Introduction
Born:- 19 February 1473
Died:- 24 May 1543 (aged 70)
Renaissance polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) worked as an astronomer, mathematician, and Catholic canon. He developed a theory of the cosmos that put the Sun, not Earth, at its center. Most likely, Copernicus created his model independently of the work of Aristarchus of Samos, an eighteenth-century Greek astronomer who had previously devised a similar model.
A pivotal moment in the history of science occurred when Copernicus published his model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), shortly before his death in 1543. This publication marked the beginning of the Copernican Revolution and provided a trailblazing contribution to the Scientific Revolution.
Born and raised in what was once the Teutonic Order’s territory following the Thirteen Years’ War, Copernicus was raised in Royal Prussia, a multilingual, semiautonomous area under the Polish Crown. In addition to being a mathematician, astronomer, doctor, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist, he also held a PhD in canon law. He became a chapter canon of Warmian Cathedral in 1497. He developed the quantity theory of money, a foundational idea in economics, in 1517, and the Gresham’s law economic principle, which he developed in 1519.
Existence
On February 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born in the Polish city of Toruń (Thorn), in the region of Royal Prussia, under the Polish Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. His mother was of mixed German and Polish ancestry.
His mother was the daughter of a prosperous businessman from Toruń, while his father was a trader from Kraków. Nicolaus was the fourth kid and youngest. At Frombork (Frauenburg), his brother Andreas (Andrew) was ordained as an Augustinian canon. During her later years, his sister Barbara—named after her mother—served as a prioress of a monastery in Chełmno (Kulm) until passing away in 1517. His sister Katharina left five children for Copernicus to care for till his life’s end after marrying businessman and Toruń city councilor Barthel Gertner.
Copernicus never married and is not known to have had children, but from at least 1531 to 1539, two bishops of Warmia considered his relationship with live-in housekeeper Anna Schilling to be scandalous, and they repeatedly pressured him to end it.
The Family of the father
The family of Copernicus’s father comes from a hamlet in Silesia that is situated between Prudnik (Neustadt) and Nysa (Neiße). The name of the settlement has been spelled Kopernik, Copernik, Kopernic, Coprirnik, and, most recently, Koperniki.
The family started relocating to many Silesian cities in the 14th century, including Toruń (1400) and Kraków (1367), the capital of Poland. Mikołaj the Elder, the father, was probably Jan’s son and descended from the Kraków family.
Nicolaus derived his name from his father, who was initially documented as a prosperous copper trader who mostly sold his products in Danzig (Gdańsk). Around 1458, he relocated to Toruń from Kraków. At that time, the Teutonic Order was fighting the Kingdom of Poland and the Prussian Confederation, an alliance of Prussian towns, aristocracy, and clergy, for control of the region. Toruń, which is located on the Vistula River, was a part of this conflict.
Hanseatic communities, including Danzig and Nicolaus Copernicus’s birthplace of Toruń, decided to side with Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon in this conflict because he pledged to uphold the cities’ long-standing, mostly independent status, which the Teutonic Order had threatened. Nicolaus’s father was an active participant in the current political climate, siding with Poland and the cities in their opposition against the Teutonic Order.
He served as a mediator in the 1454 war loan payback discussions between the Prussian cities and Poland’s Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki. The seized areas were restored to Poland as Royal Prussia when the Teutonic Order publicly relinquished all claims to them in the Second Peace of Thorn (1466). This state of affairs persisted until the First and Second Partitions of Poland (1772 and 1793).
Between 1461 and 1464, the astronomer Barbara Watzenrode and her father, Copernicus, were married. He passed sometime in 1483.
Mom’s side of the family
Barbara Watzenrode, Nicolaus’s mother, was the daughter of Jan Peckau’s wife Katarzyna Rüdiger gente Modlibóg (died 1476), who was named in other sources as the widow of rich Toruń aristocrat and city councillor Lucas Watzenrode the Elder (dead 1462). From 1271 onwards, the Modlibógs were a well-known Polish family in Polish history. Similar to the Kopernik family, the Watzenrode family originated in Silesia, close to Schweidnitz (Świdnica), and they eventually made Toruń their home after 1360.
