Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/30

 Both Janssen, the Catholic historian, and Father Hagen of the Vatican Observatory, together with many other Catholic writers, claim that a hundred years before Copernicus, Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus (c. 1400-1464) had the courage and independence to uphold the theory of the earth's motion and its rotation on its axis. As Father Hagen remarked: "Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions he would probably have been encouraged by them to publish his own monumental work." But the Cardinal stated these views of the earth's motions in a mystical, hypothetical way which seems to justify the marginal heading "Paradox" (in the edition of 1565). And unfortunately for these writers, the Jesuit father, Riccioli, the official spokesman of that order in the 17th century after Galileo's condemnation, speaking of this paradox, called attention, also, to a passage in one of the Cardinal's sermons as indicating that the latter had perhaps "forgotten himself" in the De Docta Ignorantia, or that this paradox "was repugnant to him, or that he had thought better of it." The passage he referred to is as follows: "Prayer is more powerful than all created things.

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