It was meanwhile gradually becoming known that he held the novel doctrine that the earth was in motion and the sun and stars at rest, a doctrine which was sufficiently startling to attract notice outside astronomical circles. About 1531 he had the distinction of being ridiculed on the stage at some popular performance in the neighbourhood; and it is interesting to note (especially in view of the famous persecution of Galilei at Rome a century later) that Luther in his _Table Talk_ frankly described Coppernicus as a fool for holding such opinions, which were obviously contrary to the Bible, and that Melanchthon, perhaps the most learned of the Reformers, added to a somewhat similar criticism a broad hint that such opinions should not be tolerated. Coppernicus appears to have taken no notice of these or similar attacks, and still continued to publish nothing. No observation made later than 1529 occurs in his great book, which seems to have been nearly in its final form by that date; and to about this time belongs an extremely interesting paper, known as the _Commentariolus_, which contains a short account of his system of the world, with some of the evidence for it, but without any calculations. It was apparently written to be shewn or lent to friends, and was not published; the manuscript disappeared after the death of the author and was only rediscovered in 1878. The _Commentariolus_ was probably the basis of a lecture on the ideas of Coppernicus given in 1533 by one of the Roman astronomers at the request of Pope Clement VII. Three years later Cardinal Schomberg wrote to ask Coppernicus for further information as to his views, the letter showing that the chief features were already pretty accurately known. 74. Similar requests must have been made by others, but his final decision to publish his ideas seems to have been due to the arrival at Frauenburg in 1539 of the enthusiastic young astronomer generally known as _Rheticus_.[47] Born in 1514, he studied astronomy under Schoner at Nürnberg, and was appointed in 1536 to one of the chairs of mathematics created by the influence of Melanchthon at Wittenberg, at that time the chief Protestant University. Having heard, probably through the _Commentariolus_, of Coppernicus and his doctrines, he was so much interested in them that he decided to visit the great astronomer at Frauenburg. Coppernicus received him with extreme kindness, and the visit, which was originally intended to last a few days or weeks, extended over nearly two years. Rheticus set to work to study Coppernicus’s manuscript, and wrote within a few weeks of his arrival an extremely interesting and valuable account of it, known as the First Narrative (_Prima Narratio_), in the form of an open letter to his old master Schoner, a letter which was printed in the following spring and was the first easily accessible account of the new doctrines.[48]