The Popes and Science Part 25

Innocent X (1644-55).--One of the copious writers among the Papal Physicians was Baldus Baldi, who was the medical attendant of Innocent X. We have a series of books from him, one On Contagious Diseases, a treatise on Hippocrates' Suggestions concerning Air, Water and Habitation, a book On Pleurisy, a detailed account of the fatal illness and the autopsy on the body of Cardinal Bevilacqua and academic lectures on poisons as well as a book on the Opobalsamo Orientate.

A distinguished Papal Physician under Pope Innocent X was Paul Zacchias, "a most learned philosopher and physician who had a very versatile genius and whose deep interest in every form of intellectual work, not only such serious studies as philosophy, {462} medicine, theology and jurisprudence, but also the lighter arts of poetry, music, painting and so forth, made him distinguished among his contemporaries." Zacchias is best known as the author of a book on medico-legal questions which went through a series of editions, was published originally at Rome and afterwards at Lyons in at least two editions there. Zacchias wrote a volume on the keeping of Lent in which he discussed various questions of the relationship of fasting and health, which went through several editions and is often referred to by the moralists. He also wrote a book on Hypochondriasis. Some of his writings that were widely circulated in ma.n.u.script are On Sudden and Unexpected Death, On Macules Contracted from the Foetus _in Utero_, on Rest in the Cure of Disease, on Laughter and Grief, on a Physical Consideration of The Miracles of Holy Scriptures, and other subjects that might be expected to interest a medico-legal expert who was occupied particularly with the psychology of many human problems.

The Papal Physicians were not all Italians, indeed Italian as a national designation was almost unused, men were Neopolitans, Genoese, Venetians, Paduans, Bolognese, Sicilians, Milanese quite as distinctly as now they are French, English, Spanish or whatever else it may be.

The Popes usually chose physicians from their own cities but not to the exclusion of others and not a few Papal Physicians were from outside of Italy. Pope Innocent X chose Gabriel Fonseca, a Portuguese, whose father had been a teacher of medicine at Pisa and at Padua, and who himself held chairs in medicine at both of these universities before he was invited to Rome to be a lecturer at the Sapienza and Papal Physician. Van der Linden notes among his writings a work on medical economy, _Medici Oeconomia_, and a series of lectures on Contagious Fevers, as well as a book on Medical Banquets. Fonseca came to be looked upon as one of the most distinguished teachers of medicine in Italy in his time.

Alexander VII (1655-67).--One of the physicians of Pope Alexander VII was Matthias Naldius, Doctor of Medicine and of Philosophy and a man of great erudition, a scholar in Latin and in Greek, who knew Hebrew, Chaldaic and Arabic. He was sent by the Duke of Etruria on a medical mission of consultation to the Prince of Damascus, who was suffering from what seemed to his attending physicians an incurable disease, and Naldius was able to relieve him. The incident called attention to him all over Italy and he was sent for in consultations to most of the Italian cities. He taught at the medical school of Siena, his birthplace, and wrote {463} a series of volumes on medical subjects.

One of these is the rather well-known "Pamphilia or Friendship of the Whole World," the subt.i.tle of which is "The Conciliation of the Opinions of Disagreeing Philosophers." This was published at Siena in 1647 in quarto. He issued a small volume of "Rules for the Cure of Contagious Diseases," Rome, 1656. His great work is the _Rei Medicae Prodromi_, or introduction to medical science, which has for subt.i.tle "Treatise on the Princ.i.p.al Problems of Physiology."

