ABSTRACT
As has been already noted, the whole concept of the Empyrean heaven had been rejected by the majority of the Protestants by the middle of the sixteenth century, largely as a result of their aversion to scholasticism. Copernicus, a Canon of the Catholic Church, for reasons unexplained by him, paradoxically made no mention whatever of the Empyrean or of any feature of Biblical cosmology in his work on heliocentrism, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelesfium, published in Nuremberg in 1543, confining himself to the analysis of the motions of observable celestial bodies. He went even fur ther with his visibly anti-Aristotelian statement that, '... whether the universe is finite or infini te is for the natural philosophers to argue. [...] ... its limit is unknown and cannot be known'.' For ignoring the Empyrean he was immediately taken to task by the first ecclesiastic to review his work, the I ta l ian Dominican astronomer Giovanni Maria Tolosani (c.1470/ 71-1549). In about 1546/47 Tolosani wrote in a manuscript, only published recently, that 'Copernicus, in Book I, Chapter 10, falsely supposes that the first and highest of all [the spheres] is the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains itself and everything and is therefore immobile.2 Copernicus would have spoken correctly', said Tolosani, 'had he agreed with the theologians that above the Prim urn Mobile the highest sphere is immobile, the sphere called by the theologians the Empyrean Heaven.'1 Contrary to what is
1 Nicolas Copernicus, De Revolutinnihus Orbium C.a'lestium l.ilm 17 (Nuremberg, 154.}), l ib.I
cap.8 f.6r (.y/tr igjturfinitus sit mundtis, sivt infinitus, disputationi physiologprum f/imittamus /.../ muntius ruins finis ignoratur sririr/ue nequi/). See ling, trans, by A.M. Duncan, Copernicus: On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, a new translat ion from the Latin wi th in t roduc t ion and notes (London, Vancouver and New York, 1976), bk I chap.8 p.44. On Copernicus' l ife and work, see Michel-Pierre Lerner, 'Copernic (Nicolas) (1473-1543)', in Colette Nat ivcl , ed., ('ei/niri/il.atina?. Cent figures humonistes de la Renaissance fiux L.umieres offenes a Jacques Chomarat (Geneva, 1997), pp.285-292.
