Tycho Brahe was far from being alone in his dissent from Copernicus and Galileo. Saving only the bright spot made by Kepler and a few of his disciples, all Germany, France, and England were still in comparative darkness, and it is difficult to believe that at the period of Galileo's trial there were as many avowed Copernicans in all Europe together as in the single city of Rome.
In Germany, the new system was almost universally rejected, and Wolfgang Menzel, in his History of Germany, speaks of it as "die unter den Protestanten in Deutschland noch iminer bezweifelte Wahrheit des Copernikanischen Welt-systems." [Footnote 154:]
[Footnote 154: "The even yet (by German Protestants) contested truth of the Copernican system.">[
The frontispiece to Riccioli's Almagestum Novum, Astor Library copy, published in 1651, presents a curious illustration of the prevalent estimate of the new doctrines. A figure with a pair of balances is seen weighing the Tychonian against the Copernican system, and the truth of the former is shown by its overwhelming preponderance. Riccioli cites fourteen authors who up to that day had written in favor of the Copernican theory, and thirty-seven who had written against it. He adduces seventy arguments in favor of the Tychonian, and can find but forty-nine in support of the Copernican; consequently, the mere force of numbers proves the improbability of the latter.
In France, Ramus, the Huguenot Royal Professor at Paris, utterly refused the doctrine ten years after the death of Galileo.
Thomas Lydiat, a distinguished English astronomer of his day, and so good a scholar as to come victorious out of a controversy on chronology with Scaliger, openly opposed the Copernican system in his Praelectio Astronomica, (1605.) In fact, no man of astronomical acquirements of that day, and for more than fifty years afterward, dared risk the success of a book by putting in it anything favoring the Copernican theory.
Even as late as 1570, we find John Dee, an English Copernican, who, despairing of the ignorant prejudice around him, would not so much as hint at the existence of the system in his preface to Billingsley's Euclid.
In Great Britain, the system was discredited by the illustrious Gilbert. Milton, too, seems to have doubted it. Its most active opponent was Alexander Rosse, a voluminous Scotch writer, alluded to in Hudibras.
Hume tells us Lord Bacon "rejected the system of Copernicus with the most positive disdain." [Footnote 155] It is but fair to say, though, that this statement, like too many of Hume's, should be qualified. It is true that in his De Augmentis Bacon says that the absurdity and complexity of the Ptolemaic system has driven men to the doctrine of the earth's motion, which is clearly false, "quod nobis constat falsissimum esse;" but, on the other hand, in the Novum Organum, he distinctly speaks of the question of the earth's motion as one to be examined. Now, the latter work, although published before, was written after the De Augmentis, which is less serious and argumentative than the Novum Organum.