Authors: Kitty Ferguson
When Copernicus was 22, he and Andreas ‘walked across the Alps’ (tradition tells us) to Italy to continue their studies. The influential uncle had taken his Doctorate of Laws at Bologna, Italy’s oldest university and particularly famous for its faculty of law. He hoped to draw Copernicus’s interest away from
astronomy
and into law. However, Copernicus didn’t pass up the opportunity to get to know the leading scholars of astronomy and astrology at Bologna.
One eminent teacher there, Maria de Novara, not an astronomer but a mathematician, may have influenced him profoundly. Novara was a Neoplatonist and Copernicus had already expressed some sympathy for Neoplatonic opinions. Neoplatonism was a framework of thought that stressed the need to discover simple mathematical and geometric reality underlying all the apparent complexity of nature. Neoplatonists, following in the tradition of Pythagoras also saw the Sun as the source of all vital principles and energies in the universe. Novara himself insisted that nothing so complex and cumbersome as Ptolemaic theory could correctly represent the truth.
Copernicus was mathematician enough to find the complications of that astronomy unwieldy and annoying. But somewhere along the line – and we can’t know precisely when – Copernicus went beyond that annoyance to become thoroughly convinced that a simpler model of the universe was much more likely to be a correct model. The answer to the question, why
now
a challenge to Ptolemy, before there was any compelling observational reason for it, may lie partly in Copernicus’s association with Novara.
Due to their uncle the Bishop’s influence, Copernicus and his brother had received appointments as canons of Warmia, positions involving both Church and civil authority. Nevertheless, the Chapter there was pleased to extend Copernicus’s leave of absence for educational purposes when he announced his intention to study medicine. Doctors were in short supply. So Copernicus set off again in 1501, this time for the University of Padua with its famed faculty of medicine. There he did indeed expend much effort studying medicine, though, mysteriously, the degree he eventually received was a Doctorate of Canon Law from the University of Ferrara. The explanation for the change of venue may be that he didn’t know anyone at Ferrara
and
hence could avoid the expense of the expected celebration party.
Copernicus returned to Poland in 1503 and – surprisingly, after such a cosmopolitan start – never left again. He began to build a distinguished reputation as a doctor, reportedly saving many lives later during a severe epidemic in 1519. Reading his notes, some of which arguably represent the best of medical practice at the time, leads one to wonder how this happened.
From 1503 until 1512, Copernicus, now in his thirties, lived at Lidzbark Castle, the seat of his uncle the Bishop of Warmia. He served as his uncle’s secretary and personal physician and became a force in the politics of Warmia, putting to use the legal education he had received at Bologna. He also found time for astronomical observations and kept painstaking records of them. About 1507, while still a member of the court at Lidzbark, he wrote a book in which he claimed that the Ptolemaic model was wrong. The book was short, about 20 handwritten pages. In that form (it was not printed) it circulated at first anonymously and with an unrecorded title among Copernicus’s scientific acquaintances. The later title was
Nicolai Copernici de Hypothesibus Motuum Caelestium a se Constituis Commentariolus
, usually shortened to
Commentariolus (Commentary)
.
Sun-centred astronomy as Copernicus first proposed it in
Commentariolus
didn’t by any means solve all the problems still nagging Ptolemaic astronomy. Trying to eliminate the equant, which he found particularly offensive, and keeping the orbits circular, he was forced to use epicycles to account for the movement of the planets. There is little mathematical reasoning in
Commentariolus
. It is hardly more than a sketch. Nevertheless, the leap that Copernicus made was extraordinary. He claimed that by putting the Sun in the centre it would be possible to explain the heavens more simply and logically than Ptolemaic astronomy had done.
In
Commentariolus
Copernicus still visualized the universe in terms of spheres. The Sun rather than the Earth is at the centre of
his
arrangement, and there is a sphere representing the level (from the Sun) at which the Earth moves, encasing the Sun and the spheres of Mercury and Venus. The small sphere in which the Moon moves is the only sphere that has the Earth as its centre.
Copernicus proposed seven ‘assumptions’:
Copernicus went on to write: ‘The highest is the sphere of the fixed stars, containing and fixing location for everything. Below it is Saturn, followed by Jupiter, then Mars; below it the sphere in which we move, then Venus and finally Mercury. The lunar sphere revolves around the centre of the Earth.’
It would seem that Copernicus had delivered a bombshell, but there was no explosion. Few people outside Poland heard about his book. His suggestions went largely undiscussed and unchallenged. The Catholic Church became aware of him but evidently didn’t regard his ideas as a threat. The Church had for at least two centuries been adopting a tolerant, hands-off attitude towards ideas that challenged traditional astronomy – even suggestions such as that from Nicholas of Cusa, one of its own cardinals. If any dyed-in-the-wool Ptolemaic astronomers recognized Copernicus as a potential challenge, they may have sagely decided that the best defence against the new model would be not to respond to it at all. Let it die in oblivion.
In 1512, Copernicus’s life story took a new turn with the death of his uncle. He left the castle at Lidzbark and went to live at Frombork, for he was still a canon of Warmia and Frombork was the seat of the Chapter. There, in a tower adjoining the cathedral, he would do his most important work. He described his residence there as ‘the remotest corner of the Earth’, which seemed not to bother him unduly or deflect him from his scholarship. Copernicus was a modest, quiet, man who saw little objection to having himself, and the Earth, removed from the centre of things.
