NICOLAUS Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer branded a heretic for his findings by the Roman Catholic Church, has been reburied as a hero by Polish priests – nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
A reconstruction of Copernicus' features
According to this report, his burial in a tomb in a cathedral in Frombork, northern Poland, 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 a remote part of northern Poland, far from Europe’s centres of learning. He had spent years labouring 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.
After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, on Poland’s Baltic coast, the exact location unknown.
Last Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005.
A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric ranking below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.
Recognition of Copernicus comes 18 years after the Vatican rehabilitated the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted in the Inquisition for carrying the Copernican Revolution forward.
Wojciech Ziemba, the archbishop of the region surrounding Frombork, said the Catholic Church is proud that Copernicus left the region a legacy of:
His hard work, devotion and above all of his scientific genius.
Jacek Jezierski, a local bishop who encouraged the search for Copernicus, said that he considers Copernicus’ burial as part of the church’s broader embrace of science as being compatible with Biblical belief.
Today’s funeral has symbolic value in that it is a gesture of reconciliation between science and faith. Science and faith can be reconciled.
Copernicus had also been at odds with his superiors in the church over other matters.
He was repeatedly reprimanded for keeping a mistress, which violated his vow of celibacy, and was eventually forced to give her up. He also was suspected of harbouring sympathies for Lutheranism, which was spreading like wildfire in northern Europe at the time.
Copernicus’ major treatise – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres – was published at the very end of his life, and he only received a copy of the printed book on the day he died — May 24, 1543.
One of the world’s leading Copernicus scholars, Owen Gingerich, traveled from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend the ceremony. He joked:
I missed the first funeral back in 1543 and thought this was an occasion not to be missed.
Owen also argued that the church has, in fact, long reconciled faith and science, noting that the Vatican removed Copernicus from its index of banned books nearly 200 years ago.
In 2008 a reconstruction of Copernicus’ features was made from his skull. Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski said at the time that the reconstruction bears a striking resemblance to portraits of the 16th century astronomer.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 25th, 2010 at 11:00 am
I suppose a modern-day Copernicus would be involved in stem cell research, fertility treatment or molecular biology.
He’d still be damned for it by Vatican science-haters.
May 25th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Well, at this rate of ‘reconciliation’, so generous of the vatican, I expect Darwin to be accepted by 2400. Lets not hold our collective breaths.
May 25th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Not quite so embracing over condom use though.
May 25th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
RCC Inc. has always claimed to have a monopoly of truth. For the past couple of centuries it claims to be infallible. Yet in this,as in so many other cases, where they were clearly totally wrong, we don’t see any apology or admission of error, nor do we even see a little embarrassment. Copernicus is just “reconciled” to the RCC. That’s it.
One wonders who, apart from Damian Thompson, is fooled by this. so here’s a little logic truth table
1. they were wrong then but they’re right now
2. they were right then but they’re wrong now
3. they were right then and they’re still right now – not possible
4. they were wrong then and they’re still wrong now
BTW; RCC Inc. has accepted evolution but they’re having difficulty incorporating it into their total scheme of their universe. It is protestant fundamentalists and muslims, and public figures hoping to capitalize on ignorance, who deny evolution.
May 25th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
They make this reconciliation publicly, as if they’re proud of it. How very odd. Surely embarrassment would be a more appropriate emotion.
Just seen your post sailor1031. D’oh!
May 25th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I do wish Catholics would stop digging people up and leave them be!
May 25th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
It’s a bit like when in 1992 the lovable Pope John Paul II mumbled something along the lines that the church’s ruling had in fact all been a bit of a bureaucratic mix up and that Galileo wasn’t a heretic after all. And then they had the gall to put on an exhibition of his memorabilia at the vatican like he was one of their own. Twats.
Anyway, apparently as he left the courtroom where the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church forced him, under threat of torture, to recant his theory that the Earth moves around the Sun, Galileo is said to have muttered, ‘all the same, it moves’. Good lad!
May 25th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
I wonder if they’ll ever have the bare-faced cheek to dig up a homosexual and make him a saint? Oh, wait……..
May 25th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
A great man. Sure, he was a Catholic Christian. Then again, it was kinda hard not to be back then and there.
May 25th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
A reconciliation? No, more like an admission of guilt.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Is it not amazing that anyone would take these clowns seriously? Equally amazing that they take themselves seriously.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I love how the catholics assume that’s what he would have wanted. He was probably sick of the lot of them by the time he died.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
The whole show stinks of nationalism. He is a Pole so we’ll dig him up and then we can brag about him. Then there is the reconciliation between faith an science which they are kidding themselves about. What a bunch of wankers!
May 25th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Search for Catholic Church and Darwin sometime. A typical result:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....arwin.html
Let’s not slam organized religion for everything it does right or wrong. It seems best to save the criticism for mistakes the Catholic Church persists in making rather than the ones they correct and apologize for.
That there are some people within the Church hierarchy today who oppose persecuting scientists for doing science, and that stuff like this can be done without raging controversy within the Church, was not always true and is no small thing. It should not be taken for granted much less mocked.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I thought he died on 24 May 1543 and gave that date in my lectures for about thirty years. I learned that date so long ago that I no longer have the source, but I note that Wikipedia also gives this as the date of his death. The above article cites 21 May as the date of death. Which is it and what is the evidence?
