18"26.] Galileo, and the Copernican Si/sicm. 606 



oC Astronomy from 1405 to 1411, a short time before Ciisa went there; conse- 

 quently " it is not improbable," saws Tiraboschi, " that the latter received 

 through him the first ideas of that system which he afterwards eiiibrnced, and 

 of which he has given a rough draught in his work — " de docta ignorantia." 

 He there (lib.ii.cap.il, 12) states, that the earth moves and that the sun 

 remains fixed, and to the popular objection that we see the motion of the latter, 

 he replies, that it is similar to what happens to a person who, when in a ship 

 under sail, keeps his eye fixed upon the shore — the land seems to be in motion 

 and he appears stationary. 



Now this book, in which he ventured to support an opin-on at that time so 

 strange, w-as not concealed in his writing-desk, but laid before the public with a 

 dedication to one of the most celebrated persons of whom the church could 

 boast — to Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, his former master in canon law at Padua, 

 and with whom Cusa, already Archdeacon of Lieges, assisted at the council of 

 Basle, over which Pope Eugenius IV. had appointed the former to preside in his 

 name, in the year 14;51. This book of Cusa, dedicated to a cardinal, must have 

 fallen into the hands of the learned, and the new opinions which he proposed 

 must have been the frc(juent subject of their deliberations; more particularly so 

 when he communicated to the same council his tract, to show the necessity of 

 reforming the calendar, and the disorders into which it had fallen ; so that the 

 astronomical learning of the Archdeacon of Lieges must have been made known 

 to that great assembly, and his fame consequently have been widely spread. 

 Yet so far was the opinion which he advanced concerning the system of the 

 world from occasioning him any inconvenience, that, on the contrary, he was 

 raised by the Roman pontiffs to the highest dignities. He was employed in 

 some delicate and important missions by Eugenius IV.; was nominated Cardinal 

 in 1448, and appointed to the see of Brixen in the Tyrol by Nicholas V., who 

 was never perhaps surpassed by any pope as a patron of learning: and he, 

 CallistusIII. and Pius II , his successors, availed themselves of the advice and 

 assistance of the Cardinal de Cusa in the most difficult affairs and most arduous 

 legations. In 1450 he was despatched into Germany for the purpose of effecting 

 a league among its princes against the Turks, in which object he failed both at 

 that time and three years afterwards; he was then employed to maintain the 

 rights of the holy see against the secular princes of the empire, and was at 

 length made governor of Rome : nor did these pontiffs cease to honour, esteem, 

 and love him up to the time of his death, which took place at Todi in Umbria, 

 in 1464. Nor should it be omitted, which is not generally known, that the 

 works of the Cardinal de Cusa were first printed in Italy in the year 1502, at 

 Corte Maggiore, under the patronage of the Marqais Rolando Pallavicino, the 

 lord of that part of the Duchy of Piacenza, who addressed his epistle dedicatory 

 to the celebrated Cardinal George d'Amboi^e. And still there was no one 

 who accused the work of containing heterodox opinions, or suspected the author 

 of heresy. 



Here then is the person who first renewed the system, subsequently denomi- 

 nated Copernican, received into favour and distinguished by the popes and the 

 Roman court, honoured by the friendship of one cardinal, and his works 

 patronised by another. But this is far from all. The system thus roughly 

 sketched out by Cusa was shortly afterwards brought to greater perfection, and 

 the evidence in its support more clearly displayed by Nicholas Copernicus, and 

 he was still countenanced and protected by the popes and the court of Rome, 

 as will fully appear by considering the principal circumstances in the life of 

 this great man. Copernic was born at Thorn in the year 1472. He obtained a 

 degree in medicine at Cracow, where he made great proficiency in the know- 

 ledge of perspective and in the art of painting : he also studied mathematics 

 under Albert Brudzevius, and desiring to excel in this science, he, as Cusa had 

 done before him, proceeded into Italy and completed the usual course of studj' 

 in the university of Bologna. During the w hole of the fifteenth and part of the 

 fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Bologna and Padua were the two most 

 celebrated universities of Europe ; nor was any person esteemed a man of letters 



