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| Nicolaus Copernicus Portrait by Nicolaus Reusner, 1578 |
Although he was also a mathematician, jurist, classical scholar, artist, governor and quadrilingual polyglot, he is nevertheless mostly remembered for his earth-shattering cosmology.
All this certainly made Copernicus stand out in a crowd.
His heliocentric ideas were in opposition to some biblical understanding of that time. Commonly quoted passages such as Ecclesiastes 1:5, Chronicles 16:30 and Psalm 104:5 seemed to promote the idea of a motionless earth and a mobile sun when literally interpreted.
Sixteenth-century Protestants, who particularly relied upon the Bible for guidance, were up in arms about the heliocentric view. In 1539 Martin Luther said this about Copernicus: There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon... The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down...
Many say that Calvin was not a whole lot kinder about this. In response to the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres" - in Latin, no less), Calvin preached against those who "pervert the course of nature" by saying that "the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns." Years later, Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius allegedly added: Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?
Interestingly, Catholic contemporaries of Copernicus had looked somewhat favorably upon his heliocentrism. Pope Clement VII and several cardinals attended lectures in Rome about it. In 1536 the Archbishop of Capus actively encouraged Copernicus to publish the theory in its entirety. It wasn't until the 1600s that this position was reversed.
Resources
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolaus-Copernicus
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