A distinguished scientist of the seventeenth century who found Rome a refuge and place of opportunity for his studies at this time when beset with difficulties elsewhere, was Borelli, the first to apply mechanical principles to the explanation of physiological problems in his work _De Motu Animalium_. Borelli had been a professor of science in Messina, visited Florence for a time in order to be with Galileo shortly before the great astronomer's death, accepted the call of the Duke of Tuscany to Pisa, where he had as colleagues Redi and Malpighi, with whom he founded the Accademia del Cimento. He left Pisa, not long after, to return to Messina, whence however he had to flee, having fallen under the suspicion of taking part in a conspiracy against the government, and now found a refuge in Rome. He was pensioned by Queen Christina of Sweden, who was then living in the Papal Capital, but after a time he retired to the monastery of San Pantaleone in Rome, where two years later he died. Professor Foster, in his Lectures on the History of Physiology, which were delivered at a number of universities in this country and subsequently published in the Cambridge Biological Series, devotes a whole lecture, some thirty pages, to "Borelli and the Influence of the New Physics." He does not hesitate to say at the conclusion of the lecture that "when we consider the effect which a perusal of Borelli's book has upon the reader now, we can easily understand how he was the founder of a great school which flourished long after him. He was so successful in his mechanical solutions of physiological problems that many coming after him readily rushed to the conclusion that all such problems could be solved by the same method. And as is often the case the less qualified alike as regards mechanical as well as physiological knowledge and insight to follow in Borelli's path were the men of succeeding times the more loudly did they often proclaim the might of Borelli's method." It has always been thus and doubtless always will be. The smaller men who come after the great masters are quite sure that they can go farther than the master himself and push his system, as did the Darwinians in {464} our time, to silly exaggerations. When the question of the att.i.tude of the Popes to science is under consideration, however, it is well to recall that Borelli's revolutionary work was completed under the aegis of the Popes and a religious order in Rome and the account of it was not actually published in its completed form until after Borelli's death, and then at the expense of ecclesiastics. It is the knowledge of details of this kind that gives us a real insight into the significance of ecclesiastical relations to science.

Innocent XI (1676-89).--The Papal Physician of this Pope was Floridus Salvatorius, to whom the Provost, the Trustees and his Colleagues of the College of Physicians of Rome dedicated, in an Introductory Epistle, a volume of the Statutes of the College of Physicians of the City, in which they praised him very highly. He seems to have been a great favorite with the members of the medical profession in his time at Rome, and other books on medicine were also dedicated to him.

Another of this Pope's physicians was Lancisi, one of the most important in the list, whose place in the history of medicine is pointed out in the body of this book.

Alexander VIII (1689-91).--The physician to this Pope was Romulus Spezioli, doctor of philosophy and of medicine of the University of Firmo, who acquired a great reputation at Rome as physician and finally was selected as Papal Physician. He became professor at the Sapienza, the Roman University, and was very popular as a teacher.

After the death of the Pope he gave up his profession of medicine and, like Linacre a century before, became a priest, but his scientific knowledge was taken advantage of to enable him to give lectures on subjects in the borderland between religion and medicine, what has come to be called in our time pastoral medicine, to the theological students at the Roman University, and his medical experience was used in the causes of canonization in order to pa.s.s on miracles.

Innocent XII (1691-1700).--Both of the physicians of Innocent XII, Malpighi and Lucas Tozzi, are very well known. Malpighi deserves in medical history a place beside Harvey as one of the greatest of the contributors to the medical sciences and probably even a niche higher than the Englishman because of the number of original observations that he made. I dealt with him earlier in this volume. Lucas Tozzi is the author of a series of books on The Theory and Practice of Medicine that are cla.s.sics. One of these was issued at Lyons in 1731, another at Paris in 1737, and a commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates at Naples, 1743. He {465} wrote also a commentary on the _Ars Medicinalis Galeni_, besides smaller contributions to medical theory and practice.

One of his books, with the t.i.tle _De Anima Mundi_, The Soul of the World, in which he brings together a large number of the fallacies of philosophic writers before his time regarding the universe and man and their origin and destiny, was widely read. He suggests not only how little there is that we know, but how much there is that we think we know that is not so.

Pope Innocent XII died in 1700, and with the beginning of the eighteenth century we feel that we are in our own times. Whatever of direct opposition there has been supposed to be between the Popes and science has always been traced to the older times. It was nearly always shrouded in the mists of medieval history. It does not seem so important then, to follow out the lives of the Papal Physicians in detail in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For anyone who wishes really to know, the information is readily available. There is abundant evidence, moreover, of the favorable att.i.tude of the Popes towards the medical sciences and a number of distinguished men are among their physicians. The great Morgagni, who in his time was undoubtedly the greatest of living physicians, was the intimate friend of a number of Popes and was frequently consulted on all scientific as well as medical matters. Both Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) and his successor Clement XIII (1758-69) insisted, as we have said in the body of this volume, on having the great pathologist consider the Papal Palace always open to him as a place of residence, whenever he visited Rome. Almost needless to say this same favorable att.i.tude has continued during the nineteenth century.

