$ 73l Life of Copper nicus 97 



22), but he declined to give any advice on the ground 

 that the motions of the sun and moon were as yet too 

 imperfectly known for a satisfactory reform to be possible. 

 A few years later (1524) he wrote an open letter, intended 

 for publication, to one of his Cracow friends, in reply to a 

 tract on precession, in which, after the manner of the time, 

 he used strong language about the errors of his opponent.* 

 It was meanwhile gradually becoming known that he 

 held the novel doctrine that the earth was in motion and 

 the sun and stars at rest, a doctrine which was sufficiently 

 startling to attrac t notice outside astronomical circles. 

 About 1531 he had the distinction of being ridiculed on 

 the stage at some popular performance in the neighbour- 

 hood ; and it is interesting to note (especially in view of 

 the famous persecution of Galilei at Rome a century later) 

 that Luther in his Table Talk frankly described Coppernicus 

 as a fool for holding such opinions, which were obviously 

 contrary to the Bible, and that Melanchthon, perhaps the 

 most learned of the Reformers, added to a somewhat similar 

 criticism a broad hint that such opinions should not be 

 tolerated. Coppernicus appears to have taken no notice of 

 these or similar attacks, and still continued to publish nothing. 

 No observation made later than 1529 occurs in his great 

 book, which seems to have been nearly in its final form by that 

 date ; and to about this time belongs an extremely interest- 

 ing paper, known as the Commentariolus, which contains a 

 short account of his system of the world, with some of the 

 evidence for it, but without any calculations. It was 

 apparently written to be shewn or lent to friends, and was 

 not published ; the manuscript disappeared after the death 

 of the author and was only rediscovered in 1878. The 

 Commentariolus was probably the basis of a lecture on 

 the ideas of Coppernicus given in 1533 by one of the 

 Roman astronomers at the request of Pope Clement VII. 

 Three years later Cardinal Schomberg wrote to ask 

 Coppernicus for further information as to his views, the 

 letter showing that the chief features were already pretty 

 accurately known. 



* Nullo demutn loco itteptior est quam . . . ubt nim s pueriliter 

 hallucinatur : Nowhere is he more foolish than . . where he suffers 

 from delusions of too childish a character. 



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