Yet in 1765 Lalande, the great French astronomer, tried in vain at
Rome to induce the authorities to remove Galileo's works from the
_Index_. Even at a date far within our own nineteenth century the
authorities of many universities in Catholic Europe, and especially
those in Spain, excluded the Newtonian system. In 1771 the
greatest of them all, the University of Salamanca, being urged to
teach physical science, refused, making answer as follows: "Newton
teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician;
and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth
as Aristotle does."
Vengeance upon the dead also has continued far into our own
century. On the 5th of May, 1829, a great multitude assembled at
Warsaw to honour the memory of Copernicus and to unveil
Thorwaldsen's statue of him.
Copernicus had lived a pious, Christian life; he had been beloved
for unostentatious Christian charity; with his religious belief no
fault had ever been found; he was a canon of the Church at
Frauenberg, and over his grave had been written the most touching
of Christian epitaphs.
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