Pius VI (1775-99).--Among the physicians who treated Pius VI during the severe physical trials of a stormy pontificate was Professor Cotugno of Naples, to whom we owe a number of important discoveries in medicine. He was the first to point out the presence of the cerebro-spinal fluid and ably supplemented the investigations of Valsalva on the ear which did so much to clear up many problems in connection with that organ, most of whose anatomy we owe to Italians.

He made a careful study of sciatica, _De Ischiada Nervosa_, Vienna, 1770, which is the cla.s.sic foundation of our modern knowledge of that affection. He made a series of _post-mortem_ observations on typhoid fever in which he demonstrated very clearly the intestinal lesions of that affection and came very near solving the important problem of the pathological basis of the disease. Like a number of others about the middle of {466} the eighteenth century, in spite of acute observations on intestinal lesions, he could not get away from the theory of fevers being const.i.tutional and so was unable to separate abdominal typhus from dysentery on the one hand, nor true typhus on the other. The const.i.tutional nature of the disease we have come to recognize to some extent again after the pendulum had swung very far in the direction of the declaration of its local character.

Pius VII (1800-23).--One of the physicians of Pope Pius VII was Professor Giambattista Bomba, who was professor of physiology at the Sapienza or Roman University of that time. One of the surgeons in attendance at the Papal Court was Antonio Baccelli, the father of Professor Guido Baccelli, the distinguished Italian scientist and statesman of the modern time.

Another of the physicians of Pius VII was Flajani, to whom we owe the first description of the affection known as Graves' Disease in English-speaking countries, and often as Basedow's Disease on the Continent, though the English physician Parry antic.i.p.ated both of these in 1822. Graves' description did not come until 1835, Flajani's had been published in 1802; Basedow did not write the more complete description in which he called attention not only to the goitre and the rapid heart action as his Irish and Italian predecessors had done, but also to the exophthalmos, which is so common an accompaniment, until 1850. Flajani was distinguished for his ability as a clinical observer as his priority in this matter would well suggest.

Gregory XVI (1831-46).--The two of Gregory XVI's physicians who were best known were Professor Paolo Baroni, the distinguished Professor of Surgery, the University of Bologna, and Pier Luigi Valentini, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Roman University. At the conclave which followed his death for the election of his successor, Professor Giusseppe Constantini, the Professor of the Inst.i.tutes of Surgery at the Roman University, was in attendance.

[Footnote 53]

[Footnote 63: When the material of the famous Challenger expedition was being a.s.signed for investigation to those who were expected to use it to the best advantage of science, the diatoms were handed over to the study of Francesco Castracane degli Anteminelli. He discovered in the material submitted to him three new genera of diatoms, 225 new species and some thirty varieties. Altogether he had written some 112 papers on the biology of his favorite microscopic plants. Castracane was a Catholic priest living at Rome in high favor with the ecclesiastical authorities and directly encouraged by the Pope in his work.]

Leo XIII (1878-1903) was so situated in his relations to the Italian government that it would have been almost impossible for him to have selected one of the distinguished professors at the {467} University at Rome, which was, after all, a government inst.i.tution. His physician then was chosen from distant Ancona and proved to be a man of distinct intellectual capacity, who impressed himself upon the science of Rome in certain ways. This was Dr. Joseph Lapponi, whom those of us who had the privilege of meeting remember with special pleasure. He was professor of practical anthropology at the Academy of the Historico-Juridical Conferences of Rome and the author of a book on "Hypnotism and Spiritism; A Critical and Medical Study," which ran through two or more editions in the original Italian and was translated into several foreign languages. The English edition published by Longmans is well known.

Pius X (1903-14).--Dr. Lapponi continued as the Papal Physician of Leo XIII's successor until his death. Political conditions in Rome having been modified somewhat Professor Marchiafava of the Roman University, now in the hands of the Italian government, became the consultant Papal Physician, the latest of a long line of distinguished men.

Marchiafava has done some excellent work with regard to malaria, working out the life cycle of the malarial parasite and demonstrating that the organisms of pernicious malaria and the tertian and quartan malarial fevers are quite different. In recent years Marchiafava has been particularly interested in the pathology of alcoholism, being a prominent factor in that movement in Europe which during our time has made it very clear that alcohol is never a stimulant but only a narcotic and that in practically all cases where it is used regularly, even though not consumed to excess, it produces definite pathological changes in human tissues.

