588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



selves merry over a farce in wliicli Copernicus was the main ob- 

 ject of ridicule. The people of Nuremberg, a Protestant strong- 

 hold, caused a medal to be struck with inscriptions ridiculing the 

 philosopher and his theory. 



Why the people at large took this view is easily understood 

 when we note the attitude of the guardians of learning, both 

 Catholic and Protestant, in that age. It throws great light upon 

 sundry claims by modern theologians to take charge of public in- 

 struction and of the evolution of science. So important was it 

 thought to have " sound learning " guarded, and " safe science " 

 taught, that in many of the universities, as late as the end of the 

 seventeenth century, professors were forced to take an oath not to 

 hold the " Pythagorean " — that is, the Copernican idea — as to the 

 movement of the heavenly bodies. As the contest went on, pro- 

 fessors were forbidden to make known to students the facts re- 

 vealed by the telescope. Special orders to this effect were issued 

 by the ecclesiastical authorities to the universities and colleges of 

 Pisa, Innspruck, Louvain, Douay, Salamanca, and others ; during 

 generations we find the authorities of these universities boasting 

 that these godless doctrines were kept away from their students. 

 It is touching to hear such boasts made then, just as it is touching 

 now to hear sundry excellent university authorities boast that 

 they discourage the reading of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin. Nor 

 were such attempts to keep the truth from students confined to 

 the Roman Catholic institutions of learning. Strange as it may 

 seem, nowhere were the facts confirming the Copernican theory 

 more carefully kept out of sight than at Wittenberg ; the univer- 

 sity of Luther and Melanchthon. About the middle of the six- 

 teenth century there were at that center of Protestant instruction 

 two astronomers of a very high order, Rheticus and Reinhold: 

 both of these, after thorough study, had convinced themselves 

 that the Copernican system was true, but neither of them was 

 allowed to tell this truth to his students. Neither in his lecture 

 announcements nor in his published works did Rheticus venture 

 to make the new system known, and he at last gave up his pro- 

 fessorship and left Wittenberg, that he might have freedom to 

 seek and tell the truth. Reinhold was even more wretchedly 

 humiliated. Convinced of the truth of the new theory, he was 

 obliged to advocate the old ; if he mentioned the Copernican ideas, 

 he was compelled to overlay them with the Ptolemaic. Even this 

 was not thought safe enough, and in 1571 the subject was in- 

 trusted to Peucer. He was eminently " sound," and denounced 

 the Copernican theory in his lectures as " absurd and unfit to be 

 introduced into the schools." 



To clinch anti-scientific ideas more firmly into German Prot- 

 estant teaching. Rector Hensel wrote a text-book for schools en- 



