Finding Copernicus

The remains of astronomer and priest Copernicus were found three years ago near an altar in Frombork Cathedral and confirmed to be his based on DNA samples, news services reported yesterday.

Copernicus was one of the key proponents of the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun.

For many years he was a canon and only carried out his astronomical studies in his spare time. People had speculated about his final resting place for centuries.

via news.bbc.co.uk

[Although his was not the first book in the area] his publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations. via Wikipedia.org

Six decades passed before the Catholic church issued a decree in 1616 suspending Copernicus' book De revolutionibus, until it was changed regarding the Pythagorean doctrine. Four years later, nine sentences were thus altered.

This was in connection with the Galileo affair "- a defining moment in the history of the relationship of religion and science". Galileo was tried and sentenced for heresy for following the position of Copernicus which was felt to be against Scripture. He was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Prohibitions against De revolutionibus were finally dropped in 1835 from the Catholic church's Index of Prohibited Books.

Copernicus died without "ever knowing what a stir his work would cause."

"Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind - for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic - religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of."

Goethe