The Refusal to Accommodate: Jesuit Exegetes and the Copernican System
In 1543, Copernicus' masterpiece, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was published. This treatise, asserting the reality of a central Sun and a moving Earth, produced problems in biblical interpretation. Debate centered on biblical passages which seemed to affirm the Earth's immobility a...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.
1995
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| In: |
The sixteenth century journal
Year: 1995, Volume: 26, Issue: 2, Pages: 273-283 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | In 1543, Copernicus' masterpiece, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was published. This treatise, asserting the reality of a central Sun and a moving Earth, produced problems in biblical interpretation. Debate centered on biblical passages which seemed to affirm the Earth's immobility and the Sun's mobility. The first Catholic theologian to tackle these problems was Stunica, who in his 1584 commentary on Job, applied the principle of accommodation and contended that these passages were written in the language of the people, not in that of physical truth. Stunica's work produced a theological polemic spearheaded by Jesuit exegetes, e.g. Lorinus, Serarius, and Pineda. While admitting the legitimacy of the principle of accommodation and specific pro-Copernican readings, these exegetes denied the orthodoxy of Stunica's interpretations. This denial is linked not only to the more literal exegesis of the Counter-Reformation Church, but also to the history of the Jesuit Order and to contemporary debates on the status of astronomy. |
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| ISSN: | 2326-0726 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/2542790 |