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194 7 Foreknowledge, Skepticism, and Celestial Order in Rome Paul III, the pope to whom Copernicus carefully and elegantly crafted the dedication to De Revolutionibus , knew where to seek astrological advice on the most propitious moment to lay the cornerstone of the wing of the vatican palace named after his family; but there is no evidence that his astrologers advised him beforehand about the arrival of a technical work on planetary theory. Paul was deeply preoccupied with other matters. voices urging spiritual and institutional renewal and reform had been growing louder for more than a century.1 By the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Church was deeply preoccupied with affirming its traditional authority against the culturally and politically fragmenting effects of the “German Schism.” Also hanging like a great shadow over the reigns of Clement vII (1523–34) and his successor , Paul III (1534–49), was the memory of the humiliating and devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 by Hapsburg armies.2 Beginning in the last years of Paul’s reign, the Catholic response assumed many forms, some defensive, some quite innovatory . The Society of Jesus, formed in 1542 through the initiative of Ignatius de Loyola (1491–1556), a Spanish nobleman, brought new and remarkable cultural energies and initiatives into the Church. A great reforming council was held at the Italian city of Trento between 1545 and 1563 (with gaps in 1547–51 and 1552–62). The overriding issue confronting the Council of Trent was the need to give the faithful some feeling of security by restoring strict clerical discipline and renewing theological doctrine. It was reasonably successful in achieving the latter but largely failed in the former. Whatever real reforms were eventually made, however, some of the new initiatives created an atmosphere of obsessive control over detail, endless doctrinal clari- fications by councils, synods, and theologians, suspicion of deviancy, and a proclivity for inflexible, legalistic remedies in areas of social conflict—a climate to which the Protestants also contributed in their own way.3 Copernicus’s book was received and studied at the papal court in Rome just after the start of the Council of Trent, but it did not figure in the council’s formal decrees. Even calendar reform, which had been a major concern at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), was not in any sense a primary issue of consideration.4 There were other arenas where the Church saw more urgent need for drawing unambiguous boundaries between the legitimate and the illegitimate: (1) divinatory practices that claimed foreknowledge of future events, (2) the authoritative edition of the Scriptures , and (3) the correct exegetical standards for interpreting the Bible. By the end of the Council of Trent, an attitude toward these matters had emerged that was markedly different from that of the Melanchthonians. De revoluTionibus aT The papal CourT a sTillborn (neGaTive) reaCTion Copernicus’s theory was not discussed at the Council of Trent.5 Matters of natural philosophy foreKnoWledGe and sKepTiCisM 195 the author could hope to win over the prospective patron and other readers only through the persuasiveness of his arguments. Such appears to be the most likely explanation for Copernicus’s strategy in dedicating his volume to the pope. However, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Copernicus knew of Tolosani from the time of the Fifth Lateran Council and perhaps had requested that a copy of the work be sent directly to him by virtue of his status as a mathematicus who, like Paul of Middelburg, possessed the right kind of expertise to evaluate his proposals.11 It seems clear that De Revolutionibus had arrived while Tolosani was preparing his much longer work on the Church and holy scripture, because he added an extensive opinion about De Revolutionibus , book 1, as the fourth of the twelve additional works.12 The contrast with Copernicus’s reception in Wittenberg—at precisely the same moment— could not have been more striking. At the papal court, there was no Rheticus to promote the theoretical value of the work, no Reinhold to translate the new models into tables, and no Melanchthon to urge its utility for prognostication to a prospective patron. Whatever Copernicus himself may have known about the pope and his advisers skilled in mathematical subjects, we do not know whether the pope read the carefully crafted preface directed to him.13 And Tolosani himself refers neither to the pope nor to the Copernican preface. What we can be sure of is that Copernicus...

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