CHAPTER II.
Copernicus and His Times.
DURING these centuries, one notable scholar at least stood forth in open hostility to the slavish devotion to Aristotle's writings and with hearty appreciation for the greater scientific accuracy of "infidel philosophers among the Arabians, Hebrews and Greeks."[1] In his Opus Tertium (1267), Roger Bacon also pointed out how inaccurate were the astronomical tables used by the Church, for in 1267, according to these tables "Christians will fast the whole week following the true Easter, and will eat flesh instead of fasting at Quadragesima for a week—which is absurd," and thus Christians are made foolish in the eyes of the heathen.[2] Even the rustic, he added, can observe the phases of the moon occurring a week ahead of the date set by the calendar.[3] Bacon's protests were unheeded, however, and the Church continued using the old tables which grew increasingly inaccurate with each year. Pope Sixtus IV sought to reform the calendar two centuries later with the aid of Regiomontanus, then the greatest astronomer in Europe (1475);[4] the Lateran Council appealed to Copernicus for help (1514), but little could be done, as Copernicus replied, till the sun's and the moon's positions had been observed far more precisely;[5] and the modern scientific calendar was not adopted until 1582 under Pope Gregory XIII.
What was the state of astronomy in the century of Copernicus's birth? Regiomontanus—to use Johann Müller's Latin name—his teacher Pürbach, and the great cardinal Nicolas of Cues were the leading astronomers of this fifteenth century.
