APPENDIX C: COPERNICUS 411 



I do not avoid anyone's judgment, I have preferred to dedicate these 

 lucubrations of mine to Your Holiness rather than to any other, be- 

 cause, even in this remote corner of the world where I live, you are 

 considered to be the most eminent man in dignity of rank and in love 

 of all learning and even of mathematics, so that by your authority 

 and judmgent you can easily suppress the bites of slanderers, albeit 

 the proverb hath it that there is no remedy for the bite of a sycophant. 

 If perchance there shall be idle talkers, who, though they are ignorant 

 of all mathematical sciences, nevertheless assume the right to pass 

 judgment on these things, and if they should dare to criticise and 

 attack this theory of mine because of some passage of scripture which 

 they have falsely distorted for their own purpose, I care not at all; 

 I will even despise their judgment as foolish. For it is not unknown 

 that Lactantius, otherwise a famous writer but a poor mathematician, 

 speaks most childishly of the shape of the Earth when he makes fun 

 of those who said that the Earth has the form of a sphere. It should 

 not seem strange then to zealous students, if some such people shall 

 ridicule us also. Mathematics are written for mathematicians, to 

 whom, if my opinion does not deceive me, our labors will seem to 

 contribute something to the ecclesiastical state whose chief office 

 Your Holiness now occupies ; for when not so very long ago, under 

 Leo X, in the Lateran Council the question of revising the ecclesiastical 

 calendar was discussed, it then remained unsettled, simply because 

 the length of the years and the months, and the motions of the sun 

 and moon were held to have been not yet sufficiently determined. 

 Since that time, I have given my attention to observing these more 

 accurately, urged on by a very distinguished man, Paul, Bishop of 

 Fossombrone, who at that time had charge of the matter. But what 

 I may have accomplished herein I leave to the judgment of Your 

 Holiness in particular, and to that of all other learned mathematicians ; 

 and lest I seem to Your Holiness to promise more regarding the use- 

 fulness of the work than I can perform, I now pass to the work itself. 

 ( From the Harvard Classics, Vol. 39, 55-30.) 



