"Maister: You are too yong to be a good judge in so great a matter: it passeth farre your learning, and their's also, that are much better learned than you, to improuve his supposition by good arguments, and therefore you were best condemne nothing that you do not well understand: but an other time, as I saide, I will so declare his supposition, that you shall not onely wonder to heare it, but also peradventure be as earnest then to credite it, as you are now to condemne it: in the meane season let us proceed forward in our former order...."

This little book, reprinted in 1556 and in 1596, and one of the most popular of the mathematical writings in England during that century, must have interested the English in the new doctrine even before Bruno's emphatic presentation of it to them in the eighties.

Yet the English did not welcome it cordially. One of the most popular books of this period was Sylvester's translation (1591) of DuBartas's The Divine Weeks which appeared in France in 1578, a book loved especially by Milton.[192] DuBartas writes:[193]

"Those clerks that think—think how absurd a jest!
That neither heavens nor stars do turn at all,
Nor dance around this great, round earthly ball,
But the earth itself, this massy globe of our's,
Turns round about once every twice twelve hours!
And we resemble land-bred novices
New brought aboard to venture on the seas;
Who at first launching from the shore suppose
The ship stands still and that the firm earth goes."

Quite otherwise was the situation in the sixteenth century at the University of Salamanca. A new set of regulations for the University, drawn up at the King's order by Bishop Covarrubias, was published in 1561. It contained the provision in the curriculum that "Mathematics and Astrology are to be given in three years, the first, Astrology, the second, Euclid, Ptolemy or Copernicus ad vota audientium," which also indicates, as Vicente de la Fuente points out, that at this University "the choice of the subject-matter to be taught lay not with the teachers but with the students, a rare situation."[194] One wonders what happened there when the professors and students received word[195] from the Cardinal Nuncio at Madrid in 1633 that the Congregations of the Index had decreed the Copernican doctrine was thereafter in no way to be held, taught or defended.

One of the graduates of this University, Father Zuñiga,[196] (better known as Didacus à Stunica), wrote a commentary on Job that was licensed to be printed in 1579, but was not published until 1584 at Toledo. Another edition appeared at Rome seven years later. It evidently was widely read for it was condemned donec corrigatur by the Index in 1616 and the mathematical literature of the next half century contains many allusions to his remarks on Job: IX: 6; "Who shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." After commenting here upon the greater clarity and simplicity of the Copernican theory, Didacus à Stunica then states that the theory is not contradicted by Solomon in Ecclesiastes, as that "text signifieth no more but this, that although the succession of ages, and generations of men on earth be various, yet the earth itself is still one and the same, and continueth without any sensible variation" ... and "it hath no coherence with its context (as Philosophers show) if it be expounded to speak of the earth's immobility. The motion that belongs to the earth by way of speech is assigned to the sun even by Copernicus himself, and those who are his followers.... To conclude, no place can be produced out of Holy Scriptures which so clearly speaks the earth's immobility as this doth its mobility. Therefore this text of which we have spoken is easily reconciled to this opinion. And to set forth the wonderful power and wisdom of God who can indue the frame of the whole earth (it being of monstrous weight by nature) with motion, this our Divine pen-man added; 'And the pillars thereof tremble:' As if he would teach us, from the doctrine laid down, that it is moved from its foundations."[197]

French thinkers, like the English, did not encourage the new doctrine at this time. Montaigne[198] was characteristically indifferent: "What shall we reape by it, but only that we neede not care which of the two it be? And who knoweth whether a hundred yeares hence a third opinion will arise which happily shall overthrow these two præcedent?" The famous political theorist, Jean Bodin, (1530-1596), was as thoroughly opposed to it as DuBartas had been. In the last year of his life, Bodin wrote his Universæ Naturæ Theatrum[199] in which he discussed the origin and composition of the universe and of the animal, vegetable, mineral and spiritual kingdoms. These five books (or divisions) reveal his amazing ideas of geology, physics and astronomy while at the same time they show a mind thoroughly at home in Hebrew and Arabian literature as well as in the classics. His answer to the Copernican doctrine is worth quoting to illustrate the attitude of one of the keenest thinkers in a brilliant era:

"Theorist: Since the sun's heat is so intense that we read it has sometimes burned crops, houses and cities in Scythia,[200] would it not be more reasonable that the sun is still and the earth indeed revolves?

"Mystic: Such was the old idea of Philolaus, Timæus, Ecphantes, Seleucus, Aristarchus of Samos, Archimedes and Eudoxus, which Copernicus has renewed in our time. But it can easily be refuted by its shallowness although no one has done it thoroughly.