When I think of a classic example of a mainstream news story that is in urgent need of GetReligion treatment, the opening goes something like this:
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.
His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.
The lede above is from an Associated Press story and it is wildly misleading.
What’s the big deal? The reporter makes it sound like the Church excommunicated or otherwise punished Copernicus, depriving him of a Christian burial. That’s a big deal.
Truth be told, he had been buried in the same cathedral — even the same exact location — in which he was reburied. It wasn’t like he was discarded into some unimportant plot. Apparently he was buried in the manner that other church canons of the time were. That’s because he wasn’t exactly famous when he died. He only published the book that really launched the field of astronomy — On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres — just before death. The grave wasn’t marked but there was a plaque at the cathedral that celebrated his burial there.
You can actually find some of this information in the rest of the story, if you make it to the end and consider what the reporter is actually saying. But the spin on this is really inappropriate.
It’s still an important story even if you can’t tie the church’s condemnation of Copernicanism to the body of Copernicus. As one of the readers who submitted the story pointed out, it’s sad when even Wikipedia gets the timeline on these things better than the reporter.
 | Posted at 10:37 am |  Print
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Comments (19) |
May 30, 2010, at 1:12 pm
*jaw drop*
What the (expletive deleted)?
Nicolas Copernicus, a Canon of Warmia (that’s a clergy position), brother of an Augustinian canon (that’s a religious order) and a Benedictine prioress (yep, more religious orders), nephew of a Prince-Bishop?
Obviously, since he was executed in the dungeons of the Inquisition, all references to him and his work were ruthlessly extirpated by the fanatics of the Church - naturally, no public recognition of him such as this plaque on the house in Bologna where he stayed in 1496-1501 was at all possible until the glorious dawn of the Enlightenment today has finally freed his memory from obscurity and the dead hand of the Dark Ages - oh, but they put this up back in 1973? How did the heresy hunters miss that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copernico_commemorative_plate.jpg
Five minutes glancing over the Wikipedia article would set this straight (and yes, I know, Wikipedia isn’t academically rigorous, but it would give a jumping off point to investigate is this true or not):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
“In 1533, Johann Widmanstetter, secretary to Pope Clement VII, explained Copernicus’ heliocentric system to the Pope and two cardinals. The Pope was so pleased that he gave Widmanstetter a valuable gift.
…Some of Copernicus’ close friends turned Protestant, but Copernicus never showed a tendency in that direction. The first attacks on him came from Protestants. Wilhelm Gnapheus, a Dutch refugee settled in Elbl?g, wrote a comedy in Latin, Morosophus (The Foolish Sage), and staged it at the Latin school that he had established there. In the play, Copernicus was caricatured as a haughty, cold, aloof man who dabbled in astrology, considered himself inspired by God, and was rumored to have written a large work that was moldering in a chest.
Elsewhere Protestants were the first to react to news of Copernicus’ theory. Melanchthon wrote:
Some people believe that it is excellent and correct to work out a thing as absurd as did that Sarmatian [i.e., Polish] astronomer who moves the earth and stops the sun. Indeed, wise rulers should have curbed such light-mindedness.”
At this hour of the day, I expect the Galileo thing to never die down because it’s too entrenched in the popular mythology of “everyone knows”. But damn it all, when they start dragging Copernicus into it… is this reporter writing an article or the next Dan Brown novel, for all that’s good and holy?
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May 30, 2010, at 3:25 pm
The reporter makes it sound like the Church excommunicated or otherwise punished Copernicus, depriving him of a Christian burial.
Do they? All I saw were some references to his teachings later being condemned.
(not even sure what Martha is rolling her eyes over today.)
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May 30, 2010, at 4:11 pm
Martha,
I actually wondered if the reporter was thinking of Galileo instead of Copernicus when writing the lede. And then the editors were too ignorant of history to correct? I don’t know, but it’s just awful.
Also, Copernicus was viewed skeptically by his church during his life, according to some reports. But not for heliocentrism. Rather, they worried he was too sympathetic to Lutheranism.
Anyway, such nuanced views of scientist-scholar-clerics are probably never going to get published.
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May 30, 2010, at 4:13 pm
Stoo—Please read the opening lede that Mollie gave from the story.Martha said “it makes it sound like::”
Well, it certainly does.
Anyone who has been miseducated to believe in “the Church always gets things wrong” would certainly take it the way Martha portrayed it.