They quickly rose to prominence as one of the most affluent and powerful aristocratic families. Copernicus was linked to affluent families of Toruń (Thorn), Danzig (Gdansk), and Elbing (Elbląg) through the broad familial links formed by the Watzenrodes through marriage, as well as to well-known Polish aristocratic families of Prussia, including the Czapskis, Działyńskis, Konopackis, and Kościeleckis.
Three children were born to Lucas and Katherine: Christina (died before 1502), who married Tiedeman von Allen, a merchant and mayor of Toruń in 1459; Barbara, the astronomer’s mother (dying after 1495); and Lucas Watzenrode the Younger (1447–1512), who would go on to become the Bishop of Warmia and Copernicus’s patron.
The rich businessman Lucas Watzenrode the Elder was a strong opponent of the Teutonic Knights and served as president of the judicial bench from 1439 until 1462. He represented Toruń at the assembly at Grudziądz (Graudenz) in 1453, when plans for the rebellion against them were made. He enthusiastically supported the military effort of the Prussian towns during the Thirteen Years’ military that followed by providing significant financial subsidies (of which he subsequently reclaimed only a portion), engaging in political activities in Toruń and Danzig, and participating in fights at Łasin (Lessen) and Malbork (Marienburg). In 1462, he passed away.
The astronomer’s maternal uncle and sponsor, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, received his education at the universities of Cologne, Bologna, and Kraków. The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order once referred to him as “the devil incarnate” since he was a fierce opponent of the order. Watzenrode defeated King Casimir IV’s wish to appoint his son to the position of Bishop of Warmia (Ermeland, Ermland) in 1489. Watzenrode and the monarch fought for three years until Casimir IV’s passing. Subsequently, Watzenrode managed to establish intimate bonds with three Polish kings in succession: Sigismund I the Old, Alexander Jagiellon, and John I Albert.
He was each ruler’s close friend and important counselor, and his influence significantly improved the relations between Warmia and Poland as a whole. Watzenrode, who was regarded as the most influential person in Warmia, was able to assure Copernicus’s education and employment as a canon at Frombork Cathedral thanks to his riches, connections, and influence.
Instruction
Early instruction
At the age of ten, in or around 1483, Copernicus’ father passed away. Copernicus was taken under the wing of his maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger (1447–1512), who also oversaw his professional development. Watzenrode was chosen to be the Bishop of Warmia six years later. Watzenrode was friendly with important Italian-born humanist and courtier Filippo Buonaccorsi of Kraków, and he kept in touch with prominent intellectuals in Poland. Regarding the early years of Copernicus’s upbringing and schooling, no source papers have survived. Biographers of Copernicus presume that Watzenrode initially enrolled young Copernicus in St. John’s School in Toruń, where he had previously served as a master.
Armitage later claimed that the youngster went to the Cathedral School at Włocławek, which was located up the Vistula River from Toruń and prepared students for admission to the University of Kraków.
Kraków University, 1491–1495
During the winter term of 1491–1422, Copernicus enrolled at the University of Kraków alongside his brother Andrew under the name “Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia”. During the height of the Kraków astronomical-mathematical school, Copernicus studied in the Department of Arts (perhaps from the fall of 1491 to the summer or fall of 1495), gaining the groundwork for his later mathematical accomplishments.
Copernicus studied under Albert Brudzewski, who by then (from 1491) was a professor of Aristotelian philosophy but also taught astronomy privately outside the university. Copernicus probably attended the lectures of Bernard of Biskupie and Wojciech Krypa of Szamotuły, as well as other astronomical lectures by Jan of Głogów, Michał of Wrocław (Breslau), Wojciech of Pniewy, and Marcin Bylica of Olkusz. This tradition is credible but later, according to Jan Brożek.
Calculus-based Astronomy
During his studies in Kraków, Copernicus gained a solid foundation in mathematical astronomy, including arithmetic, geometry, geometric optics, cosmography, theoretical and computational astronomy, and a solid understanding of Aristotle’s and Averroes’ natural science and philosophy writings (De Coelo, Metaphysics). These experiences sparked Copernicus’s curiosity and made him familiar with humanistic culture.
