out of Holy Scriptures which so clearly speaks the earth's immobility as this doth its mobility. Therefore this text of which we have spoken is easily reconciled to this opinion. And to set forth the wonderful power and wisdom of God who can indue the frame of the whole earth (it being of monstrous weight by nature) with motion, this our Divine pen-man added; 'And the pillars thereof tremble:' As if he would teach us, from the doctrine laid down, that it is moved from its foundations."[1]
French thinkers, like the English, did not encourage the new doctrine at this time. Montaigne[2] was characteristically indifferent: "What shall we reape by it, but only that we neede not care which of the two it be? And who knoweth whether a hundred yeares hence a third opinion will arise which happily shall overthrow these two præcedent?" The famous political theorist, Jean Bodin, (1530-1596), was as thoroughly opposed to it as DuBartas had been. In the last year of his life, Bodin wrote his Universæ Naturæ Theatrum[3] in which he discussed the origin and composition of the universe and of the animal, vegetable, mineral and spiritual kingdoms. These five books (or divisions) reveal his amazing ideas of geology, physics and astronomy while at the same time they show a mind thoroughly at home in Hebrew and Arabian literature as well as in the classics. His answer to the Copernican doctrine is worth quoting to illustrate the attitude of one of the keenest thinkers in a brilliant era:
"Theorist: Since the sun's heat is so intense that we read it has sometimes burned crops, houses and cities in Scythia,[4] would it not be more reasonable that the sun is still and the earth indeed revolves?
- ↑ Quoted in Salusbury: Math. Coll.: I; 468-470 (1661), as a work inaccessible to most readers at that time because of its extreme rarity. It remained on the Index until the edition of 1835.
- ↑ Montaigne: Essays: Bk: II, c. 2: An Apologie of Raymonde Sebonde (II, 352).
- ↑ This book, published at Frankfort in 1597, was translated into French by M. Fougerolles and printed in Lyons that same year. It has become extremely rare since its "atheistic atmosphere" (Peignot; Dictionnaire) caused the Roman Church to place it upon the Index by decree of 1628, where it has remained to this day.
- ↑ Cromer in History of Poland.
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