Spanish the works of Ptolemy and other philosophers. Under his patronage the University of Salamanca developed rapidly to become within two hundred years one of the four great universities of Europe[1]—a center for students from all over Europe and the headquarters for new thought, where Columbus was sheltered,[2] and later the Copernican system was accepted and publicly taught at a time when Galileo's views were suppressed.[3]
Popular interest in astronomy was evidently aroused, for Sacrobosco (to give John Holywood[4] his better known Latin name) a Scotch professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 13th century, published a small treatise De Sphæri Mundo that was immensely popular for centuries,[5] though is was practically only an abstract of the Almagest. Whewell[6] tells of a French poem of the time of Edward I entitled Ymage du Monde, which gave the Ptolemaic view and was illustrated in the manuscript in the University of Cambridge with a picture of the spherical earth with men upright on it at every point, dropping balls down perforations in the earth to illustrate the tendency of all things toward the center. Of the same period (13th century) is an Arabian compilation in which there is a reference to another work, the book of Hammarmunah the Old, stating that "the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle, and that some are on top, the others below … and there are countries in which it is constantly day or in which at least the night continues only some instants."[7] Apparently, however, such advanced views were of no influence, and the Ptolemaic theory remained unshaken down to the close of the 15th century.
Aside from the adequacy of this explanation of the universe for the times, the attitude of the Church Fathers on the matter
- ↑ Graux: 318
- ↑ Graux: 319.
- ↑ Rashdall: II, pt. I, 77.
- ↑ Dict. of Nat. Biog.
- ↑ MSS. of it are extremely numerous. It was the second astronomical book to be printed, the first edition appearing at Ferrara in 1472. 65 editions appeared before 1647. It was translated into Italian, French, German, and Spanish, and had many commentators. Dict. of Nat. Biog.
- ↑ Whewell: I, 277.
- ↑ Blavatski: II, 29, note.
