"Heretical" Copernicus Reburied as a Hero

[n2doc]

The coffin with the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus is seen in the cathedral in Frombork, Poland, Saturday, May 22, 2010. The 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. (AP Photo/Jerzy Mytka)

(AP) Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe's centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens because the telescope had not yet been invented.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/22/world/main6509699.shtml

[Xipe Totec]

1. Paraphrasing The Hitchhiker's Guide...

It is notable that a future edition of The Encyclopedia Galactica fell through a wormhole in time, and its entry for the Catholic Church is "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

[FiveGoodMen]

7. That copy didn't happen to mention the date of the revolution, did it?

I think we're long overdue.

[whyverne]

2. To be fair, it wasn't all on the church.

Many scientists at the time could not reconcile the speeds involved. Have you totally accepted 65,000 mph.? It is hard to grasp.

[krispos42]

3. One reason they thought the Earth was only a few thousand years old...

...was that astronomers calculated the Sun's energy output and figured that it would not be able to burn any sort of combustable fuel for more than a few millenia.

The concept of nuclear fusion is what enabled scientists to expand the lifespan of the Sun by several orders of magnitude.

So at some point in the distant future, long after we're all dead and buried, I expect the fundamentalists to accept that the Earth is older than 7,000 years.

[Orsino]

4. Slow learners. n/t

[struggle4progress]

5. ... Copernicus' burial in an anonymous grave .. was not linked to suspicions of heresy ... The ..

attack .. came decades later when the Vatican was waging a .. defense against .. Luther's Reformation. "There is no indication that Copernicus was worried about being declared a heretic and being kicked out of the church for his astronomical views," Repcheck said ... Copernicus had, however, been at odds with his superiors .. over other matters. He was repeatedly reprimanded for keeping a mistress .. and was eventually forced to give her up. He also was suspected of harboring sympathies for Lutheranism ...
Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero in Poland
By VANESSA GERA (AP) – 3 days ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jct0iiOImcZfdU4t59BC07IVRwfQD9FS5R7O0

[struggle4progress]

6. ... In 2004, Frombork’s bishop approached Gassowski and proposed a new search for the scientist. At

least four other excavation teams, the first digging as early as 1802, had looked in vain for Copernicus’ body. A ground-penetrating radar survey showed more than 100 possible graves underneath the cathedral’s gray-and-black marble tiles. “I wasn’t enthusiastic,” Gassowski recalls. “I just thought we’d dig year after year and never find him.” But the bishop, Jacek Jezierski, was more optimistic, thanks to a historian’s hunch that Copernicus might be buried near the altar where he prayed every day. The excavation was complicated. Digging had to stop several times a day for masses, concerts, weddings and funerals. When the workers lifted the cathedral’s marble floor tiles to dig a square pit about ten feet on a side, they found loose, shifting sand. The bass note vibrations of the cathedral’s organ twice caused the pit’s sand walls to collapse. Two weeks of exploratory digging in August 2004 turned up three skeletons. Two were too young, and the other had been buried in a labeled coffin. Then, last summer, the archaeologists uncovered parts of more than a dozen bodies. Some were encased in coffins, others had been wrapped in shrouds long since decayed; most had been damaged or mixed up over the centuries. In August, Pultusk archaeologist Beata Jurkiewicz carefully lifted a skull from the bottom of the pit. Forensic anthropologist Karol Piasecki said the skull, which lacked a jawbone, was that of a roughly 70-year-old male. “It was an amazing moment, but I’m a skeptical person,” says Jurkiewicz. The researchers sent the partial skull to the Warsaw police department’s main crime lab, where police artist Dariusz Zajdel did a forensic reconstruction, the same technique police use to flesh out and help identify decomposed murder victims. From detailed measurements of the shape of the skull and its grooves and deformations, Zajdel used a computer program to create a portrait of a severe old man with a long face, a nose that had been broken decades before his death and a scar above his right eye ...
Copernicus Unearthed
Archaeologists believe they have found the remains of the 16th century astronomer who revolutionized our view of the universe
By Andrew Curry
Smithsonian magazine, May 2006
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/digs-may06.html


... The age of the skull and bones as well as certain facial features led Mr. Gassowski to say he was "97 percent certain these are Copernicus's remains, but only DNA testing could fully authenticate the find." A computer reconstruction of the skull showed the head of a gray-haired man of about 70, the age at which Copernicus died. It matched the scar above the left eye and broken nose seen in his portraits ...
By REUTERS
Published: November 6, 2005
Copernicus's Grave Is Reported Found
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/international/europe/06coper.html?_r=1


... Swedish genetics expert Marie Allen found that DNA from a tooth and femur bone matched that taken from two hairs retrieved from a book that the 16th-century Polish astronomer owned, which is kept at a library of Sweden’s Uppsala University where Allen works ...
DNA MATCHES HAIR FOUND IN HIS BOOKS…
http://zeitlerweb.com/about-2/copernicus-grave-found/