eneral denunciation; and in 1631 Father Melchior
Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to bear upon Galileo
with this declaration: "The opinion of the earth's motion is of all
heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous;
the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the
immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation,
should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth
moves." From the other end of Europe came a powerful echo.

From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp, the noted theologian
Fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the Ant-Aristarclius. Its very
title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of Copernicus, since
it paraded the assumption that the new truth was only an exploded theory
of a pagan astronomer. Fromundus declares that "sacred Scripture fights
against the Copernicans." To prove that the sun revolves about the
earth, he cites the passage in the Psalms which speaks of the sun "which
cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber." To prove that the
earth stands still, he quotes a passage from Ecclesiastes, "The earth
standeth fast forever." To show the utter futility of the Copernican
theory, he declares that, if it were true, "the wind would constantly
blow from the east"; and that "buildings and the earth itself would fly
off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with
claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface."
Greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of Aristotle and St.
Thomas Aquinas, a demonstration from theology and science combined, that
the earth MUST stand in the centre, and that the sun MUST revolve about
it.(62) Nor was it merely fanatics who opposed the truth revealed by
Copernicus; such strong men as Jean Bodin, in France, and Sir Thomas
Browne, in England, declared against it as evidently contrary to Holy
Scripture.

(62) For Father Inchofer's attack, see his Tractatus Syllepticus, cited
in Galileo's letter to Deodati, July 28, 1634. For Fromundus's more
famous attack, see his Ant-Aristarchus, already cited, passim, but
especially the heading of chap. vi, and the argument in chapters x and
xi. A copy of this work may be found in the Astor Library at New York,
and another in the White Library at Cornell University. For interesting
references to one of Fromundus's arguments, showing, by a mixture of
mathematics and theology,