Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/87

 Another writer preferring the Tychonic scheme was Longomontanus, whose Astronomica Danica (Amsterdam, 1640) upheld this theory because it "obviates the absurdities of the Copernican hypothesis and most aptly corresponds to celestial appearances," and also because it is "midway between that and the Ptolemaic one." Even though he speaks of the "apparent motion of the sun," he attributed diurnal motion to the heavens, and believed the earth was at the center of the universe because (1), from the account of the Creation, the heaven and the earth were first created, and what could be more likely than that the heavens should fill the space between the center (the earth) and the circumference? (2) and because of the incredibly enormous interval between the sphere of the fixed stars and the earth necessitated by Copernican doctrine.

The high-water mark of opposition after Galileo's condemnation was reached in the Almagestum Novum (Bologna, 1651) by Father Riccioli of the Society of Jesus. It was the authoritative answer of that order, the leaders of the Church in matters of education, to the challenges of the literary world for a justification of the condemnation of the Copernican doctrine and of Galileo for upholding it. Father Riccioli had been professor of philosophy and of mathematics for six years and of theology for ten when by order of his superiors, he was released from his lectureship to prepare a book containing all the material he could gather together on this great controversy of the age. He wrote it as he himself said, as "an apologia for the Sacred Congregation of the Cardinals who officially pronounced these condemnations, not so much because I thought such great height and eminence needed this at my hands but especially in behalf of Catholics; also out of the love of truth to which every non-Catholic, even, should be persuaded; and from a certain notable zeal and eagerness for the preservation of the Sacred Scriptures intact and unimpaired; and lastly because of that reverence and devotion which I owe

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