102 



MA THEM A TIC A L SCIENCES. 



necessary to go, not to France, but to Poland, where Nicholas Copernicus, 

 born at Thorn, in 1473, had returned home, after professing mathematics at 

 Rome, without awaking the susceptibilities of the Roman clergy, who 

 would not admit of the utterance of any scientific idea contrary to the facts 

 set forth in Holy Writ. But, once settled at Frauenburg, where he was 

 appointed to a canonry, he threw off the reserve imposed upon him by the 

 fear of ecclesiastical censure, and unhesitatingly declared that he accepted, 

 with certain rectifications, the system formerly taught by the philosophers of 



ENS EIQ NEmOY'M OlSMHE-V. 



Fig. 77. Marque of Jehan St. Denis, Bookseller at Paris, Rue Neui've Nostre-Dame, at the Sign 

 of St. Nicholas: "Petit Compost en fra^oys" (jrinted in 1530, small octavo). "The 

 present book, for the use of simple persons who do not understand Latin, contains a small and 

 easy process for understanding the course of the sun and moon, festivals, and time according 

 to the order of the ' Latin Compost.' " 



ancient Greece, according to which the planets revolved, from east to west, 

 around the sun, while the earth described two distinct motions, one of rotation 

 upon its own axis, the other of circumvolution around the sun. Copernicus, 

 however, waited for some time before publishing this system, which was 

 violently attacked by the defenders of biblical lore, and he took the precaution 

 of dedicating to Pope Paul III. his book, "De Revolutionibus Orbium Cseles- 

 tibus," in which he had expounded the whole of his system. He did not live 



