Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Evolution of Faith: An Essay
In the meantime, however, the uprise of Moham medanism had exercised an important influence over the fortunes of the Church. The new faith spread rapidly from east to west, and with it were carried the works of the old Greek philosophers, translated into the Arabic tongue. \vith the capture of Granada in 1492 the rule of the Moors came to an end, but not before a knowledge of Greek thought had been spread among the Christians by means of the translation into Latin of the works of many scholars and thinkers. It was soon after this that the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan (1519) proved the falsity of the teaching of the theologians in regard to the flatness of the earth, while the authority of the Church was yet again rudely shaken by the discoveries of the astronomer Copernicus, who, in demonstrating the sun to be the centre of our system, dealt a death-blow to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. It was but a few hours before his death, in 1543, that the work of the great astronomer saw the light of day, and to this fact alone was due his escape from the terrors of the Inquisition. It fell to the lot of his illustrious successor, Giordano Bruno, to suffer the full penalty of unorthodoxy in scientific thought. For expounding the theory of Copernicus he was burnt alive at Rome on February 17th, 1600.
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