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May 30, 2010, at 4:24 pm
I don’t think it does make it sound that way. The impression I got was that controversy sprung up mostly after Copernicus death and that he himself wasn’t persecuted, just died mostly unknown.
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May 30, 2010, at 4:44 pm
Many years after Copernicus’ death his writings were put on the Index until sometime in the 1800s. This does not always mean they are deemed heretical. Often, it meant that the thesis has not been proven and the book should not be published in the vernacular. Seeing as how all academics wrote in Latin, that meant that it was thought that the general, uneducated public shouldn’t be exposed to unproven theories that might be misunderstood and make them nervous.
That’s pretty much what happened with Galileo, too, seeing as how he was a close friend of the Pope who liked to do astronomy with him before becoming Pope - that and making fun of the Pope in a satire like the one that Gnapheus wrote making fun of Copernicus.
BTW Much of Einstein’s theories were not proven for quite a while after he proposed them.
I have a theory that many of these stories are echos of what the reporter heard in Sunday School. A woman attorney friend of mine said she had heard all the stuff in the DaVinci Code in Sunday School and therefore she was sure it was all true.
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May 30, 2010, at 5:58 pm
Stoo, it’s simple.
I’m rolling my eyes over lazy, misleading reporting.
Copernicus was never condemned as a heretic. Therefore, I don’t see in what way the Church is somehow now “making peace with the scientist”.
Now, his work being tangled up with Galileo’s trial for heresy means that certainly the waters are muddied, but the gist of this little effusion by the AP is that once again, the Evil Dark Ages Church crushed yet another scientific pioneer beneath its jackboots in an attempt to hold on to power in the face of the dawn of reason, and only now is the “hero” being given his rightful recognition, being moved from his “unmarked grave”.
I’m rolling my eyes over bon-bons such as “The pageantry comes 18 years after the Vatican rehabilitated the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted in the Inquisition for carrying the Copernican Revolution forward.”
(Can’t you just hear the strains of the Marseillaise in the background? Aux armes, citoyens! Let us defend the Scientific Revolution against the forces of darkness and superstition!)
What I am rolling my eyes about is the laziness, the acceptance of the urban legends, the trotting out of the Same Old Article once again.
I don’t mind the Church being yelled at for its faults. I do mind when imaginary transgressions are reported as fact.
I wish to God Copernicus *was* the one primarily associated with heliocentrism in the popular mind not Galileo. I wish Galileo had never gotten involved with the whole damn question in the first place, because quite apart from the quality of his work as a scientist, personality-wise he was a bit of a gloryhound and too prone to making claims that he couldn’t back up with the requisite proof.
Or do you mean to tell me that a peer-reviewed journal would have done any less than Cardinal Bellarmine, when he said that certainly Galileo could teach heliocentrism as a hypothesis but couldn’t declare it as a proven theory without the requisite proof to back it up, which he didn’t have?
Yeah, we were wrong on this one. Now, when are we going to see an AP piece attacking the Lutherans for their anti-heliocentrism, hmmm?
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May 30, 2010, at 6:08 pm
Don’t worry, Stoo. Even though I am currently leaning back in my black leather swivel chair, petting my white Persian cat, and revolving my schemes to attain complete global domination and instigate an Irish Catholic Theocracy, you have nothing to fear in the forthcoming purges.
My minions labouring in the secret underground laboratories based in Antartica have assured me that implantation of the mind control chip is completely painless
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May 30, 2010, at 7:04 pm
Martha, I hope you’ve studied how to be an Evil Overlord before you unleash your minions. It’s required reading in evil overlord schools everywhere. Note that teachers in these schools will be summarily killed if they stray from the official doctrine in the slightest measure.
Of course, as these things go, this list is very sexist in nature, but I’m sure you can rectify that once your minions take over. However, evil overlords of all sexes and religions must take note of #100 on the list:
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
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May 30, 2010, at 8:42 pm
Well, Jerry, it has always struck me that the pitfall of Evil Overlording is that on the one hand, it makes sense to appeal to your subjects’ self-interest by improving conditions so that when you usurp power from your noble half-brother, the masses will be less inclined to revolt, give aid to the hero and his plucky band of rag-tag rebels, or indeed pine for the ‘good old days’.
On the other hand, what’s the point in being an Evil Overlord if you’re going to be a better, more enlightened ruler than the soft-hearted one you’re replacing? It takes all the fun out of tyrannising a cowering populace when they’re not, in fact, cowering.
