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Early modern astronomers made cathedrals into solar observatories and thereby disproved the very geocentric dogma they were supposed to uphold
THE COPERnican revolution, which displaced the earth from its ancient seat at the center of the universe, is often cited as the beginning of modern science. Not only did Copernicanism correct an error dating to antiquity by substituting the sun for the earth as the center of the solar system, but it also challenged the cosmological teachings ofthe Roman Catholic Church, thereby setting up the new scientific cosmology as the rallying point of opposition to dogma. The culmination of the Copernican triumph is the morality play that was enacted in the trial of Galileo. There the Church is portrayed as quite willing to impose the heavy hand of censorship, and worse, to suppress ideas that would one day open wide the windows of scientific freedom.
The trouble with this story is that, like most other myths, it promotes a kernel of truth about the protagonists to a general, symbolic level that purports to summarize major historical currents. In particular, the momentary rigidity of the censorship and Pope Urban VIII has engendered the belief, found even in the best modern historians, that-to quote the late historian and philosopher of science Richard S. Westfall-the Church's action in the matter of Galileo made "Copernican astronomy a forbidden topic among faithful Catholics for . . . two centuries."
But nothing could be further from the truth. Beginning with the recovery of ancient learning in the twelfth century and continuing through the Copernican upheavals and on even into the Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy-Copernican and otherwise-than did any other institution. The reason for such lavish attention to astronomy is that it was absolutely central to the authority of Rome: the Church had a pressing need to establish and promulgate the date of Easter.
Christian theologians had decreed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the day of the equinox is a day when the hours of daylight and darkness are equal). The full moon that follows the equinox can...