Copernicus expanded his knowledge beyond the lecture halls of the university by reading books on his own that he had acquired while living in Kraków, such as Euclid, Haly Abenragel, the Alfonsine Tables, and Johannes Regiomontanus’ Tabulae direction. It is also likely that during this time he made his first scientific notes, which are partially preserved at Uppsala University.
Ptolemaic and Aristotelian systems’ contradictions
During his four years in Kraków, Copernicus developed his critical faculties and began to analyze the logical contradictions in the two “official” systems of astronomy: Ptolemy’s mechanism of eccentrics and epicycles and Aristotle’s theory of homocentric spheres. Overcoming and discarding these systems would pave the way for the development of Copernicus’s own theory of the structure of the universe.
Warmia, 1495–1696
Copernicus left Kraków without obtaining a degree, most likely in the fall of 1495, and went to the court of his uncle Watzenrode, who had been promoted to Prince-Bishop of Warmia in 1489. Watzenrode soon (before November 1495) attempted to install his nephew in the Warmia canonry that had been left vacant by the death of Jan Czanow, the previous tenant, on August 26, 1495. Uncertainty over the reasons behind the delay in Copernicus’s installation—possibly because some members of the chapter appealed to Rome—led Watzenrode to send both of his nephews to study canon law in Italy, ostensibly to advance their ecclesiastical careers and bolster his own power within the Warmia chapter.
Copernicus officially succeeded to the Warmia canonry, which had been awarded to him two years earlier, on October 20, 1497, by proxy. In addition, he would add a sinecure at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew in Wrocław (which was then under the Crown of Bohemia) by a document dated January 10, 1503, at Padua. Copernicus did not only not obtain other prebends and higher stations (prelacies) at the chapter throughout his ecclesiastical career, but he also gave up the Wrocław sinecure in 1538, even though on November 29, 1508, he had a papal indult to receive future benefices. Whether he was ever ordained as a priest is unknown. According to Edward Rosen, he wasn’t.
Copernicus accepted petty commands, enough to earn him a canonical chapter. Given that he was one of four candidates in 1537 for the ordination-required bishop seat of Warmia, the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that his ordination was likely.
Italy
Bologna University, 1496–1501
Copernicus, meantime, left Warmia in the middle of 1496, possibly escorting the chapter’s chancellor, Jerzy Pranghe, on his way to Italy. He arrived in Bologna in the fall, maybe in October, and a few months later (after 6 January 1497), he registered himself as a member of the “German nation” of the Bologna University of Jurists, which included young Poles from Silesia, Prussia, and Pomerania along with students of other nationalities.
Copernicus appears to have focused more on studying astronomy and the humanities during his three years in Bologna, which took place between fall 1496 and spring 1501, rather than canon law (for which he did not receive his doctorate until seven years later, after making a second trip to Italy in 1503). He is likely to have attended lectures by Alessandro Achillini, Giovanni Garzoni, Filippo Beroaldo, and Antonio Urceo, called Codro. He became the pupil and helper of renowned astronomer Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara after meeting him. Reading the “Epitome of the Almagest” (Epitome in Almagestum Ptolemei) by George von Peuerbach and Johannes Regiomontanus (Venice, 1496) encouraged Copernicus to propose new theories.
By making a noteworthy observation of the Moon occulting Aldebaran, the brightest star in the Taurus constellation, on March 9, 1497, in Bologna, he confirmed its findings on specific irregularities in Ptolemy’s theory of the Moon’s motion. Through the close reading of Greek and Latin authors (Pythagoras, Aristarchos of Samos, Cleomedes, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Philolaus, Heraclides, Ecphantos, Plato), the humanist Copernicus sought confirmation for his growing doubts. He also collected fragments of historical information about ancient astronomical, cosmological, and calendar systems, particularly while at Padua.
