From the mass of books which appeared under the auspices of the
Church immediately after the condemnation of Galileo, for the
purpose of rooting out every vestige of the hated Copernican theory
from the mind of the world, two may be taken as typical. The first
of these was a work by Scipio Chiaramonti, dedicated to Cardinal
Barberini. Among his arguments against the double motion of the
earth may be cited the following:
"Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no
limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move. It is angels who make
Saturn, Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolves,
it must also have an angel in the centre to set it in motion; but
only devils live there; it would therefore be a devil who would
impart motion to the earth....
"The planets, the sun, the fixed stars, all belong to one
species--namely, that of stars. It seems, therefore, to be a
grievous wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of impurity,
among these heavenly bodies, which are pure and divine things.
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