CLEP Western Civ I

Answer: D - Nicolaus Copernicus, a Catholic cleric, was the first Renaissance thinker to refute the geocentric model of cosmology, instead advocating a heliocentric model, in which the Earth revolved around the Sun. Copernicus spent the last decades of his life working on the theory, trying to work out mathematical proofs that would confirm his hypothesis while he wrote his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. He refused to let the work be published until after he died (in 1543) so that he would not be attacked by the Church for advocating a theory that was discordant with their doctrine.