1500s Rome
Copernicus spent his jubilee year of 1500 in Rome, having traveled there that spring with his brother Andrew, most likely to serve as an apprentice at the Papal Curia. But he also carried up the astronomical research he had started in Bologna here, seeing, for instance, a lunar eclipse on the night of November 5–6, 1500. In a subsequent narrative by Rheticus, Copernicus is also described as having lectured publicly “to numerous… students and… leading masters of the science” as a “Professor Mathematum” (astronomy professor), most likely in private rather than at the Roman Sapienza. These lectures were likely devoted to a critique of the mathematical solutions of modern astronomy.
University of Padua 1501–1503
Midway during his voyage back, Copernicus most likely made a brief stay at Bologna before returning to Warmia in 1501. After obtaining a two-year leave extension from the chapter on July 28 to pursue his medical studies (because “he may in future be a useful medical advisor to our Reverend Superior [Bishop Lucas Watzenrode] and the gentlemen of the chapter”), he returned to Italy either in the late summer or early fall, most likely with his brother Andrew[m] and Canon Bernhard Sculteti.
This time, he studied at the renowned University of Padua, a center of medical scholarship. He was a resident of Padua from fall 1501 to summer 1503, with the exception of a brief trip to Ferrara in May and June 1503 to complete the requirements for his doctorate in canon law.
Astrology
Astrology was seen as a vital component of a medical education, therefore it was undoubtedly one among the things that Copernicus studied. But he doesn’t seem to have studied astrology or shown any interest in it, in contrast to the majority of other well-known Renaissance astronomers.
Greek academics
Copernicus did not confine himself to his formal studies, just as he did in Bologna. He presumably first became interested in Hellenistic culture during the Padua years. With the help of Theodorus Gaza’s grammar (1495) and Johannes Baptista Chrestonius’s lexicon (1499), he became acquainted with Greek language and culture and broadened his knowledge of antiquity—which he had started in Bologna—by reading works by Bessarion, Lorenzo Valla, and other authors. Additionally, there appears to be proof that the notion of constructing a new global system based on Earth’s movement came to fruition during his visit to Padua.
When the time came for Copernicus to return home, he traveled to Ferrara in the spring of 1503, where he was awarded the title of Doctor of Canon Law (Nicolaus Copernich de Prusia, Jure Canonico… et doctoratus) on May 31, 1503, after passing the required exams. Without a doubt, he returned to Warmia shortly after, or at the latest, in the fall of 1503, and permanently departed Italy.
Planetary observations
Three observations of Mercury were made by Copernicus; the errors were −3, −15, and −1 minutes of arc. With an inaccuracy of -24 minutes, he created one of Venus. With errors of 2, 20, 77, and 137 minutes, four were made of Mars. Jupiter was observed four times, with error times of 32, 51, -11, and 25 minutes. Using 31, 20, 23, and −4 minute errors, he made four observations of Saturn.
Additional Remarks
On March 9, 1497, Copernicus witnessed the Moon obscure Aldebaran with Novara. On March 4, 1500, Copernicus also witnessed a conjunction of Saturn and the Moon. He witnessed a lunar eclipse on November 6, 1500.
Work
Following his completion of his studies in Italy, thirty-year-old Copernicus returned to Warmia, where he would spend the next forty years of his life, with the exception of short trips to nearby Prussian cities such as Malbork (Marienburg), Gdańsk (Danzig), Elbląg (Elbing), Grudziądz (Graudenz), and Toruń (Thorn).
With its own treasury, monetary unit, and diet (assembly), the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia had significant autonomy, just like the other regions of Royal Prussia.
From 1503 until 1510 (or maybe until his uncle’s death on March 29, 1512), Copernicus worked as his uncle’s physician and secretary. He lived in the Bishop’s castle at Lidzbark (Heilsberg), where he started developing his heliocentric theory. He participated in almost all of his uncle’s political, ecclesiastical, and administrative-economic responsibilities in his official position.
Dobrzycki and Hajdukiewicz state that Copernicus “participated… in all the more important events in the complex diplomatic game that ambitious politician and statesman played in defense of the particular interests of Prussia and Warmia, between hostility to the [Teutonic] Order and loyalty to the Polish Crown.” Copernicus began accompanying Watzenrode to sessions of the Royal Prussian diet held at Malbork and Elbląg at the beginning of 1504 and accompanied him there.
