Nicolaus Copernicus of his life. At the instance of Roger Boscovich, the Catholic Church's 1758 "Index of Prohibited Books" omitted the general prohibition of works defending heliocentrism, but retained the specific prohibitions of the original uncensored versions of "De revolutionibus" and Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems". Those prohibitions were finally dropped from the 1835 "Index". There has been discussion of Copernicus' nationality and of whether it is meaningful to ascribe to him a nationality in the modern sense. Nicolaus Copernicus was born and raised in Royal Prussia, a semiautonomous and polyglot region of the Kingdom of Poland. He was
Nicolaus Copernicus Copernicus neither read nor understood the arguments of Aristotle the philosopher and Ptolemy the astronomer." Tolosani wrote that Copernicus "is expert indeed in the sciences of mathematics and astronomy, but he is very deficient in the sciences of physics and logic. Moreover, it appears that he is unskilled with regard to [the interpretation of] holy scripture, since he contradicts several of its principles, not without danger of infidelity to himself and the readers of his book. ...his arguments have no force and can very easily be taken apart. For it is stupid to contradict an opinion accepted by everyone over