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Former Historical Theology Student. If this drives you nuts wait till you read primary sources of many different historical documents and than just heard how pe

• cturner 12y ago
  > Example Nicolaus Copernicus Where is it [falsely] written that Copernicus was attacked? There's a fair bit on Gallileo being attacked for advocating Copernicus' ideas. I can imagine innocent mistakes coming from confusion of this.
• analog31 12y ago
  I've read a few books pertaining to the Galileo affair. It seems to be conventional wisdom that Copernicus had permission to publish his book, and that he was not attacked by the Church in his day. I've also read that Galileo received favorable treatment from the Pope at first, then things went downhill for him later. A weird tidbit, that I can't confirm, is that Martin Luther denounced Copernicus.
  • kevinwang 12y ago
    weird tidbit seems true: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit3/response.html http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit3/resp...
  • ijk 12y ago
    There's a record of Luther dismissing Copernicus, or at least geocentrism, though it's from four years before On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was published: "So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down." But that's pretty mild for Luther. If he wasn't using scatalogical references, his heart wasn't really in it. We only know about it because many of Luther's casual conversations were recorded; he was literally complaining about it at the dinner table.
    • mcguire 12y ago
      "So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down." Fortunately, things are completely different in the modern world.
  • xyzzyz 12y ago
    Well, Copernicus died before the book became widely available, didn't he? Maybe that's why he was not attacked during his life by church establishment.
    • analog31 12y ago
      Good eye. But it's still my understanding that the attack from the church fathers didn't occur until much later, around the time of the Galileo affair.
• benihana 12y ago
  Also the notion that humans in the past were just so vastly different than humans today is another myth we like to tell ourselves. We look at stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza and assume there must be some great philosophical plan behind it, not that people did things for the same reasons we do things today: to impress people, to leave our mark, to challenge ourselves, or just to try something new. The implication here is that if our ignorant savage ancestors endeavored to put the effort into building something, there must be a great spiritual or philosophical reason. It doesn't cross our minds that they sat around and pondered this stuff just like we do. I feel like this plays into the popular idea that everything in medieval times was poorly built and covered in shit. We seem to want to think that because they lived in a largely illiterate, Church dominated feudal society that all the peasants were too stupid to function. That these savages would be too dim to possess the critical thinking skills to realize that if they used well built tools, that they could accomplish their work faster. That after thousands of years of human advancement, we hit this period where everyone not just lost accumulated knowledge, but forgot how to be a human in the process.
  • Retric 12y ago
    While not exactly covered in shit, things where far more dirty than we are used to. First off dirt floors where fairly common, though this quickly became dry hard pact dirt which is better flooring than you might think. Second running water was uncommon let alone vacuums and dish washers. Even bathing was far less common as getting a warm bath together was difficult in the winter and bathing in freezing water is unpleasant. Add to that indoor fireplaces added quite a bit of smoke and soot into people’s homes. That said, some things where higher quality back then. For example modern fast growth wood is far lower quality let alone things like particle board.
    • icebraining 12y ago
      You don't need to go to medieval times for that, though. My grandparents grew up in those conditions, here in Europe.
    • Mobiu5 12y ago
      Of course, high quality wood items still exist just as they did then. But now there are cheaper alternatives for those on a budget.
• mc32 12y ago
  The way I've heard it wasn't that people drank wine instead of water rather that wine was less alcoholic in antiquity. Then people asked why and concluded it might have been more widely drunk. I don't recall hearing of it as a substitute for water. Just that it was weaker and thinking if the implications that could present.
  • kedean 12y ago
    Yes, wine was weaker, but that only explains willingness to drink so much, not the actual practice. Romans and greeks generally watered their wine down to about half/half if I remember right, and considered anything higher to be barbaric (and a waste of good wine). That's part of why greeks could go all night drinking from bowls in large groups without turning into frat boys, the reduced alcohol content may everything quite a bit tamer than it could have been.
• pekk 12y ago
  This has almost nothing to do with the original post, I guess you just wanted to bring up the strange idea that Christians are being unfairly persecuted all of the time by the less-religious minority.
• robbrown451 12y ago
  It was Galileo that was persecuted for promoting heliocentrism (a.k.a. "Copernicanism"). I was never taught that Copernicus was persecuted...but I can see why some people could get it mixed up. I think you'd have a hard time finding any historians that presented the position that Copernicus himself was persecuted -- it was probably mostly that teachers (etc) remembered incorrectly.