to take alarm were the Wittenberg theologians, to whose
attention the new theory was forcibly brought by their colleague
Rheticus. Luther alludes to the subject twice or thrice in his table
talk, most clearly on June 4, 1539, when

mention was made of a certain new astronomer, who tried
to prove that the earth moved and not the sky, sun and
moon, just as, when one was carried along in a boat or
wagon, it seemed to himself that he was still and that
the trees and landscape moved. "So it goes now," said
Luther, "whoever wishes to be clever must not let
anything please him that others do, but must do something
of his own. Thus he does who wishes to subvert the
whole of astronomy: but I believe the Holy Scriptures,
which say that Joshua commanded the sun, and not the
earth, to stand still."

In his _Elements of Physics_, written probably in 1545, but not
published until 1549, Melanchthon said:

The eyes bear witness that the sky revolves every
twenty-four hours. But some men now, either for love
of novelty, or to display their ingenuity, assert that the
earth moves. . . . But it is hurtful and dishonorable to
{622}
assert such absurdities. . . . The Psalmist says that the
sun moves and the earth stands fast. . . . And the earth,
as the center of the universe, must needs be the
immovable point on which the circle turns.

Apparently, however, Melanchthon either came to adopt the new theory,
or to regard it as possible, for he left this passage entirely out of
the second edition of the same work. [Sidenote: 1550] Moreover his
relations with Rheticus continued warm, and Rheinhold continued to
teach the Copernican system at Wittenberg.

The reception of the new work was also surprisingly mild, at first, in
Catholic circles. As early as 1533 Albert Widmanstetter had told
Clement VII of the Copernican hypothesis and the pope did not, at
least, condemn it. Moreover it was a cardinal, Schoenberg, who
consulted Paul III on the matter [Sidenote: 1536] and then urged
Copernicus to publish his book, though in his letter the language is so
cautiously guarded against possible heresy that not a word is said
about the earth moving around the sun but only about the moon and the
bodies near it so doing. [Sidenote: 1579] A Spanish theologian,
Didacus a Stunica (Zuniga) wrote a commentary on Job, which was
licensed by the censors, accepting the Copernican astronomy.

But graduall