07 Dec




















astronomers in 1838, clinched forever the doctrine of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and in 1851 the great experiment of Foucault with the pendulum showed to the human eye the earth in motion around its own axis. To make the matter complete, this experiment was publicly made in one of the churches at Rome by the eminent astronomer, Father Secchi, of the Jesuits, in 1852--just two hundred and twenty years after the Jesuits had done so much to secure Galileo's condemnation.(75) (75) For good statements of the final action of the Church in the matter, see Gebler; also Zoeckler, ii, 352. See also Bertrand, Fondateurs de l'Astronomie moderne, p. 61; Flammarion, Vie de Copernic, chap. ix. As to the time when the decree of condemnation was repealed, there have been various pious attempts to make it earlier than the reality. Artaud, p. 307, cited in an apologetic article in the Dublin Review, September, 1865, says that Galileo's famous dialogue was published in 1714, at Padua, entire, and with the usual approbations. The same article also declares that in 1818, the ecclesiastical decrees were repealed by Pius VII in full Consistory. Whewell accepts this; but Cantu, an authority favourable to the Church, acknowledges that Copernicus's work remained on the Index as late as 1835 (Cantu, Histoire universelle, vol. xv, p. 483); and with this Th. Martin, not less favourable to the Church, but exceedingly careful as to the facts, agrees; and the most eminent authority of all, Prof. Reusch, of Bonn, in his Der Index der vorbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, p. 396, confirms the above statement in the text. For a clear statement of Bradley's exquisite demonstration of the Copernican theory by reasonings upon the rapidity of light, etc., and Foucault's exhibition of the rotation of the earth by the pendulum experiment, see Hoefer, Histoire

Comments
* The email will not be published on the website.
I BUILT MY SITE FOR FREE USING