Opposition to the theory had not yet gathered serious headway. There is record[139] of a play poking fun at the system and its originator, written by the Elbing schoolmaster (a Dutch refugee from the Inquisition) and given in 1531 by the villagers at Elbing (3 miles from Frauenburg). Elbing and Ermeland were hostile to each other, Copernicus was well known in Elbing though probably from afar, for there seems to have been almost no personal intercourse between canons and people, and the spread of Luther's teachings had intensified the hostility of the villagers towards the Church and its representatives. But not until Giordano Bruno made the Copernican system the starting-point of his philosophy was the Roman Catholic Church seriously aroused to combat it. Possibly Osiander's preface turned opposition aside, and certainly the non-acceptance of the system as a whole by Tycho Brahe, the leading astronomer of Europe at that time, made people slow to consider it. [Footnote 139: Prowe: II, 233-244.] CHAPTER III. THE LATER DEVELOPMENT AND SCIENTIFIC DEFENSE OF THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. Copernicus accomplished much, but even his genius could not far outrun the times in which he lived. When one realizes that not only all the astronomers before him, but he and his immediate successor, Tycho Brahe, made all their observations and calculations unaided by even the simplest telescope, by logarithms or by pendulum clocks for accurate measurement of time,[140] one marvels not at their errors, but at the greatness of their genius in rising above such difficulties. This lack of material aids makes the work of Tycho Brahe,[141] accounted one of the greatest observers that has ever lived,[142] as notable in its way perhaps as that of Copernicus. [Footnote 140: Burckhardt: 8.] [Footnote 141: The two standard lives of Tycho Brahe are the _Vita Tychonis Brahei_ by Gassendi (1655) till recently the sole source of information, and Dreyer's _Tycho Brahe_ (1890) based not only on Gassendi but on the documentary evidence disclosed by the researches of the 19th century. For Tycho's works I have used the _Opera Omnia_ published at Frankfort in 1648. The Danish Royal Scientific Society has issued a reprint (1901) of the rare 1573 edition of the _De Nova Stella_.] [Footnote 142: Bridges: 206.]