Copernicus's remains reburied in Polish cathedral

The remains of Nicolas Copernicus, the 16th century father of modern astronomy, were reburied in a Polish cathedral Saturday as a cleric expressed regret for Church condemnation of his theories. Copernicus was finally laid to rest in a marked grave, the day following the 467th anniversary of his death, after a hunt by experts worthy of a detective story.

His coffin was entombed in the 14th century cathedral of Frombork, his northern Polish hometown, with his grave marked by a black granite headstone engraved with a map of the solar system. The coffin had been taken Friday on a tour of the towns and villages of the northern Polish region around Frombork which Copernicus had known as a canon of the cathedral and an administrator of Church property.

In 1616, the Vatican labelled as heresy the Copernican theory that the sun, rather than the Earth, is at the centre of the universe. It banned his pioneering work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres), which shocked contemporaries when it was published shortly before his death in 1543 at the age of 70.

Copernicus had postulated that the Earth rotated on its axis once a day and travelled around the sun once a year, opposing the Church-backed Ptolemaic theory that the Earth was fixed at the centre of the universe, with the sun and stars revolving around it.

The Church only struck his work from its list of banned books in 1835, and in 1999 Polish pope John Paul II visited the astronomer's birthplace in Torun and praised his scientific achievements. In an address at the burial service, archbishop of Lublin Jozef Zycinski criticised the excesses of the self-proclaimed defenders of the Church in condemning Copernicus's theories.

A mathematician, economist and physician as well as a cleric, Copernicus was buried like many other priests and laymen of Frombork in an unmarked tomb beneath the cathedral floor.


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