Scheiner, Christoph. Rosa Vrsina: siue, Sol. Bracciani, Apud Andream Phaeum typographum ducalem, 1630, p. 150.

The Sun in Early Modernity

An Online Exhibition at the Linda Hall Library. Curated by Sophie Battell and MA Students from the University of Zurich, Switzerland

Responses to Copernicus

Alessia Tami (University of Zurich) 

That a diagram of the Copernican universe is found in a treatise on how to forecast the weather according to the Sun and the planets attests to the success of Copernicus’s model, and the many uses of solar theory. Image source: Digges, Leonard. A prognostication euerlastinge of right good effect … manifold wayes profitible to all men of vnderstanding. Imprinted at London: by the widow Orwin, 1596, Between Leaves M2 and M3.

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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).

Click here to view a collection of early modern books on astronomy and heresy in the age of Copernicus and Galileo.

Click here to learn more about Galileo Galilei.

Illustration from the title page of Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. Image source: Galilei, Galileo. Dialogo di Galileo Galilei Linceo matematico sopraordinario dello studio di Pisa. E filosofo, e matematico primario del serenissimo gr. duca di Toscana. Doue ne i congressi di quattro giornate si discorre sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico, e copernicano; proponendo indeterminatamente le ragioni filosofiche, e naturali tanto per l'una, quanto per l'altra parte. In Fiorenza Florence, Per Gio: Batista Landini, 1632, Frontispiece.

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