Part 6 (1/2)

How widespread among the people generally did this theory become in the years immediately following the publication of the _De Revolutionibus_? M. Flammarion, in his _Vie de Copernic_ (1872), refers[187] to the famous clock in the Strasburg Cathedral as having been constructed by the University of Strasburg in protest against the action taken by the Holy Office against Galileo, (though the clock was constructed in 1571 and Galileo was not condemned until 1633).

This astronomical clock constructed only thirty years after the death of Copernicus, he claims represented the Copernican system of the universe with the planets revolving around the sun, and explained clearly in the sight of the people what was the thought of the makers.

Lest no one should miscomprehend, he adds, the portrait of Copernicus was placed there with this inscription: Nicolai Copernici vera effigies, ex ipsius autographo depicta.

[Footnote 187: P. 78-79: ”Ce planetaire ... represente le systeme du monde tel qu'il a ete explique par Copernic.”]

This would be important evidence of the spread of the theory were it true. But M. Flammarion must have failed to see a brief description of the Strasburg Clock written in 1856 by Charles Schwilgue, son of the man who renovated its mechanism in 1838-1842. He describes the clock as it was before his father made it over and as it is today.

Originally constructed in 1352, it was replaced in 1571 by an astrolabe based on the Ptolemaic system; six hands with the zodiacal signs of the planets gave their daily movements and, together with a seventh representing the sun, revolved around a map of the world.[188]

When M. Schwilgue repaired the clock in 1838, he changed it to harmonize with the Copernican system.[189]

[Footnote 188: Schwilgue: p. 15.]

[Footnote 189: Ibid: p. 48.]

But within eighteen years after the publication of the _De Revolutionibus_, proof of its influence is to be found in such widely separated places as London and the great Spanish University of Salamanca. In 1551, Robert Recorde, court physician to Edward and to Mary and teacher of mathematics, published in London his _Castle of Knowledge_, an introduction to astronomy and the first book printed in England describing the Copernican system.[190] He evidently did not consider the times quite ripe for a full avowal of his own allegiance to the new doctrine, but the remarks of the _Maister_ and the _Scholler_ are worth repeating:[191]

”MAISTER: ... howbeit Copernicus a man of great learning, of much experience, and of wonderfull diligence in observation, hath renewed the opinion of Aristarchus Samius, affirming that the earth, not onely moveth circularly about his owne centre, but also may be, yea and is, continually out of the precise centre of the world eight and thirty hundred thousand miles: but because the understanding of that controversie depends of profounder knowledge than in this Introduction may be uttered conveniently, I wil let it pa.s.se til some other time.

”SCHOLLER: Nay sit, in good faith, I desire not to heare such vaine fantasies, so farre against the common reason, and repugnant to the content of all the learned mult.i.tude of Writers, and therefore let it pa.s.se for ever and a day longer.

”MAISTER: You are too yong to be a good judge in so great a matter: it pa.s.seth farre your learning, and their's also, that are much better learned than you, to improuve his supposition by good arguments, and therefore you were best condemne nothing that you do not well understand: but an other time, as I saide, I will so declare his supposition, that you shall not onely wonder to heare it, but also peradventure be as earnest then to credite it, as you are now to condemne it: in the meane season let us proceed forward in our former order....”

[Footnote 190: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: ”Recorde.”]

[Footnote 191: Quoted (p. 135), from the edition of 1596 in the library of Mr. George A. Plimpton. See also Recorde's _Whetstone of Witte_ (1557) as cited by Berry, 127.]

This little book, reprinted in 1556 and in 1596, and one of the most popular of the mathematical writings in England during that century, must have interested the English in the new doctrine even before Bruno's emphatic presentation of it to them in the eighties.

Yet the English did not welcome it cordially. One of the most popular books of this period was Sylvester's translation (1591) of DuBartas's _The Divine Weeks_ which appeared in France in 1578, a book loved especially by Milton.[192] DuBartas writes:[193]

”Those clerks that think--think how absurd a jest!

That neither heavens nor stars do turn at all, Nor dance around this great, round earthly ball, But the earth itself, this ma.s.sy globe of our's, Turns round about once every twice twelve hours!

And we resemble land-bred novices New brought aboard to venture on the seas; Who at first launching from the sh.o.r.e suppose The s.h.i.+p stands still and that the firm earth goes.”

[Footnote 192: DuBartas: _The Divine Weeks_ (Sylvester's trans. edited by Haight): Preface, pp. xx-xxiii and note.]

[Footnote 193: _Op. cit._: 72.]

Quite otherwise was the situation in the sixteenth century at the University of Salamanca. A new set of regulations for the University, drawn up at the King's order by Bishop Covarrubias, was published in 1561. It contained the provision in the curriculum that ”Mathematics and Astrology are to be given in three years, the first, Astrology, the second, Euclid, Ptolemy or Copernicus _ad vota audientium_,” which also indicates, as Vicente de la Fuente points out, that at this University ”the choice of the subject-matter to be taught lay not with the teachers but with the students, a rare situation.”[194] One wonders what happened there when the professors and students received word[195] from the Cardinal Nuncio at Madrid in 1633 that the Congregations of the Index had decreed the Copernican doctrine was thereafter in no way to be held, taught or defended.

[Footnote 194: La Fuente: _Historia de la Universidades ... de Espana_: II, 314.]

[Footnote 195: _Doc. 86_ in Favaro: 130.]

One of the graduates of this University, Father Zuniga,[196] (better known as Didacus a Stunica), wrote a commentary on Job that was licensed to be printed in 1579, but was not published until 1584 at Toledo. Another edition appeared at Rome seven years later. It evidently was widely read for it was condemned _donec corrigatur_ by the Index in 1616 and the mathematical literature of the next half century contains many allusions to his remarks on Job: IX: 6; ”Who shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.”

After commenting here upon the greater clarity and simplicity of the Copernican theory, Didacus a Stunica then states that the theory is not contradicted by Solomon in Ecclesiastes, as that ”text signifieth no more but this, that although the succession of ages, and generations of men on earth be various, yet the earth itself is still one and the same, and continueth without any sensible variation” ...

and ”it hath no coherence with its context (as Philosophers show) if it be expounded to speak of the earth's immobility. The motion that belongs to the earth by way of speech is a.s.signed to the sun even by Copernicus himself, and those who are his followers.... To conclude, no place can be produced out of Holy Scriptures which so clearly speaks the earth's immobility as this doth its mobility. Therefore this text of which we have spoken is easily reconciled to this opinion. And to set forth the wonderful power and wisdom of G.o.d who can indue the frame of the whole earth (it being of monstrous weight by nature) with motion, this our Divine pen-man added; 'And the pillars thereof tremble:' As if he would teach us, from the doctrine laid down, that it is moved from its foundations.”[197]