panzerbjoern:

thetechnicolortrenchcoat:

Today is Copernicus’s 540th birthday. You may remember Copernicus as the man who said “Hey, what if the Earth went around the sun?” To which the Catholic Church replied “Hey, what if we set you on fire?” 

I hate to be ‘that guy’, but the Catholic church never threatened him. His calendar reform and his ideas on heliocentricism weren’t even discussed at the Council of Trent and his works were seen as uncontroversial. Copernicus never faced any persecution directly or indirectly by the Holy See. In fact, Pope Gregory XIII used Copernicus works on heliocentrism to reform the calendar in 1582.  It was only 75 years later that it was even brought up again by Galileo. The pope at the time was a conservative one and the Catholic church was desperately trying to counter Protestantism and the thirty years war, hence why the pope and the inquisition placed him under house arrest on suspicion of heresy, using Copernicus’ theories as their argument against him.