As a member of his uncle’s entourage, Copernicus traveled widely between 1504 and 1512: he may have attended a session of the Prussian diet at Poznań (Posen) in 1510 and the coronation of Poland’s King Sigismund I the Old in Kraków (1507). In 1504, Copernicus traveled to Toruń and Gdańsk for a session of the Royal Prussian Council in the presence of King Alexander Jagiellon of Poland. Watzenrode’s itinerary implies that Copernicus could have gone to the Kraków Sejm in the spring of 1509.
During that later event in Kraków, Copernicus most likely submitted his translation from Greek to Latin for printing at Jan Haller’s press. The collection was written by the 7th-century Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta and consisted of 85 short poems called Epistles, or letters, that were supposedly exchanged between different characters in a Greek tale. They fall into three categories: “moral,” which gives guidance on how people ought to behave; “pastoral,” which provides brief depictions of life as a shepherd; and “amorous,” which consists of love poetry. They are set up to rotate through subjects in a regular order.
Theophilacti scolastici Simocati epistolae morales, rurales et amatoriae interpretatione Latina is Copernicus’ translation of the Greek poetry into prose. It was given to his uncle as a token of appreciation for all the advantages he had reaped from him. Copernicus put himself on the humanists’ side in the debate over the merits of bringing back Greek literature with this translation. The earliest poem by Copernicus was a Greek epigram, written most likely while he was in Kraków for Johannes Dantiscus’ epithalamium for Barbara Zapolya’s marriage to King Zygmunt I the Old in 1512.
A heliocentric theory’s preliminary framework is called Commentariolus.
Nicolai Copernici de hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus, often known as the Commentariolus, is the title of an early outline of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory that is only known from subsequent recordings. Copernicus produced this outline sometime around 1514. It was a brief theoretical explanation of the heliocentric mechanism of the globe, devoid of mathematical equipment, and it diverged from De revolutionibus in a few significant geometrical construction elements, but it was predicated on the same theories on the three movements of Earth.
Copernicus deliberately considered the Commentariolus as only an initial draft of his intended book and did not intend for it to be printed and distributed. Only a small number of his closest friends and associates had access to manuscript copies, perhaps including a few astronomers from Kraków with whom he worked on eclipse observations between 1515 and 1530. In Tycho Brahe’s book Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata, published in Prague in 1602, he included a fragment from the Commentariolus. The treatise was based on a manuscript that Brahe obtained from Rheticus’s acquaintance, the Bohemian physician and astronomer Tadeáš Hájek. It would not be until 1878 that the Commentariolus would be published in its entirety in print.
1513–1516 observations of stars
Copernicus relocated to Frombork, a town northwest of the Vistula Lagoon on the shore of the Baltic Sea, around 1510 or 1512. There he took part in the election of Fabian of Lossainen to the office of Prince-Bishop of Warmia in April of 1512. The chapter did not grant Copernicus an “external curia”—a home outside the cathedral mount’s protective walls—until early June 1512. He bought the northwest tower inside the Frombork stronghold’s fortifications in 1514. Despite the Teutonic Order’s January 1520 invasion against Frauenburg, which likely resulted in the destruction of Copernicus’s astronomical apparatus, he would continue to live in both of these mansions until the end of his life.
Astronomical observations were made by Copernicus between 1513 and 1516, most likely from his exterior curia, and between 1522 and 1543, from an undetermined “small tower” (turricula), employing archaic equipment such as the quadrant, triquetrum, and armillary sphere. More than fifty percent of Copernicus’s sixty-plus documented astronomical observations were made in Frombork.
Warmia’s administrative responsibilities
After making his permanent home in Frombork, where he would remain until the end of his life with brief stays in 1516–1519 and 1520–1521, Copernicus found himself at the administrative and economic hub of the Warmia chapter, which also happened to be one of the two main concentrations of political life in Warmia.
