  The general prohibition of books advocating heliocentric theory put many
progressive Jesuits in a difficult position. One of the most prominent Jesuit
scientists of the 18th century, Rogerius Boscovich, was in particularly
affected by conflicts between a beautifully simple theory of gravity by Newton,
his Jesuit peripatetic education, Church doctrine and the lack of crucial
experimental evidence for the motion of the Earth. I present the development of
Boscovich's ideas prior to the lifting of the ban, and his retrospective
considerations in later writings. These show that Boscovich's acceptance of the
motion of the Earth was primarily driven by the existence of a working physical
theory that also explained the motion of the Earth, and the lack of a
consistent theory that supported any variation of a geocentric system.