With this list before him, the reader will have all the material necessary to understand the declaration that there is no series of men whose names are connected together by any bond in the history of medicine, even as members of the faculty of our oldest medical schools, that represent so much achievement and original investigation in medical matters as the Papal Physicians. With these men beside them as advisers and very often as intimate friends, it would have been quite impossible for the Popes to have been deliberate opponents of scientific progress. We all know that by a curious irony of fate physicians are sometimes found ranged against the line of advance in medical science, but this is inevitable with human frailty and the incidents of opposition have not done nearly so much harm as their conservative refusal to listen to enthusiastic discoverers, whose discovery was of no significance, has done of {468} good. No medical society in the world has an unblemished record of constant readiness to accept genuine new discoveries and all of them have sometime or other been in opposition to what proved eventually to be significant scientific progress. There are no striking incidents in the lives of the Papal Physicians in this regard though their admiration for Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen sometimes kept them over conservative. As a rule, however, they were ready to welcome every new step in medical advance that was made.

We all know how much a man's physician usually means in influencing him with regard to the att.i.tude that he shall a.s.sume towards scientific advances generally and particularly announced progress in the biological sciences. The Popes could scarcely have had better advisers in this matter than the men who were actually chosen as Papal Physicians. They came from every part of Italy and sometimes even from other countries. A library consisting of their works alone would contain an extremely valuable collection of books ill.u.s.trating nearly every phase of advance in medicine.

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APPENDIX VI.

ASTRONOMY AND THE CHURCH.

_Some Roman Astronomers_.

A formal list of Papal Astronomers in any way comparable to that of the Papal Physicians cannot be given. Astronomy is not so compelling in its interests as medicine and while man's first serious scientific interest is his body, and the first modern university, that of Salerno, was founded around a medical school, the development of astronomy as a science was practically delayed until the Renaissance.

Though a formal list of Papal Astronomers is not available, there is, however, a long series of names of workers in astronomy at Rome, some of whom occupied positions in the Papal capital actually called by that name, with many others who merited it for the work they did with Papal aid and encouragement. A large number of astronomical investigators conducted their researches under the patronage of the Popes, often dedicated their books, with permission, to them, were frequently supported by Papal revenues and had their observatories supplied by the Papal government, or else they were in intimate relations with the Papacy and received every stimulus for their researches.

For special purposes, as the correction of the calendar, distinguished astronomers were summoned from long distances to Rome. At the Sapienza Papal University and later at the Roman College directly under the control of the Jesuits, but with the entire approval and constant effective good-will of the Popes, men of great distinction in astronomy and mathematics have frequently been professors. Some of the very greatest contributions to the science of astronomy have been issued not only with dedications to the Popes, as I have said, but not infrequently have been printed at the expense of the Holy See.

In the chapter on Papal Physicians I have suggested that no list of men connected by any bond in the history of medicine are so distinguished as the roll of the Papal Physicians. The faculty of no medical school, for instance, no matter how long it may be able to trace its history, contains so many distinguished names. This same thing might well be said of the list of men who have done distinguished work in astronomy whose names are in some way {470} connected with the Papacy and whose relations to the Popes make it very clear that far from a determined course of opposition there was, on the contrary, a definite policy of encouragement and patronage for astronomical workers and that this greatly helped the diffusion of valuable scientific information with regard to the heavens and made the ecclesiastics of the world particularly interested in these important advances in human knowledge. In this appendix, then, as a complement to the appendix on the Papal Physicians, I have brought together some of the names and the achievements of astronomers who worked at Rome or were in some way connected with the Popes. I know that it is incomplete, but even as it stands it is a strong confirmation of that principle so surprising to many presumably well-informed people that the Popes were, as far as conditions permitted, always the patrons, not the persecutors, of scientists in all departments of the purely physical as well as biological, theoretic and applied sciences.

It is sometimes a.s.sumed in the modern time, and it used to be the custom a generation ago for nearly everyone in English-speaking countries to a.s.sume, that because we knew very little about science in the medieval period it must be because there was very little to know.

We have learned the fallacy of that supposition to our cost, by the republication of the great text-books of medicine and surgery of the medieval period and by the deeper study of such great scholars as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even the scanty records that we have show us the Popes following the same sort of policy with regard to education and science as at the present time.

Men who collected scientific information for academic or popular diffusion, as Isidore of Seville, Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquin, were not infrequently raised to ecclesiastical dignities during life and placed among the saints after death. Occasionally a distinguished scientist like Gerbert, who became Pope Sylvester II, or Petrus Hispa.n.u.s the well-known physician, who became Pope John XXI, were even made Popes. It is easy to understand that their att.i.tude as Supreme Pontiffs towards science would be not only not one of opposition but of sympathy and helpful patronage.

