a widespread interest in
them and much popular superstition with regard to them. Antoninus was
on terms of familiar intimacy with Pope Eugene IV, who insisted on his
becoming Archbishop of Florence, though Antoninus would have preferred
to have remained a simple Dominican and keep his leisure for his
scholarly work. When the Pope felt his end {474} approaching he called
Antoninus to Rome to administer the last rites of the Church to him
and be by his side during his last hours. Antoninus was frequently
consulted by Pope Eugene's successors, Nicholas V and Pius II, both of
whom were among the scholarly patrons of learning and art at this
time. Some fifty years after his death Antoninus was canonized by Pope
Hadrian VI, the scholarly Pope from Utrecht in Holland. His whole
career then shows clearly the relations of the ecclesiastics and
particularly the Popes of the time to science in a most favorable
light.

The relationship with the rising science of the Renaissance period
thus initiated was continued during the following century. At the end
of the fifteenth century Copernicus studied for ten years in Italy and
felt so thoroughly the interest of Italians in advances in science as
well as scholarship that when some years later he came to formulate
his great new hypothesis of the heavens, he sent an abstract of his
theory to some of the Roman teachers with whom he had become intimate
during his stay and it was taught publicly in the city to crowded
audiences. This may well seem surprising to many whose only knowledge
of the relations of the Popes to astronomy is the Galileo incident,
but it must not be forgotten that Copernicus' great work in which he
elaborated his theory, was dedicated, with permission, to the Pope,
and not only received no censure until Galileo's time, nearly a
century later, but was welcomed as a great contribution to science and
thought. It was looked upon as a theory, to be discussed as any other.
When Galileo, at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, insisted on teaching it as absolute science, it must not be
forgotten that there were no astronomers in Europe who looked upon
Copernicanism as an accepted scientific doctrine. Even the reasons
advanced by Galileo for its acceptance have all since been rejected.
Owing to the discussions of it far and wide in the time of Galileo,
certain expressions in Copernicus' great work were required by the
Church authorities to be corrected so