During his years at Frombork, Copernicus made a number of astronomical observations – less accurately than the Greeks had done, for Copernicus was not particularly skilled at observational astronomy. He also began or continued work on a second book. However, although the death of his uncle seemed likely to leave Copernicus with more time to devote to his astronomy, there were serious distractions. He became involved in negotiations with the Teutonic Knights, one of the forces that periodically threatened to tear Poland apart. When diplomacy failed and fighting broke out, Copernicus moved to Olsztyn, though he was too stiff-necked to retreat to Gdansk with the rest of the canons and remained at Olsztyn, now under siege, to organize resistance. When the siege was finally lifted and the
fighting
stopped, he headed up relief operations. Copernicus became involved with problems of economics during the recovery after this conflict, and he wrote a short, insightful tract proposing currency reforms. It’s surprising to learn that had Copernicus not introduced Sun-centred astronomy, he might still be remembered as a minor historical figure in the field of economics.
Copernicus eventually got back to Frombork, where his duties as an administrator and doctor must still have consumed the greater part of his time. Nevertheless, he resumed work on his book. By now that may have been substantially completed, but he was a meticulous man, worrying over details, trying to confront and solve every problem presented in the astronomical data he had. He was frustrated for example by the discovery that the Earth’s whole orbit seemed to oscillate. He called these oscillations ‘trepidations’ and tried to account for them. Later astronomers found that these trepidations were an illusion. Copernicus had been worrying himself over nothing but the result of bad data. One of our own century’s great astronomers, Fred Hoyle, writes of his predecessors in his book
Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work:
The early astronomers could not know which problems they could hope to solve. Perforce they had to take a shot at everything. And because insoluble problems were mixed up with soluble ones their task in dealing with the soluble ones was made all the harder. This must always be remembered in attempting to understand the difficulties which beset Ptolemy and Copernicus. Both expended much effort in attempting to understand the Moon, whereas they would probably have gone further with less effort if they had ignored this problem.
Copernicus’s friends urged him to publish his book while he was still fretting about its not being quite ready. We are
reminded
of Johannes Brahms carrying the completed manuscript of his first symphony around with him in his coat pocket, unable to bring himself to relinquish it to the public and wanting to be dead certain none of his friends did it for him. Copernicus was about to insist on a vision that disagreed with what nearly every intelligent, educated person had been thinking for millennia. He had become a well-known and well-respected astronomer and had no desire to appear an eccentric lunatic. His conflict with the astronomers of the past was a battle we think of as being fought over the big picture, but for Copernicus it was a battle fought in terms of technical and mathematical minutiae. Until he could work out these details to his own satisfaction, he could not feel he had succeeded. Even with all this concern, there
were
loose ends. Copernicus was convinced that his rearrangement of the universe could yield a far more harmonious and effective astronomy, but he failed to demonstrate this improvement as effectively as he hoped to do.
Copernicus had other worries dogging him besides his book. He was in his sixties now, no longer in the prime of health. Gnapheus, a minor playwright, produced a comedy,
The Wise Fool
, that mocked Copernicus. There were rumours of some ill-considered, scoffing dinner table remarks about moving the Earth coming from Martin Luther. Closer to home, Copernicus became embroiled in a demeaning squabble with the new Bishop of Warmia. Reports differ as to whether Copernicus had opposed or supported this man’s election, and whether it was a vindictive move when the Bishop undertook to remove Copernicus’s housekeeper Anna Szylling, a widow and distant relation on Copernicus’s mother’s side. She was a handsome, cultured woman whose presence in Copernicus’s house the Bishop (reportedly no paragon of morality himself) deemed suspect and unsuitable. Copernicus resisted for over a year but finally agreed to her departure.
Despite these griefs and distractions, in the late 1530s, 1,700 years after Aristarchus, Copernicus was at last drawing to a
finish
the book that ultimately would lead to the vindication of that ancient astronomer and be one of the most significant watersheds in human intellectual history –
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Concerning the revolutions of the heavenly orbs)
. Copernicus wrote out the manuscript himself in longhand, as he had done with
Commentariolus
. This time there were more than two hundred pages. The book would elaborate on the sketch he had given in
Commentariolus
, his primary assertion again being that the Sun, not the Earth, must be considered the centre of the system.
While Copernicus was still labouring on
De revolutionibus
, rumour got out that something radical was in the making at Frombork. The circulation of
Commentariolus
was small, but it was significant, and Copernicus’s friends, particularly Bishop Tiedemann Giese, were spreading the word enthusiastically. Already in 1533, Pope Clement VII requested that his secretary explain these new Sun-centred theories to him. In 1536, Nicolaus Schönberg, Cardinal of Capua, wrote to Copernicus asking about his theories, and Copernicus sent him some explanations and tables. Cardinal Schönberg moved firmly into the Copernican camp. He urged Copernicus to allow his book to see the light of day and offered to pay for its publication and printing. Unfortunately, the Cardinal died before he could make good on his offer, but Copernicus mentioned this strong encouragement as well as that of Bishop Giese in the dedication of the book. However, it was not a Catholic churchman but a young mathematician named Rhaeticus, from Protestant Wittenberg, who at last persuaded Copernicus to publish his work.
Rhaeticus hadn’t had an enviable adolescence. When he was a teenager, his father was beheaded as a sorcerer, and Rhaeticus, who had previously been Georg Joachin von Lauchen, changed his name. Rhaetia was the province where he was born. Now he was a junior professor at the University of Wittenberg, and he was deeply impressed with what he heard about Copernicus’s
ideas
. In 1539 he travelled to Frombork to meet Copernicus in person. Rhaeticus evidently didn’t lack for courage, because Wittenberg, his university, was the centre of Lutheranism, while Warmia, where Copernicus was a canon of the cathedral, was Catholic and profoundly anti-Lutheran. But the two men, one 66, the other 22, seem to have hit it off splendidly, and Rhaeticus’s visit stretched on for two years. He paved the way for
De revolutionibus
by publishing a short volume of his own summarizing Copernican theory. His book was favourably received. Finally Copernicus agreed to publish.