One man, Giordano Bruno dared to assert the truth in the hearing of the Papacy. For this heresy he was hunted from land to land, finally trapped in Venice, imprisoned at Rome, burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds! Against Galileo, the war against the Copernican theory was concentrated. His discoveries were declared to be deceptions, and his announcements blasphemy when, in 1610, he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter. In 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and forced to promise that he would "relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever verbally or in writing." Pope Paul V solemnly rendered the decree that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture." The climax of this instance of the infallibility of the Church occurred when in his seventieth year Galileo was again brought before the Inquisition; he was forced to abjure under threats of torture and imprisonment by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, is taken for granted by the youngest of children. Galileo was then kept in exile for the rest of his days, died, and was buried ignobly, apart from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument or epitaph. As late as 1873 there was published, in St. Louis, a work by a president of a Lutheran teachers' seminary in which he stated that the earth is the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the sun and moon only serve to light it. Astronomy brings forth a noble array of men who have, by their intense desire for the truth, persevered against the Church, and in spite of the vilest opposition of that Church, brought to the attention of man laws that have given a meaning and order to our universe. Copernicus escaping persecution only by death; Bruno burned alive; Galileo imprisoned; Kepler reviled, and Newton bitterly attacked. In this manner has religion aided astronomy! CHAPTER IX RELIGION AND GEOGRAPHY The ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle, had evolved theories of the earth's sphericity, which, while vague, were basic for subsequent accurate ideas that developed later.