  In January of 1616, the month before before the Roman Inquisition would
infamously condemn the Copernican theory as being "foolish and absurd in
philosophy", Monsignor Francesco Ingoli addressed Galileo Galilei with an essay
entitled "Disputation concerning the location and rest of Earth against the
system of Copernicus". A rendition of this essay into English, along with the
full text of the essay in the original Latin, is provided in this paper. The
essay, upon which the Inquisition condemnation was likely based, lists
mathematical, physical, and theological arguments against the Copernican
theory. Ingoli asks Galileo to respond to those mathematical and physical
arguments that are "more weighty", and does not ask him to respond to the
theological arguments at all. The mathematical and physical arguments Ingoli
presents are largely the anti-Copernican arguments of the great Danish
astronomer Tycho Brahe; one of these (an argument based on measurements of the
apparent sizes of stars) was all but unanswerable. Ingoli's emphasis on the
scientific arguments of Brahe, and his lack of emphasis on theological
arguments, raises the question of whether the condemnation of the Copernican
theory was, in contrast to how it is usually viewed, essentially scientific in
nature, following the ideas of Brahe.
