[Illustration: A photographic facsimile (reduced) of a page from Mulier's edition (1617) as "corrected" according to the _Monitum_ of the Congregations in 1620. The first writer merely underlined the passage with marginal comment that this was to be deleted by ecclesiastical order. The second writer scratched out the passage and referred to the second volume of Riccioli's _Almagestum Novum_ for the text of the order. The earlier writer was probably the librarian of the Florentine convent from which this book came, and wrote this soon after 1620. The later writer did his work after 1651, when Riccioli's book was published. This copy of the _De Revolutionibus_ is now in the Dartmouth College Library.] If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, the writer celebrated in other ways but very little in mathematics, spoke somewhat childishly of the shape of the earth when he derided those who declared the earth had the shape of a ball.[442] So it ought not to surprise students if such should laugh at us also. Mathematics is written for mathematicians to whom these our labors, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something even to the ecclesiastical state the headship of which your Holiness now occupies. For it is not so long ago under Leo X when the question arose in the Lateran Council about correcting the Ecclesiastical Calendar. It was left unsettled then for this reason alone, that the length of the year and of the months and the movements of the sun and moon had not been satisfactorily determined. From that time on, I have turned my attention to the more accurate observation of these, at the suggestion of that most celebrated scholar, Father Paul, a bishop from Rome, who was the leader then in that matter. What, however, I may have achieved in this, I leave to the decision of your Holiness especially, and to all other learned mathematicians. And lest I seem to your Holiness to promise more about the value of this work than I can perform, I now pass on to the undertaking. [Footnote 442: These two sentences the Congregations in 1620 ordered struck out, as part of their "corrections."] APPENDIX C. THE DRAMA OF UNIVERSAL NATURE: in which are considered the efficient causes and the ends of all things, discussed in a connected series of five books, by JEAN BODIN, (Frankfort, 1597). _Book V_: On the Celestial Bodies: their number, movement, size, harmony and distances compared with themselves and with the earth. Sections 1 and 10 (in part) and 12 (entire).