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His treatise, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, which was dedicated to Pope Paul III., appeared at Nuremberg in 1543, with a preface added to it by the preacher, Andreas Osiander, which calls the heliocentric system merely an hypothesis advanced as a basis for astronomical calculations.
Copernicus kept back the publication of his "De Revolutionibus Orbium Caeslestium" for thirty-six years, and received a copy of it only on his death-bed. Galileo tasted the sweets of the Inquisition. Tycho Brahe was exiled. And Kepler himself was persecuted all his life, hounded from city to city. And yet the sixteenth century will ever be memorable in the history of the human mind.
Be that as it may, Copernicus was removed by death from the danger of attack, and it remained for his disciples of a later generation to run the gauntlet of criticism and suffer the charges of heresy. The work of Copernicus, published thus in the year 1543 at Nuremberg, bears the title De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus.
In Frauenburg, the town physician and a canon, now nearing the Psalmist limit and his end, had sent to the press the studies of a lifetime "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium." It was no new thought, no new demonstration that Copernicus thus gave to his generation.
A copy of it was brought to him on his death-bed. Its fate was such as he had anticipated. The Inquisition condemned it as heretical. Astronomers justly affirm that the book of Copernicus, "De Revolutionibus," changed the face of their science. It incontestably established the heliocentric theory.
But the Inquisition now took up the matter as heretical and contrary to the express words of Scripture; and in 1616, Copernicus's work, "De Revolutionibus," Kepler's "Epitome," and some of Galileo's own letters, were placed on the list of prohibited books; and he himself, being then in Rome, received formal notice not to teach that the earth revolves round the sun.
His great object was to increase the accuracy of the calculations and the tables. The results of his cogitations were printed just before his death in an interesting book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium. It is only by careful reading of this book that the true position of Copernicus can be realised.
Having reduced his doctrine to six books, he published them under the title of "De Revolutionibus Coelestibus," at the instance of the Cardinal of Capua, and of the Bishop of Culma; and, since he undertook the task at the order of Pope Leo X., he dedicated the work to his successor Paul III., and it was received by the Holy Church and studied by all the world.
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