6 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



The system of Copernicus was well received at 

 Kome. A German disciple of his, John Albert 

 Widmanstadt, in the year 1533, expounded it before 

 Pope Clement VII., and produced a very favourable 

 impression. Nor was the favour shown to Copernicus 

 and his teaching ever withdrawn at Kome ; his great 

 work, " De Kevolutionibus Orbium Coslestium " 

 (published, it is said, by the advice of Cardinal 

 Schunberg, Bishop of Capua), was dedicated to the 

 reigning Pope, Paul III. ; nor does he appear to have 

 received at any time the least rebuke or discourage- 

 ment from the Holy See ; he died, however, imme- 

 diately after the printing of his book, in May, 1543. 



Copernicus supposed the heavenly bodies, the 

 Earth included, to revolve round the Sun in circles; 

 but, as it was evident that they did not exactly do 

 this, he used the theory of epicycles, and supposed 

 each planet to make two revolutions in each epicycle 

 for every revolution round the Sun. The true solution 

 of the difficulty was due to Kepler, who lived in the 

 next century, and who discovered that the planets 

 moved in ellipses. Copernicus held, and, of course, 

 held truly, that the Earth revolves on its axis, 

 thereby causing the apparent diurnal motion of all 

 the heavenly bodies from east to west. 



Owing to his work having been the first of any 

 great importance that maintained argumentatively 

 the system called heliocentric, that is to say, in 

 which the Sun is the real centre, round which the 

 planets, including the Earth, revolve for the treatise 