Within the complex and demanding political environment of Warmia, which was threatened both internally by strong separatist pressures (the election of Warmia’s prince-bishops; currency reform) and externally by the aggressions of the Teutonic Order (attacks by Teutonic bands; the Polish–Teutonic War of 1519–1521, Albert’s plans to annex Warmia), he and a portion of the chapter represented a program of strict cooperation with the Polish Crown and demonstrated in all of his public actions (the defense of his country against the Order’s plans of conquest; suggestions to unify its monetary system with that of the Polish Crown;
acknowledgment of his conscious citizenship in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic and his support for Poland’s interests in the ecclesiastical administration of the Warmia domain. Shortly after the death of uncle Bishop Watzenrode, He took part in the signing of the Second Treaty of Piotrków Trybunalski (7 December 1512), which established the appointment of the Bishop of Warmia and declared his support for the Polish Crown’s allegiance in spite of objections from some members of the chapter.
In 1512, before November 8th, specifically, Copernicus took on the role of magister pistoriae, overseeing the chapter’s economic ventures. He would retake this position in 1530, having already served as chancellor and estate visitor since 1511.
Copernicus continued to conduct extensive observational work between 1512 and 1515 despite his administrative and financial responsibilities. The findings from his observations of Mars and Saturn during this time, particularly a four-part series of observations of the Sun in 1515, revealed the eccentricity of Earth’s variability and the movement of the solar apogee with respect to the fixed stars. These discoveries led to his first revisions of his system’s assumptions in 1515–1519. Paul of Middelburg, the Bishop of Fossombrone, requested a reform of the Julian calendar in the first half of 1513, which may have had an impact on some of the observations he made during this time.
Later, Copernicus’s dedicatory epistle in Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium and Paul of Middelburg’s treatise, Secundum compendium correctionis Calendarii (1516), which lists Copernicus among the learned men who had sent the Council proposals for the calendar’s emendation, memorialized their contacts in this matter during the Fifth Lateran Council.
As the economic administrator of Warmia, which included Olsztyn (Allenstein) and Pieniężno (Mehlsack), Copernicus lived in Olsztyn (Allenstein) Castle from 1516 until 1521. During his stay, he composed a book titled Locationes mansorum desertorum (Locations of Deserted Fiefs), with the intention of settling those fiefs with hardworking farmers, so enhancing Warmia’s economy. During the Polish-Teutonic War, Copernicus oversaw the Royal Polish armies’ defense of Olsztyn and Warmia against the Teutonic Knights’ siege of the city. In the succeeding peace talks, he also spoke on behalf of Poland.
Consultant for Monetary Reform
For many years, especially in the 1520s, when monetary reform was a hot topic in Prussian politics in the region, Copernicus provided the Royal Prussian sejmik with advice on the subject. His essay “Monetae cudendae ratio” on the worth of money was published in 1526. Many decades before Thomas Gresham, he developed an early version of the notion known as Gresham’s law, which states that “bad” (debased) currency pushes “good” (un-debased) money out of circulation. Additionally, he published a quantitative theory of money in 1517, which is a foundational idea in contemporary economics. In their efforts to stabilize money, the leaders of both Prussia and Poland extensively studied Copernicus’s suggestions for monetary reform.
Copernican system presented to the Pope
Copernicus’s heliocentric theory was presented to Pope Clement VII and two cardinals in 1533 by Johann Widmanstetter, the Pope’s secretary. The Pope was so happy that he bestowed to Widmanstetter a priceless present. In a letter to a gentleman in Vienna in 1535, Bernard Wapowski urged him to publish an accompanying almanac he said was written by Copernicus. This is the sole historical reference to a Copernicus almanac. Copernicus’s tables of planetary locations were probably the “almanac” in question. Copernicus’s idea of the motion of the Earth is mentioned in Wapowski’s letter. Wapowski’s desire was not fulfilled since he passed away a few weeks later.