Mass brainwashing and inculcation of fanatical devotion are easier. So yes, unlimited free access - with decent download speeds to boot!
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May 30, 2010, at 9:35 pm
I feel like I’ve wandered into an episode of Pinky and The Brain.
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May 31, 2010, at 9:15 am
Stoo,
there is nothing about “controversy springing up later” in the passage.
Sure, if one knows the truth one can take it this way but the much plainer reading suggests that Copernicus ran into trouble with church authorities at least some time during his life time, not that his book was put on the index for a while almost a century after his death.
With lines like “how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age”, the article certainly suggest that there was anything but peace between Copernicus and the Church until now when the Church has accepted heliocentrism for centuries. It was Church people who pressured Copernicus into publishing his book in the first place. And no, Copernicus was neither a modern scientist, his work not modern science and no modern age was ushered in by the book.
To look for the real scientist linked to the heliocentric system one should look to Johann Kepler.
PS. When will the Lutheran Church, which actually condemned the man, make peace with Copernicus and why does no paper call for that?
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May 31, 2010, at 10:58 am
Martha
The piece never said he was condemned as a heretic. There’s no indication he personally was “crushed beneath jackboots”.
“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, ”
“”There is no indication that Copernicus was worried about being declared a heretic and being kicked out of the church for his astronomical views,” Repcheck said. ”
Sure that could have been made clearer further up, but this whole post look like just a defensive reflex.
(Sometimes I do think the scientific revolution needs defending against those who will reject bits that don’t fit religious teaching. However I’m not quite in fear of the catholic church returning us to steam engines tomorrow or whatever)
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May 31, 2010, at 3:44 pm
Stoo,
you seem to be very apologetic about this article, defending it from any possible fault.
Sure, it says his “findings(*) were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical”, not the man Copernicus himself.
However, it also says “how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist”. It doesn’t say peace “with the man’s revolutionary theory” but with the man himself.
Furthermore, the Church has made peace with the gist of the man’s findings(*) long ago. The article clearly suggests here that Copernicus the man and the Church were at odds personally, which simply isn’t true.
I provided some asteriks because the terms “theory”, “scientist” and even “findings” in Copernicus’ case must be used very loosely.
The whole notion of a scientific revolution fought through against an unwilling and malvolent church is wrongheaded, so it doesn’t need defending. And worse, the notion is used today by those who would rather ruining basic human morality in the pursuit of what they call science. This is why the Catholic Church is still bashed for her supposed enmity to Copernicus and not Protestant ones, despite Luther being much harsher than any Pope or Cardinal about Copernicus. But Luther’s heirs support “progress”, where those evil Papist are nagging all the time with their “concerns” and “reservations”.
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June 1, 2010, at 9:02 pm
“I feel like I’ve wandered into an episode of Pinky and The Brain.”
## Impossible - “Pinky and the Brain” (which always reminds me of Dangermouse”, who is escorted by his side-kick Penfold, which is the name of a Fundamentalist publisher in the UK, which is clearly symbolic) is an intelligent programme. It is also highly amusing.
The article from the AP is not intelligent, but lazy. And deadly dull.
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June 2, 2010, at 7:43 am
It was a reference to the comments, Tigon, particularly the interchange between Martha and Jerry.
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June 2, 2010, at 1:43 pm
To say “an unmarked grave” and “teaching condemned” especially in the context of a reburial with fuller recognition makes it soundlike attacks on the person.
As generally when you say “the Catholic Church condemned the teachings of person x” the first assumption is that it happened during the person’s life time.
Also Copernicus was a canon at the time of his death. This should be made obvious in the article, probably in the beginning. He was buried as a canon in full standing and in the manner in which any other canon was buried. He was not buried as an astronomer, either for good or ill.
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June 3, 2010, at 2:14 pm
To say “an unmarked grave” and “teaching condemned” especially in the context of a reburial with fuller recognition makes it soundlike attacks on the person.
As generally when you say “the Catholic Church condemned the teachings of person x” the first assumption is that it happened during the person’s life time.
Also Copernicus was a canon at the time of his death. This should be made obvious in the article, probably in the beginning. He was buried as a canon in full standing and in the manner in which any other canon was buried. He was not buried as an astronomer, either for good or ill.
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June 3, 2010, at 10:14 pm
“It was a reference to the comments, Tigon, particularly the interchange between Martha and Jerry.”
## *That* goes without saying - the original report was still a very shabby piece of reporting
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