Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/68

 then reported its decree suspending "until corrected" "Nicolai Copernici De Revolutionibus Orbium Cælestium, et Didaci Astunica in Job," and prohibiting "Epistola Fratris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitæ," together with all other books dealing with this condemned and prohibited doctrine. The Pope ordered this decree to be published by the Master of the Sacred Palace, which was done two days later. But this prohibition could not have been widely known for two or three years; the next year Muller published his edition of the De Revolutionibus at Amsterdam without a word of reference to it; in 1618 Thomas Feyens, professor at Louvain, heard vague rumors of the condemnation and wondered if it could be true; and the following spring Fromundus, also at Louvain and later a noted antagonist of the new doctrine, wrote to Feyens asking:

"What did I hear lately from you about the Copernicans? That they have been condemned a year or two ago by our Holy Father, Pope Paul V? Until now I have known nothing about it; no more have this crowd of German and Italian scholars, very learned and, as I think, very Catholic, who admit with Copernicus that the earth is turned. Is it possible that after a lapse of time as considerable as this, we have nothing more than a rumor of such an event? I find it hard to believe, since nothing more definite has come from Italy. Definitions of this sort ought above all to be published in the universities where the learned men are to whom the danger of such an opinion is very great."

Galileo meanwhile had retired to Florence and devoted himself, to mechanical science, (of which his work is the foundation) though constantly harassed by much ill health and many family perplexities. At the advice of his friends, he allowed the attacks on the Copernican doctrine to go unanswered, till

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