Copernicus took part in the election of Johannes Dantiscus, the Prince-Bishop of Warmia when Mauritius Ferber passed away on July 1, 1537 (20 September 1537). Tiedemann Giese had written in four candidates for the position, including Copernicus. However, Copernicus’s candidacy was essentially pro forma because Dantiscus had already been appointed coadjutor bishop to Ferber and had the support of King Sigismund I of Poland. Copernicus initially had cordial ties with the newly appointed Prince-Bishop, providing him with medical assistance in the spring of 1538 and going on an inspection trip of Chapter possessions with him that summer. However, concerns regarding Anna Schilling, Copernicus’s housekeeper, whom Dantiscus had expelled from Frombork in the spring of 1539, soured their acquaintance that autumn.
Medical work
Copernicus the physician had treated his brother, uncle, and other members of the chapter when he was younger. Subsequently, he was asked to care for the aging bishops, Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), in 1539, as well as Mauritius Ferber and Johannes Dantiscus, who held the see of Warmia. He occasionally sought advice from other doctors while treating such significant patients, including the Duke Albert’s physician and the Polish Royal Physician by letter.
In the spring of 1541, Copernicus was called to Königsberg by Duke Albert, the former Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who had turned the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights into a Lutheran and hereditary realm, the Duchy of Prussia, in remembrance of his uncle, the Polish King Sigismund I. The Duke’s counselor, George von Kunheim, had become gravely ill, and the Prussian physicians were unable to tend to him. Copernicus traveled voluntarily; during discussions about the reform of the currency, he had met von Kunheim. Additionally, Copernicus began to believe that Albert wasn’t all that horrible; after all, they shared a great deal of intellectual curiosity.
Copernicus was glad to go, as the Chapter wanted to maintain good relations with the Duke even if he was a Lutheran. After the patient recuperated for approximately one month, Copernicus went back to Frombork. He kept getting updates on von Kunheim’s status and letters with medical advice for a while.
Protestant critiques of Copernican theory
Copernicus never displayed a propensity for Protestantism, but a few of his close acquaintances did. Protestants launched the first of his strikes. Dutch immigrant Wilhelm Gnapheus composed a Latin comedy, Morosophus (The Foolish Sage), which he presented at the Latin school he founded in Elbląg. Copernicus was satirized in the play as the title character, Morosophus, an arrogant, distant, and chilly man who experimented with astrology, believed he was inspired by God, and was said to have produced a sizable book that was rotting in a chest.
In other places, Protestants reacted to the announcement of Copernicus’s hypothesis first. Melanchthon penned:
- Some think it’s great and right to figure out anything as ludicrous as that Polish and Sarmatian astronomer who moved the earth and stopped the sun. It is true that prudent leaders ought to have restrained such naiveté.
However, eight years after Copernicus’s passing, in 1551, astronomer Erasmus Reinhold produced the Prussian Tables, a collection of astronomical tables based on Copernicus’s work, with the support of the Protestant Duke Albert, a former military rival of Copernicus. It was swiftly replaced by astrologers and astronomers as the preferred method.
The Heliocentric Paradigm
A little before 1514, Copernicus distributed his “Commentariolus” (lit. “Little Commentary”), a document outlining his theories on the heliocentric theory, to acquaintances. There were seven fundamental presumptions in it (explained below). After that, he carried on obtaining information for a more thorough study.
Copernicus had essentially finished the manuscript of Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium by 1532, but he refused to publicly express his opinions despite the encouragement of his closest friends because, as he admitted, he did not want to run the risk of being mocked for the “novel and incomprehensibility of his theses.”
Rome’s acceptance of the Copernican system
Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter presented a set of lectures in Rome in 1533 that summarized Copernicus’s thesis. After hearing the lectures, Pope Clement VII and a few other Catholic cardinals expressed interest in the idea. The Archbishop of Capua, Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, wrote to Copernicus from Rome on November 1, 1536.
A few years back, I was informed about your expertise, which was something that everyone was talking about. I started to hold you in the highest respect at that point. For I had discovered that you had created a new cosmology in addition to having an exceptionally high mastery of the findings made by the ancient astronomers. You argue in it that the sun is at the center of the universe since it is the lowest point and that the earth moves.
