Naturally, then, the people expected a
religious service; all was understood to be arranged for it; the
procession marched to the church and waited. The hour passed, and
no priest appeared; none could be induced to appear. Copernicus,
gentle, charitable, pious, one of the noblest gifts of God to
religion as well as to science, was evidently still under the ban.
Five years after that, his book was still standing on the _Index_ of
books prohibited to Christians.
The edition of the _Index_ published in 1819 was as inexorable toward
the works of Copernicus and Galileo as its predecessors had been;
but in the year 182O came a crisis. Canon Settele, Professor of
Astronomy at Rome, had written an elementary book in which the
Copernican system was taken for granted. The Master of the Sacred
Palace, Anfossi, as censor of the press, refused to allow the book
to be printed unless Settele revised his work and treated the
Copernican theory as merely a hypothesis. On this Settele appealed
to Pope Pius VII, and the Pope referred the matter to the
Congregation of the Holy Office.
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