Then the center of astronomical development shifted from Syria to Spain and mainly through this channel passed on into Western Europe. The scientific fame of Alphonse X of Castile (1252-1284 A.D.) called the Wise, rests chiefly upon his encouragement of astronomy. With his support the Alfonsine Tables were calculated. He is said[27] to have summoned fifty learned men from Toledo, Cordova and Paris to translate into Spanish the works of Ptolemy and other philosophers. Under his patronage the University of Salamanca developed rapidly to become within two hundred years one of the four great universities of Europe[28]--a center for students from all over Europe and the headquarters for new thought, where Columbus was sheltered,[29] and later the Copernican system was accepted and publicly taught at a time when Galileo's views were suppressed.[30] [Footnote 27: Vaughan: I, 281.] [Footnote 28: Graux: 318.] [Footnote 29: Graux: 319.] [Footnote 30: Rashdall: II, pt. I, 77.] Popular interest in astronomy was evidently aroused, for Sacrobosco (to give John Holywood[31] his better known Latin name) a Scotch professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 13th century, published a small treatise _De Sphæri Mundo_ that was immensely popular for centuries,[32] though it was practically only an abstract of the _Almagest_. Whewell[33] tells of a French poem of the time of Edward I entitled _Ymage du Monde_, which gave the Ptolemaic view and was illustrated in the manuscript in the University of Cambridge with a picture of the spherical earth with men upright on it at every point, dropping balls down perforations in the earth to illustrate the tendency of all things toward the center. Of the same period (13th century) is an Arabian compilation in which there is a reference to another work, the book of Hammarmunah the Old, stating that "the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle, and that some are on top, the others below ... and there are countries in which it is constantly day or in which at least the night continues only some instants."[34] Apparently, however, such advanced views were of no influence, and the Ptolemaic theory remained unshaken down to the close of the 15th century. [Footnote 31: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._] [Footnote 32: MSS. of it are extremely numerous. It was the second astronomical book to be printed, the first edition appearing at Ferrara in 1472. 65 editions appeared before 1647. It was translated into Italian, French, German, and Spanish, and had many commentators. _Dict. of Nat. Biog._] [Footnote 33: Whewell: I, 277.] [Footnote 34: Blavatski: II, 29, note.]