page_title: Christoph Scheiner
section_title: Rome: 1624–1633
hierarchical_section_title: Christoph Scheiner / Biography / Rome: 1624–1633
caption_attribution_description: English: Observations of sun spots Deutsch: Beobachtung der Sonnenflecken
context_page_description: Christoph Scheiner SJ was a Jesuit priest, physicist and astronomer in Ingolstadt.
context_section_description: When Scheiner went to Rome in 1624, friends asked him to write about his solar observations. At last he had time for mathematical books, among them Galilei’s Il saggiatore, which contains Galileo's work on sunspots. This was similar to Scheiner's own work (unsurprisingly, since both were observing at the same time) but led to allegations from both of plagiarism by the other, and to a deep enmity between the two scientists.
  In 1629 and 1630, Scheiner observed a series of mock suns (parhelia) and haloes, including a complex display on 24 January 1630. These were described in his book Parhelia, which had a profound influence on the work of René Descartes and later on Christian Huygens. His observations also included an eclipse on 8 April 1633. 
  On 22 June 1633, Galilei received his sentence and had to renounce his claims, despite the protest sounding even from the Aristotelian side. Scheiner's influence on the trial cannot be proven. The trial files merely contain a small note mentioning that he had opposed the Copernicans. At the time of the trial, Scheiner was still in Rome, staying at the seminary for future priests.
  Scheiner wrote three of his books in Rome: Rosa Ursina sive Sol (Bracciano, 1626–1630), on sunspots, which served as a standard work for research work on the sunspots for a long time. Rosa Ursina sive Sol contains four books. In the first part, Scheiner discusses the question of priority of discovery in regard to sunspots. The second part not only describes telescopes, different kinds of projection and the helioscope but also compares the optics of the telescope to the physiological optics of the eye. In the third book, Scheiner presents a comprehensive collection of the data from his observation of sunspots. Book 4 consists of two parts: the first part deals once again with solar phenomena like sunspots and sun flares, the sun's rotation period of 27 days and the inclination of its axis of rotation. In the second part, Scheiner mentions numerous passages and quotations from the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers and philosophers to prove that his geocentric view is in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. 
  Scheiner published Pantographice, about the pantograph which he had invented as early as 1603, and finally in 1632/1633, Scheiner published his last work Prodromus, a pamphlet against the heliocentric theory which was published posthumously in 1651.
caption: Depiction of the sunspots
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