But his utterances are perhaps purposely obscure.

Again it disappears beneath the theological wave, and a hundred years later Nicolas d'Oresme, geographer of the King of France, a light of science, is forced to yield to the clear teaching of the Scripture as cited by St.Augustine.
Nor was this the worst.

In Italy, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Church thought it necessary to deal with questions of this sort by rack and fagot.

In 1316 Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death; and in 1327 Cecco d'Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at Florence.

Nor was this all his punishment: Orcagna, whose terrible frescoes still exist on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, immortalized Cecco by representing him in the flames of hell.( 35) (35) For Vincent of Beauvais and the antipode, see his Speculum Naturale, Book VII, with citations from St.Augustine, De Civitate Dei, cap.xvi.For Albert the Great's doctrine regarding the antipodes, compare Kretschmer, as above, with Eicken, Geschichte, etc., p.