While these few copies were being eagerly devoured by impatient readers at Rome, and passed rapidly from hand to hand, the book had been circulating in the rest of Italy in spite of the difficulties of communication. The applause which this famous work called forth from all men of independent minds was unexampled, and was only equalled by the bitterness and consternation it excited among the scientific conservatives. The learned world of Italy was divided into two hostile camps: that of Ptolemy on the one side, that of Copernicus-Galileo on the other. In the one were to be found progress, recognition of truth, free independent thought and research; in the other blind worship of authority and rigid adherence to the old school. And the latter party was far the most numerous; it was also reinforced by those, of whom there were a considerable number, who opposed the great reformer of science from interested motives. Besides this, the academic corporations were not favourable to him, because he so dangerously revolutionised the modern methods of teaching. The university of his native city seemed especially adverse to him. It had carried its animosity so far a few years before as to try to deprive him of the income which he enjoyed as its first mathematician by the Grand Ducal decree of 12th July, 1620, though, thanks to the energetic remonstrances of some influential patrons, the attempt was not successful.[261] In addition to all this there is another consideration, which played a much larger part in the sad story of Galileo’s trial than is generally supposed. The clergy, and especially the Jesuits, had hitherto had a monopoly of science. Everybody knows how assiduously it had been cultivated in ancient times in the cells and schools of the convents, and that the ecclesiastical orders were the guardians and disseminators of learning, while among both populace and nobles ignorance flourished like a weed. When by the natural law of progress the nations of Europe emerged from the simplicity of childhood into the storm and stress period of youth; when inventions,—especially printing,—and above all the discovery of America, began to spread knowledge and culture among the masses, it was once more the servants of Rome who, justly estimating the spirit of the age, placed themselves, so to speak, in the van of the intellectual movement, that they might guide its course. The strongest evidence that the Church was in exclusive possession of the highest mental powers is afforded by the Reformation; for the first stirrings of doubt, of critical, philosophical speculation, arose in the bosoms of the Roman Catholic clergy. All the reformers, from Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, to Huss and Luther, sprang, without exception, from among them.