While as I have said astronomy as a formal science practically did not develop until the Renaissance, there were a series of important discussions of the relations of the earth to the other heavenly bodies and of the size and shape of the earth itself among the professors of the medieval universities, and the perfect freedom with which these discussions were carried on shows how unshackled {471} was human thought. Albertus Magnus discussed the antipodes, dismissed the notion that if there were men on the other side of the earth they would surely fall off by the thoroughly Socratic remark that we ourselves were on the other side from them yet did not fall off, and understood and taught very definitely the rotundity of the earth and other doctrines that are usually supposed to be much more recent, and that are often said to have brought their holders into ecclesiastical odium. Far from this, Albert was always in high favor and was made a bishop and canonized as a saint after his death.

Roger Bacon studied light, declared that it moved with a definite velocity and gathered and made good use in his teaching of an immense amount of information in the departments of knowledge that we now call astronomy and geography. Humboldt declared that it was a pa.s.sage from Roger Bacon which more than anything else, even the Toscanelli letters, roused Columbus to his life purpose of sailing westwards.

Roger Bacon's books, the one with the paragraph now famous because of its connection with Columbus among the number, were issued at the request of the Pope and it seems very probable that we would have had no idea of his marvellous antic.i.p.ation of many modern scientific truths only for the definitely expressed wish of the Pope to know the English Franciscan's thought. We have just celebrated the seventh centenary of Roger Bacon's birth, and this has brought home to us how much of a loss to the history of human culture would have been the missing of Bacon's works. Bacon's difficulties in life were with his Order and were personal matters not directly connected with his science.

With the beginning of the Renaissance the stimulating effect of the study of Greek science on the men of the fifteenth century was exerted and one of those who was most deeply touched by the Greek spirit was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, or Cusa.n.u.s, as he is called from the Latin name of his birthplace. He wrote a series of books touching many matters in science and treating various phases of mathematics. He dwelt particularly on certain problems relating to geography and astronomy. I have summed up his scientific career in a chapter of "Old Time Makers of Medicine" (N. Y., 1911). He taught the rotundity of the earth and that the earth was the same sort of a body as the other stars in the heavens, that it was not and could not be the centre of the universe and that it had a movement of its own. Far from such revolutionary teaching leading to his persecution or bringing him under the suspicion {472} of the ecclesiastical authorities he was, on the contrary, looked up to for his scholarship, received successive ecclesiastical preferments, became Bishop of Brixen and then Papal Legate to Germany for the reform of abuses, and finally a Cardinal. He did much to encourage interest in mathematical, geographical and astronomical science, provided opportunities for students, encouraged Puerbach and Regiomonta.n.u.s in their significant pioneer work in mathematics and astronomy, and generally showed himself the enlightened patron of every movement related to the physical sciences, and all the workers with the experimental method.

The first epoch-making astronomer who was brought into intimate relations with the Pope of whom we have definite knowledge was Regiomonta.n.u.s. He is deservedly known as the Father of Modern Astronomy for his initiation of series of calculations and publications with regard to the heavens and his establishment at Nuremburg of a regular observatory. He was summoned to Rome to direct the calculations for the correction of the calendar, but unfortunately died there at the early age of forty. His invitation to Rome for this purpose came within the same decade when, if we were to trust certain modern historians of the relations of the Popes to science, Pope Calixtus III issued his supposed bull against Halley's comet. The bull has never been found. The att.i.tude of the Popes towards science is much better ill.u.s.trated by the invitation to Regiomonta.n.u.s and the encouragement of astronomical research thus afforded than by the fict.i.tious bull against the comet. The supposed bull has, however, played a large role in convincing a number of people of Church opposition to science, some of them being professors of science who knew nothing about the almost simultaneous appointment of Regiomonta.n.u.s as Papal Astronomer.

