Abstract

The fact that the Earth is no longer seen as at the centre of the Universe is the reason normally put forward to explain the rejection of heliocentrism. However, this version does not hit the mark. We should remember particularly that Man's position at the midpoint of the heavens was not all glorious; in the medieval world's hierarchical vision, only Hell is lower than the Earth, above which rises the celestial sphere, the whole being transcended by divine infinity. Observing that this lowly spiritual position reflects a cosmic reality, Nicolas Oresme (d. 1382) thought it wiser to assign the central place to the Sun. Anticipating Copernicus, he even advanced the hypothesis that it was the Earth that moved rather than Heaven. In any case, the important point was less Man's place in the Universe than in Creation, which might in fact contain another Universe side by side with ours, also with an inhabited Earth at its centre, as certain reputable theologians maintained from the thirteenth century. Thus humanity's loss of the central position in Creation had already been sidelined by the hypothesis of a plurality of worlds. However, Giordano Bruno was condemned in 1600, eleven years before the heliocentrism of Copernicus and Galileo, for having defended the vision of an infinite Universe and the idea of extraterrestrial life. How should we explain the fact that in the thirteenth century the papacy was battling with the universities to persuade them to teach that God could create other worlds, whilst in the seventeenth century philosophers, scientists and freethinkers were risking their lives trying to persuade the Inquisition that solar systems similar to our own exist in the Universe?