Renaissance in Poland late 18th century. The period of Polish Renaissance, supportive of intellectual pursuits, produced many outstanding artists and scientists. Among them were Nicolaus Copernicus who in his "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" presented the heliocentric theory of the universe, Maciej of Miechów, author of "Tractatus de duabus Sarmatis..." – the most accurate up to date geographical and ethnographical account of Eastern Europe; Bernard Wapowski, a cartographer whose maps of that region appeared in Ptolemy's "Geography"; Marcin Kromer who in his "De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum libri..." described both the history and geography of Poland; Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, a philosopher concerned with
Nicolaus Copernicus Pythagoras's system involved a moving earth. The Pythagorean system was mentioned by Aristotle. Copernicus owned a copy of Giorgio Valla's "De expetendis et fugiendis rebus", which included a translation of Plutarch's reference to Aristarchus's heliostaticism. In Copernicus' dedication of "On the Revolutions" to Pope Paul III—which Copernicus hoped would dampen criticism of his heliocentric theory by "babblers... completely ignorant of [astronomy]"—the book's author wrote that, in rereading all of philosophy, in the pages of Cicero and Plutarch he had found references to those few thinkers who dared to move the Earth "against the traditional opinion of astronomers and almost against