Responses to Copernicus
Alessia Tami (University of Zurich)
Among the arguments put forward in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was the assertion that the observable motion of the stars was due to the Earth performing a complete rotation on its poles every day. This contention that the Earth revolved on its axis prompted Aristotelian natural philosophers to criticize Copernicus’s model.
Copernicus had not provided a theory of physics that could explain how the Earth could be moving at high speeds without noticeable consequences. In 1651, Italian astronomer Gianbattista Riccioli reinforced criticism of Copernicus’s model by adding that a falling body would be deflected from its straight path if the Earth were rotating.
Click here to learn more about Gianbattista Riccioli.
Criticism notwithstanding, the suppression of Copernicus’s work on religious grounds came later. Indeed, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was not only dedicated to the Pope but was ushered into print in Nuremberg by German printer Johannes Petreius, with an anonymous foreword by the firebrand Protestant, Andreas Osiander.
Click here to learn more about Copernicus’s first publisher, Johannes Petreius.
Click here to learn more about Andreas Osiander.
Censure by the Catholic Church occurred during a conservative backlash in the seventeenth century. In 1616, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was added to the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books. In 1633, Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei was put on trial for heresy by the Roman Catholic Inquisition, following the publication of his overtly Copernican Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems).