742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



answer as follows : " Newton teaches nothing that would make a 

 good logician or metaphysician ; and Gassendi and Descartes do 

 not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does," 



Vengeance upon the dead also has continued far into our own 

 century. On the 5th of May, 1829, a great multitude assembled 

 at Warsaw to honor the memory of Copernicus and to unveil 

 Thorwaldsen's statue of him. 



Copernicus had lived a pious, Christian life ; he had been be- 

 loved for unostentatious Christian charity ; with his religious 

 belief no fault had ever been found ; he was a canon of the 

 Church at Frauenberg, and over his grave had been written the 

 most touching of Christian epitaphs. Naturally, then, the people 

 expected a religious service ; all was understood to be arranged 

 for it ; the procession marched to the church and waited. The 

 hour passed, and no priest appeared ; none could be induced to 

 appear. Copernicus, gentle, charitable, pious, one of the noblest 

 gifts of God to religion as well as to science, was evidently still 

 under the ban. Five years after that, his book was still standing 

 on the Index of books prohibited to Christians. 



The edition of the Index published in 1819 was as inexorable 

 toward the works of Copernicus and Galileo as its predecessors 

 had been ; but in the year 1820 came a crisis. Canon Settele, Pro- 

 fessor of Astronomy at Rome, had written an elementary book in 

 which the Copernican system was taken for granted. The Mas- 

 ter of the Sacred Palace, Anfossi, as censor of the press, refused 

 to allow the book to be printed unless Settele revised his work 

 and treated the Copernican theory as merely a hypothesis. On 

 this Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII, and the Pope referred the 

 matter to the Congregation of the Holy Office. At last, on the 

 10th of August, 1820, it was decided that Settele might teach 

 the Copernican system as established, and this decision was ap- 

 proved by the Pope. This aroused considerable discussion, but 

 finally, on the 11th of September, 1822, the cardinals of the Holy 

 Inquisition graciously agreed that " the printing and publication 

 of works treating of the motion of the earth and the stability of 

 the sun, in accordance with the general opinion of modern astron- 

 omers, is permitted at Rome." This decree was ratified by Pius 

 VII, but it was not until thirteen years later, in 1835, that the 

 condemnation of works defending the double motion of the earth 

 was left out of the Index. 



This was not a moment too soon, for, as if the previous proofs 

 had not been sufficient, each of the motions of the earth was now 

 absolutely demonstrated anew, so as to be recognized by the 

 ordinary observer. The parallax of fixed stars, shown by Bessel 

 as well as other noted astronomers in 1838, clinched forever the 

 doctrine of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and in 



