Therefore,
when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear
because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly
induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

My friends, however, in spite of long delay and even resistance on my
part, withheld me from this decision. First among these was Nicolaus
Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, distinguished in all branches of
learning. Next to him comes my very dear friend, Tidemann Giese,
Bishop of Culm, a most earnest student, as he is, of sacred and,
indeed, of all good learning. The latter has often urged me, at times
even spurring me on with reproaches, to publish and at last bring to
the light the book which had lain in my study not nine years merely,
but already going on four times nine. Not a few other very eminent and
scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer
through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of
students of Mathematics. They said I should find that the more absurd
most men now thought this theory of mine concerning the motion of the
Earth, the more admiration and gratitude it would command after
they saw in the publication of my commentaries the mist of absurdity
cleared away by most transparent proofs. So, influenced by these
advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish
the work, as they had long besought me to do.

But perhaps Your Holiness will not so much wonder that I have ventured
to publish these studies of mine, after having taken such pains in
elaborating them that I have not hesitated to commit to writing my
views of the motion of the Earth, as you will be curious to hear
how it occurred to me to venture, contrary to the accepted view of
mathematicians, and well-nigh contrary to common sense, to form a
conception of any terrestrial motion whatsoever. Therefore I would not
have it unknown to Your Holiness, that the only thing which induced
me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly
bodies was that I knew that mathematicians by no means agree in their
investigations thereof. For, in the first place, they are so much in
doubt concerning the motion of the sun and the moon, that they can
not even demonstrate and prove by observation the constant length of
a complete year; and in the second place, in determining the motions
both of these and of the five other planets, they fail to employ
consistently one set of first principles a