Copernicus proved that the earth was in orbit around the sun, along with the other planets, and not the other way around. This theory effectively turned the religious community upside down.
It was the Copernican theory that effectively gave agnostics and atheists the opening they needed to disclaim the church's belief that God created the earth and the heavens.
Even though Copernicus was very religious, he enabled atheism.
>>> Copernicus proved that the earth was in orbit around the sun, along with the other planets, and not the other way around. This theory effectively turned the religious community upside down. <<<
I seem to remember that Copernicus “framed a hypothesis” regarding heliocentrism; I don’t think that a proof was forthcoming until Newton (via Kepler and Galileo).
I dug up a photocopy of a 1960 article by Edward Rosen (”Calvin’s Attitude Toward Copernicus”). Rosen argues in part that Calvin never criticizes/condemns Copernicus by name in any of his writings. The claim that Calvin DID do this was traced back to Bertrand Russell’s _A History of Western Philosophy_; Russell apparently got it from A.D. White’s _A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology_. This genealogy stretches further back to some 19th century Anglican named Farrar; apparently, nobody down the line bothered to provide a citation, and so the claim that Calvin “called out” Copernicus on the question of geocentrism (or any other matter) is without foundation.
Now as for Luther and Melanchthon, that’s another matter...