tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[60] and certainly his renown was approached only by that of the great Cardinal.

Both Janssen,[61] the Catholic historian, and Father Hagen[62] of the Vatican Observatory, together with many other Catholic writers, claim that a hundred years before Copernicus, Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus[63] (c. 1400-1464) had the courage and independence to uphold the theory of the earth's motion and its rotation on its axis. As Father Hagen remarked: "Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions he would probably have been encouraged by them to publish his own monumental work." But the Cardinal stated these views of the earth's motions in a mystical, hypothetical way which seems to justify the marginal heading "Paradox" (in the edition of 1565).[64] And unfortunately for these writers, the Jesuit father, Riccioli, the official spokesman of that order in the 17th century after Galileo's condemnation, speaking of this paradox, called attention, also, to a passage in one of the Cardinal's sermons as indicating that the latter had perhaps "forgotten himself" in the De Docta Ignorantia, or that this paradox "was repugnant to him, or that he had thought better of it."[65] The passage he referred to is as follows: "Prayer is more powerful than all created things. Although angels, or some kind of beings, move the spheres, the Sun and the stars; prayer is more powerful than they are, since it impedes motion, as when the prayer of Joshua made the Sun stand still."[66] This may explain why Copernicus apparently disregarded the Cardinal's paradox, for he made no reference to it in his book; and the statement itself, to judge by the absence of contemporary comment, aroused no interest at the time. But of late years, the Cardinal's position as stated in the De Docta Ignorantia has been repeatedly cited as an instance of the Church's friendly attitude toward scientific thought,[67] to show that Galileo's condemnation was due chiefly to his "contumacy and disobedience."

Copernicus[68] himself was born in Thorn on February 19, 1473,[69] seven years after that Hansa town founded by the Teutonic Order in 1231 had come under the sway of the king of Poland by the Second Peace of Thorn.[70] His father,[71] Niklas Koppernigk, was a wholesale merchant of Cracow who had removed to Thorn before 1458, married Barbara Watzelrode of an old patrician Thorn family, and there had served as town councillor for nineteen years until his death in 1483.[72] Thereupon his mother's brother, Lucas Watzelrode, later bishop of Ermeland, became his guardian, benefactor and close friend.[73]

After the elementary training in the Thorn school,[74] the lad entered the university at Cracow, his father's former home, where he studied under the faculty of arts from 1491-1494.[75] Nowhere else north of the Alps at this time were mathematics and astronomy in better standing than at this university.[76] Sixteen teachers taught these subjects there during the years of Copernicus's stay, but no record exists of his work under any of them.[77] That he must have studied these two sciences there, however, is proved by Rheticus's remark in the Narratio Prima[78] that Copernicus, after leaving Cracow, went to Bologna to work with Dominicus Maria di Novara "non tarn discipulus quam adjutor." He left Cracow without receiving a degree,[79] returned to Thorn in 1494 when he and his family decided he should enter the Church after first studying in Italy.[80] Consequently he crossed the Alps in 1496 and was that winter matriculated at Bologna in the "German nation."[81] The following summer he received word of his appointment to fill a vacancy among the canons of the cathedral chapter at Ermeland where his uncle had been bishop since 1489.[82] He remained in Italy, however, about