May 25th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Jason. While I kind of agree with some of what you say, I can’t help feeling that the church only ever publically changes its mind when it benefits it to do so or when it has been shown to be so out of step with recognised thinking that it would appear foolish to persist with its damning of a particular person or concept. As a result, I reckon mocking is healthy and entirely justifiable.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
“Orthodox Christians have the habit of claiming all great men, all men who have held important positions, men of reputation, men of wealth. As soon as the funeral is over clergymen begin to relate imaginary conversations with the deceased, and in a very little while the great man is changed to a Christian — possibly to a saint”.
– Robert Green Ingersoll, “The Religious Belief of Abraham Lincoln”
May 25th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
The Catholic Church no longer persecutes scientists because it no longer posesses the power to do so not because of any increase in enlightenment. Science is a constant headache for the RCC because every advance comes as a challenge to their piles of poisonous medieval drivel. If the RCC ever regained the power to suppress scientific progress it would do so in an instant. This ‘reconciliation of science and religion’ stuff always comes from the religious side, even if a scientist is pushing it it is always a religious scientist.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Smith Powell: The date given in the Yahoo news report to which I linked does indeed says May 24, but Wikipedia, as you point out, says it’s the 24th. I’m inclined to go with Wiki and have changed the date accordingly.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
This is too absolute a statement. There has been a dramatic increase in enlightenment. There’s conflict within the Church over the role of science, and if the views of the pro-science, pro-reason camp (which has won out in a huge way under JP II and Benedict) are far from yours and mine, they are also far from, and distinctly better than, the alternative.
The Church doesn’t treat the notion of Intelligent Design with any respect at all. That makes me smile. It means the Church is less anti-science than Fox News.
If someone asked me a year ago, “Do you think the Catholic Church should collect Copernicus’s bones and rebury him as a hero?” I would have said, yeah, he was totally a hero and the Church could stand to be a little less anti-science.
Mocking people for doing a little bit of something you’d like them to do a lot more of is dumb.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Mmm. True.
To be fair, I might be able to name one or two other large organizations that behave like this, though. Or individuals. Maybe the occasional genius physicist.
Oh, all right.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
We’ve had plenty of Darwin biopics as of late. Now, what about Copernicus? I vote for James Cromwell in the title role, as he bears a rather striking resemblance, eh?
May 25th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Jason, how does ‘what a load of bollocks’ sound.
Semi-praising an organisation which is hell bent on suppression of freethought and science, and this has been shown througout modern history, for a 400yr old apology, just smacks of desperation.
May 25th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Given the opportunity I can see Muslims putting Graig Venter on a rack and whipping him then stoning him to death after all they do such things every day.
@Jason Orendorff If “The Church” doesn’t treat ID with any respect it’s because “The Church” and(Fox News) is Catholic but Intelligent Design is an Evangelical creation.
May 26th, 2010 at 2:47 am
Sorry, this just makes no sense to me at all. If it was an Evangelical creation that made a lick of sense, there would be a doctrinally sanitized, Vatican-approved version of it.
And did you really mean to say that Fox News is Catholic? I’m not familiar with this theory.
May 26th, 2010 at 3:20 am
I guess Stony already said it, but let me add my voice to the din.
The RCC has from day one tried to suppress and silence dissenting opinions. They considered themselves as the sole distributers of truth. It was vital to their political power.
Jason O may consider their new move to forgive the pioneer freethinkers as a positive sign, today’s freethinkers see it for what it is. Desperate damage control. They waged a war to keep their “flock” ignorant in order to maintain their power, but they lost the war. Personally, I don’t want to see them making transparent gestures to appear to make things right, I want to see them disbanded and their treasures of stolen property returned to those they stole them from.
Final thought. Ivan said:
“I wonder if they’ll ever have the bare-faced cheek to dig up a homosexual and make him a saint?”
Given the track record of RCC priests, I strongly suspect there a several gay saints already. They were appointed at a time when secrecy was guaranteed by threat of torture and your eternal soul.
NeoWolfe
May 26th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Well, now I know where all the Catholic bashers hang out.
May 26th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Have to agree, a 400+ year old apology is rather meaningless to the man who suffered the wrath of the church. An interesting note, Stephen Hawking talks in one of his books about the RCC inviting a group of theoretical physicists for a conference, during the time of JP2, I believe. The pope invited him assuming he would talk about his work on black holes and their lives, such as they are. He remembered feeling distinctly embarrased as the pope told him that the church approved of the work of theoretical physics up to a point. They liked the idea of using mathematics and models to determine the nature of the early universe, but that the moment of creation was reserved for god alone. Funnily enough, he had just given a lecture about a possibility of modeling the actualbig bang using complex time. I never found out what, if anything, the pope had to say about it.
May 26th, 2010 at 10:37 am
@Jason O. You may be right. Maybe my thoughts are nonsensical. To my knowledge the ID movement has evolved from the Creationist movement, which was put forward by Evangelical Christians. The RCC doesn’t agree but refrains from criticizing them.
Referring to “The Church” is as confusing as referring to”Religion” when there are so many different “Belief Systems”
As for Fox News, I confess to has watched it only a handful of times when they have been interviewing Atheists and may well have been confused into thinking they were a Catholic outfit. There have never been Evangelicals in my part of the woods (France) until recently.
May 26th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Rupert Murdock is a Catholic. Billo the clown appears to be Catholic, but the sources were not specific. Profanity Hannity is Catholic. But Glenn Beck is a Mormon.
May 26th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
God bless Glenn Beck. Without him Stephen Colbert would be without his most hilarious material.
Colbert was my favorite part of the “Daily Show” when he used to do a segment called “This Week in God”. Given his wings and his spinoff, I think he is doing his most brilliant work. Posing as a fundie in order to ridicule them. If laughter could kill, I’d be dead.
NeoWolfe