I therefore beg you, most learned sir, with all sincerity, to share this discovery with scholars unless doing so would cause you inconvenience. Additionally, please send me your writings on the sphere of the universe as soon as possible, along with the tables and any other pertinent material you may have.
By then, scholarly people throughout Europe had heard whispers of Copernicus’s idea, and his work was almost complete. Copernicus delayed publishing his work despite strong encouragement from a variety of sources, possibly out of fear of criticism. This anxiety was subtly conveyed when he later dedicated his magnum opus to Pope Paul III. if or if Copernicus was worried about arguments from a theological perspective, or only potential astronomical and philosophical ones, is a matter of debate among academics.
Orbium coelestium de revolutionibus
Even though he was unsure if he intended to publish De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Copernicus was still working on it in 1539 when Wittenberg mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus came in Frombork. Martin Luther’s close theological supporter Philipp Melanchthon had made arrangements for Rheticus to travel and study with a number of astronomers. After studying under Copernicus for two years, Rheticus wrote a book called Narratio Prima (First Account), which summarized the main ideas of Copernicus’s theory. A book on trigonometry by Copernicus was published in 1542 by Rheticus and ultimately appeared as chapters 13 and 14 of Book I of De revolutionibus.
After experiencing significant pressure from Rheticus and witnessing the positive initial reception of his work, Copernicus ultimately consented to give De revolutionibus to his close friend Tiedemann Giese, the bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), to be printed by Johannes Petreius, a German printer, in Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany and then delivered to Rheticus. Although Rheticus was in charge of the printing at first, he had to leave Nuremberg before it could be finished, so he assigned Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander to oversee the remaining printing.
In an unwritten and unapproved introduction, Osiander defended Copernicus’s work against critics who might find its innovative theories offensive. He said that “different hypotheses are sometimes offered for one and the same motion [and therefore] the astronomer will take as his first choice that hypothesis which is the easiest to grasp.” Osiander states that “it is not necessary for these theories to be correct or even likely. It suffices if they only offer a calculus that aligns with the data.
Death
Copernicus suffered from apoplexy and paralysis towards the end of 1542, and on May 24, 1543, he passed away at the age of 70. According to legend, he was given the last printed pages of his Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium the day before he passed away, enabling him to say goodbye to his life’s work. It is said that after emerging from a coma brought on by a stroke, he stared at his book and passed away quietly.
It is said that Copernicus was interred at the Frombork Cathedral, where an inscription from 1580 was displayed until it was vandalized and redone in 1735. Archaeologists looked for Copernicus’s bones in the cathedral for more than 200 years, but they were unsuccessful. Searches in 1802, 1909, and 1939 had yielded no results. Guided by the studies of historian Jerzy Sikorski, a team led by Jerzy Gąssowski, head of an archaeology and anthropological institute in Pułtusk, started a new search in 2004. After looking beneath the cathedral floor in August 2005, they found what they thought to be Copernicus’s bones.
Only until more investigation was completed was the discovery made public on November 3, 2008. Gąssowski declared that he was “nearly certain it is Copernicus.” Using the skull, forensic specialist Capt. Dariusz Zajdel of the Polish Police Central Forensic Laboratory recreated a face that bore a striking resemblance to the characteristics on a Copernicus self-portrait, including a broken nose and a scar above the left eye. Additionally, the expert concluded that the skull belonged to a guy who had passed away at the age of 70, which was Copernicus’s age when he passed away.
Some of the skeleton’s bones were missing, including the lower jaw, and the burial was in bad condition. Hair samples from a book that Copernicus owned and maintained at the University of Uppsala library in Sweden matched the DNA from the bones discovered in the burial.
In a Mass said on May 22, 2010, Józef Kowalczyk, the recently appointed Primate of Poland and former papal nuncio to Poland, gave Copernicus a second burial. Copernicus’s bones were reinterred in the Frombork Cathedral, at the same location where a portion of his skull and other bones had been discovered. He is recognized as the creator of the heliocentric theory and a church canon on a gravestone made of black granite. Copernicus’s depiction of the Solar System, which shows a brilliant Sun surrounded by six planets, is depicted on the gravestone.
