1616
Copernicus is added to the Index of Prohibited Books
The Polish priest Nicolas Copernicus was the first astronomer to effectively challenge the age-old notion of a universe with the Earth at its centre. In his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), published in 1543 shortly before its author’s death, Copernicus proposed a heliocentric system, with the sun surrounded by the Earth, the stars and other planets. The book solved many of the problems astronomers had been having in calculating the movement of the heavens, but it was an incomplete solution, leaving more work to be done by the likes of Brahe, Kepler and Galileo.
The book was dedicated to Pope Paul III but it contained notions that seemed to be at odds not only with established scientific orthodoxy but Scripture as well. Certainly Martin Luther was at odds with heliocentrism, saying “people gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon … This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.” The Catholic Church was also troubled by it, as the scandal with Galileo proved, and in 1616 it put Copernicus’s writings on the Index.
This Holy Congregation has also learned about the spreading and acceptance by many of the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture, that the earth moves and the sun is motionless, which is also taught by Nicholaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and by Diego de Zúñiga’s In Job … Therefore, in order that this opinion may not creep any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, the Congregation has decided that the books by Nicolaus Copernicus [De revolutionibus] and Diego de Zúñiga [who had defended Copernicus in his book In Job] be suspended until corrected.
The book remained prohibited until 1758 when Pope Benedict XIV removed it from the Index.