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Rh and Tidium Gisius, Bishop of Kulm—succeeded in overcoming my repugnance. The last, especially, insisted most earnestly on my publishing this book, which I had kept on the shelf, not nine years, but nearly thirty-six."

The book (De Revolutionibus Orbium Cælestium) was printed at Nuremberg, under the care of Rheticus, one of Copernicus's pupils, in 1543. Although Copernicus had till that time been enjoying excellent health, he had then been attacked by a dysentery; and this had passed into a paralysis, with loss of his mental faculties, when the first copy of the book was given to him only a few hours before his death. He saw it and handled it, but was too far gone to exhibit any signs of appreciation of it, or for his friends to be able to know how he was affected by it, or whether he realized what it was. The first edition of the De Revolutionibus, which is now very rare, was followed by a second edition in 1566, and a third in 1617. Seventy-three years after the death of its author, on the 5th of March, 1616, it was condemned by the Congregation of the Index "for containing ideas set forth as true on the positions and motions of the earth entirely contrary to the Holy Scripture."

The first work recording the labors of the astronomer was the letter published by Rheticus under the title ''Ad Clar. V. de Jo. Schonerum de Libris Revolutionum eruditiss, Viri et Mathematici excellentiss. Rev. Doctoris Nicolai Copernici Torunnæi, Canonici Varmiensis, per quemdam juvenem Mathematicæ studiosum, Narratio prima,'' Dantzic, 1540; reprinted, with a eulogium, at Basle, 1541. The works of Copernicus are De Revolutionibus Orbium Cælestium Libri VI, Nuremberg, 1543; reprinted at Basle in 1566, with the letter of Rheticus, and also included in the Astronomia Instaurataol Nicolas Muller, Amsterdam, 1617 and 1640; a treatise on Trigonometry, with tables of sines, entitled De Lateribus et Angulis Triangulorum, Wittenberg; Theophylacti Scholastici Simocattæ Epistolæ morales, rurales, et amatoriæ, cum Versione Latina. There are also the treatise on money, already mentioned, and several manuscript treatises in the library of the bishopric of Wiarmia.

The tomb of Copernicus, which was exactly like those of the other canons of Frauenburg, was adorned with a Latin epitaph by the Polish Bishop Cromer, in 1581. It was repaired by Napoleon I in 1807, and so placed that it could be seen from all parts of the church. A statue of Copernicus by Thorwaldsen was erected by subscriptions from the Polish people, in 1829, in the Casimir Palace at Warsaw. The Polish clergy, invited to attend the ceremonies, refused, because his. book had been condemned by the Holy Office in 1616. Another monument to him, by Tieck, was erected at Thorn in 1853.