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Copernicus Reburied As Hero
CasualFriday writes "Mikolaj Kopernik, a.k.a. Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland's highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005."
Copernicus' burial in an anonymous grave in the 16th century was not linked to suspicions of heresy. When he died, his ideas were just starting to be discussed by a small group of European astronomers, astrologers and mathematicians, and the church was not yet forcefully condemning the heliocentric world view as heresy, according to Jack Repcheck, author of "Copernicus' Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began."
"Why was he just buried along with everyone else, like every other canon in Frombork? Because at the time of his death he was just any other canon in Frombork. He was not the iconic hero that he has become."
You do know that Copernicus was a Catholic priest also right?
There are a lot of misconceptions about what Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and all the other important figures during this time period were doing. For example, a lot of people don't realize that the system constructed by Copernicus still had epicycles. It was more aesthetically pleasing and slightly simpler mathematically than the Ptolemaic system but it wasn't actually more accurate. It wasn't until Kepler came around that a system that was genuinely superior in both simplicity and accurate. Also, people seem to forget that a major reason for Copernicus' work was that the Church wanted a more accurate astronomical system because they needed it to calculate the dates for Easter and other issues. And the Roman Catholic Church didn't even take a negative stance to heliocentrism until many years after Copernicus. Martin Luther and some of the other early Protestants reacted negatively far years before the Church did. The actual history is much more complicated than the standard narratives make it out to be. There are two excellent books on this topic. The first is Thomas Kuhn's "The Copernican Revolution" which presents the history pretty well although it gets filtered slightly through Kuhn's philosophy. The second is Alan Hirschfield's "Parallax" which takes a broader outlook over a much longer time period but with less detail on the period directly after Copernicus. Both books are very good reads.