"But friends, in truth, have brought me forth into the light again, though I long hesitated and am still reluctant; among these the foremost was Nicholas Schönberg, Cardinal of Capua, celebrated in all fields of scholarship. Next to him is that scholar, my very good friend, Tiedeman Giese, Bishop of Culm, most learned in all sacred matters, (as he is), and in all good sciences. He has repeatedly urged me and, sometimes even with censure, implored me to publish this book and to suffer it to see the light at last, as it has lain hidden by me not for nine years alone, but also into the fourth 'novenium'. Not a few other scholars of eminence also pleaded with me, exhorting me that I should no longer refuse to contribute my book to the common service of mathematicians on account of an imagined dread. They said that however absurd in many ways this my doctrine of the earth's motion might now appear, so much the greater would be the admiration and goodwill after people had seen by the publications of my commentaries the mists of absurdities rolled away by the most lucid demonstrations. Brought to this hope, therefore, by these pleaders, I at last permitted my friends, as they had long besought me, to publish this work. "But perhaps your Holiness will not be so shocked that I have dared to bring forth into the light these my lucubrations, having spent so much work in elaborating them, that I did not hesitate even to commit to a book my conclusions about the earth's motion, but that you will particularly wish to hear from me how it came into my mind to dare to imagine any motion of the earth, contrary to the accepted opinion of mathematicians and in like manner contrary to common sense. So I do not wish to conceal from your Holiness that nothing else moved me to consider some other explanation for the motions of the spheres of the universe than what I knew, namely that mathematicians did not agree among themselves in their examinations of these things. For in the first place, they are so completely undecided concerning the motion of the sun and of the moon that they could not observe and prove the constant length of the great year.[440] Next, in determining the motions of both these and the five other planets, they did not use the same principles and assumptions or even the same demonstrations of the appearances of revolutions and motions. For some used only homocentric circles; others, eccentrics and epicycles, which on being questioned about, they themselves did not fully comprehend. For those who put their trust in homocentrics, although they proved that other diverse motions could be derived from these, nevertheless they could by no means decide on any thing certain which in the least corresponded to the phenomena. But these who devised eccentrics, even though they seem for the most part to have represented apparent motions by a number [of eccentrics] suitable to them, yet in the meantime they have admitted