Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

Martin Luther, in one of his ‘Table Talks’, held in 1539, was quoted as saying: ‘People give ear to an upstart astrologer [sic] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon…This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.’37 As biblical citation was increasingly used against the Copernicans, they were labelled either ‘infidels’ or ‘atheists’. Eventually, about 1610, when the Catholic church officially joined the battle against the new astronomy, the charge became one of formal heresy.38 In 1616 De revolutionibus and all other works that affirmed the earth’s motion were placed on the Index and Catholics were forbidden to teach or even to read Copernican doctrines.