Catholic theologians, the "Qualifiers," reports that the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture...". February 28 – In the aftermath of the 1613–1614 anti-Jewish pogrom called the Fettmilch Uprising in Frankfurt, Germany, mob leader Vincenz Fettmilch is beheaded, but the Jews, who had been expelled from the city on August 23, 1614, following the plundering of the Judengasse, can only return as a result of direct intervention by Holy Roman Emperor Matthias. After long negotiations, the Jews are left without any compensation for their plundered belongings. February – English merchants of the East India Company complain that the great troubles and wars in Japan since their arrival have put them to much pains and charges. Two great cities, Osaka and Sakaii, have been burned to the ground, each one almost as big as London, and not one house left standing, and it is reported above 300,000 men have lost their lives, “yet the old Emperor Ogusho Same hath prevailed and Fidaia Same either been slain or fled secretly away, that no news is to be heard of him.” Jesuits, priests, and friars are banished by the emperor and their churches and monasteries pulled down; they put the fault on the arrival of the English; it is said if Fidaia Same had prevailed against the emperor, he promised them entrance again, when without doubt all the English would have been driven out of Japan. March 5 – Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, by the Congregation of the Index of the Roman Catholic Church "until corrected". March 11 Galileo Galilei meets Pope Paul V in person, to discuss his position as a defender of Copernicus' heliocentrism. English Roman Catholic priest, Thomas Atkinson, is hanged, drawn, and quartered at York, at age 70 (he will be beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 22, 1987). March 19 Sir Walter Ralegh, English explorer of the New World, is released from prison in the Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned for treason, in order to conduct a second (ill-fated) expedition, in search of El Dorado in South America. The Scornful Lady, a comedy stage play written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, is published. March 26 – August 30 – English explorer