Toscanelli, over the question of whose influence on Columbus an as yet unsettled controversy is waged, was a lifelong friend of Nicholas of Cusa, they had been schoolmates at College and undoubtedly the great cardinal doctor of laws or of decrees as they said at that time, owed much of his progressive advanced views on scientific subjects to his Florentine friend "the doctor of physic, Paul Toscanelli." Cusa.n.u.s at the height of his fame dedicated his book on Geometrical Transformations "to Paul the Florentine physician." Regiomonta.n.u.s, as well as Cusa, often sought Toscanelli's opinion on abstruse questions of mathematics and quoted him with confidence. The intimate relations of Cusa.n.u.s and Regiomonta.n.u.s with the Popes of the middle of the fifteenth century are very well known. Toscanelli's services to astronomy are only {473} less famous than those to cosmography. A series of his careful and painstaking observations and calculations of the orbits of the comets of 1433, 1449-50, of Halley's comet of 1456 and of the comets of 1457 and 1472 are preserved in ma.n.u.script. They demonstrate his profound and successful interest in astronomical subject and it is easy to see that they must have cost him, as indeed he tells in his letters, many a night's watching of the stars. The relations between the ecclesiastical authorities and Toscanelli are very well ill.u.s.trated by that well-known monument to his astronomical skill which still interests visitors so much in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence. This is the gnomon arranged in the dome of the Cathedral by the shadow of which it is said that he could determine midday to within half a second. The use of the Cathedral for this purpose is interesting testimony to the cordial relations of science and religion at this time. It may be said in pa.s.sing that Toscanelli's gnomon was later improved by Cardinal Ximenes of Spain, showing that these cordial ecclesiastical relations with science were not confined to Italy.

While Toscanelli was making his observations Antoninus of Florence was for some thirteen years the Archbishop of the city and was one of the learned members of the Dominican Order at this time, who had made his novitiate among the Dominicans with Fra Angelico and Fra Bartholomeo the great Renaissance painters. Antoninus was greatly influenced evidently by his a.s.sociations with Toscanelli and formed one of a group of men containing the Florentine physician astronomer, Cardinal Cusa.n.u.s and Regiomonta.n.u.s, himself afterwards a bishop, who were on terms of intimate relationship at least in scholarly matters at this period. Archbishop Antoninus, who is the author of a _Summa Theologica Moralis_ of which no less than fifteen editions were printed after his death, wrote also a series of histories in which he shows this influence by insisting that comets are celestial bodies like the others in the heavens and had no effect on the physical or moral conditions of the world and, quite contrary to popular beliefs, were not responsible for war or pestilence nor prophetic of evil to mankind. There had been a number of brilliant comets in the heavens about this time and there was consequently a widespread interest in them and much popular superst.i.tion with regard to them. Antoninus was on terms of familiar intimacy with Pope Eugene IV, who insisted on his becoming Archbishop of Florence, though Antoninus would have preferred to have remained a simple Dominican and keep his leisure for his scholarly work. When the Pope felt his end {474} approaching he called Antoninus to Rome to administer the last rites of the Church to him and be by his side during his last hours. Antoninus was frequently consulted by Pope Eugene's successors, Nicholas V and Pius II, both of whom were among the scholarly patrons of learning and art at this time. Some fifty years after his death Antoninus was canonized by Pope Hadrian VI, the scholarly Pope from Utrecht in Holland. His whole career then shows clearly the relations of the ecclesiastics and particularly the Popes of the time to science in a most favorable light.

The relationship with the rising science of the Renaissance period thus initiated was continued during the following century. At the end of the fifteenth century Copernicus studied for ten years in Italy and felt so thoroughly the interest of Italians in advances in science as well as scholarship that when some years later he came to formulate his great new hypothesis of the heavens, he sent an abstract of his theory to some of the Roman teachers with whom he had become intimate during his stay and it was taught publicly in the city to crowded audiences. This may well seem surprising to many whose only knowledge of the relations of the Popes to astronomy is the Galileo incident, but it must not be forgotten that Copernicus' great work in which he elaborated his theory, was dedicated, with permission, to the Pope, and not only received no censure until Galileo's time, nearly a century later, but was welcomed as a great contribution to science and thought. It was looked upon as a theory, to be discussed as any other.

When Galileo, at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, insisted on teaching it as absolute science, it must not be forgotten that there were no astronomers in Europe who looked upon Copernicanism as an accepted scientific doctrine. Even the reasons advanced by Galileo for its acceptance have all since been rejected.

Owing to the discussions of it far and wide in the time of Galileo, certain expressions in Copernicus' great work were required by the Church authorities to be corrected so that his explanation of the heavens should be presented as the theory that it was and not as an absolute doctrine of science.