Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve Episode two hundred and sixty four Copernicus,
Part one. Quote, my Lord, most Reverend Father in Christ, my
noble Lord, with due expression and respect and deference, I have received your
most Reverend Lordship's letter again. You have deigned to write me with your own
hand, conveying an admonition at the outset. In this regard, I most
humbly ask your most Reverend Lordship not overlooked the fact that the woman about whom
your most Reverend Lordship writes to me was given in marriage through no act or
plan of mine. But this is what happened. Considering that she had once
been my faithful servant. With all my zeal and energy, I endeavored to
persuade them to remain with each other as respectable spouses. I would venture to
call on God as my witness in this matter, and they would admit that
if they were both interrogated. But she complained that her husband was impotent,
a condition which she acknowledged in court as well as outside. Hence my efforts
were in vain. However, with reference to the matter, I will admit
to your Lordship that when she was recently passing through here, from the fair
with the woman from Elberg who employs her. She remained in my house until
the next day. But since I realized the bad opinion of me arising therefrom,
I shall so order my affairs that nobody will have any proper pretext to
suspect evil of me thereafter, especially on account of your most Reverent Worship's admonition
and exhortation. I want to obey you gladly in all manners, and I
should obey you out of desire that my service may always be acceptable. This
is a letter written by Nicholas Copernicus, the father of modern astronomy and one
of the major catalysts of the scientific Revolution. For those who picture their icons
as statues, as let's just say, chapters and textbooks as unblemished, it's
jarring. It would be perhaps, let's start aling if Copernicus had been a
young man when he wrote this letter. Even icons, I suppose, are
allowed indiscretions when they're young. But he wasn't young. He was fifty eight
years old when he drafted this letter in July A, fifteen thirty one.
The background facts of the matter are that Copernicus had a housekeeper whose identity we
do not know. In the twenties, who left his employment to marry the
woman. Soon separated from her husband, supposedly, as Copernicus says, because
he was impotent, and then went to work as a housekeeper for a widow
in the city of l Blog, which was about twenty miles southwest of Copernicus's
home in Fromborg. On one occasion, as the two women were returning from
affair, they decided to stop a Copernicus's town and spend the night. The
ex housekeeper stayed at the astronomer's house. Someone then reported the visit to Copernicus's
supervisor, who sent a letter rebuking him because he's a member of the clergy.
This letter was Copernicus's response. Now, this is not the first such
correspondence between Copernicus and his bishop Maurice Farber, and the subject had been then
what it was now, a woman, notably a woman living with Copernicus,
a member of a local canon at a time when the Church was really cracking
down on such behavior. I wanted to start with this letter because it's such
a stark reminder the reality that the men and women from history were real people
with a lot on their minds. We know that Copernicus was the father really
of heliocentric theory of the universe, but clearly he had a lot more going
on. This was not the only unique aspect to Kapernicus's life. He was
what we would call a late bloomer. He did not attend university until he
was nineteen years old, during an age when most young men went starting at
age fifteen. It took him three universities and twelve years to obtain his degree,
when the standard length of study was only four years. Kaupernicus never dreamt
of glory. It wasn't even what we would say a professional astronomer. He
was instead, as we'll see, a man who was willing to question the
wisdom of the ancients. It was the man that many credit with beginning the
scientific revolution. When we're done here, I might argue that point, but
it certainly has some validity. During the past few episodes, we have covered
the scientific revolution rather broadly. Today we start to focus more closely on one
thinker, one aspect of the scientific revolution. We're going to begin with Copernicus
because he is just simply the most logical beginning Again, there's a very good
argument to be made that we should not be beginning with Kapernicus. There's a
few other names that predate him, which I am going to give you in
the context of the story. But I think to continue going back, always
looking for the sources a fool's errand when it comes to history, eventually we'll
just wind up in Mesopotamia. It's just kind of the end game, no
matter what we do. Then again, if you're still listening to this show
our ten thousand or whatever it is we're at, I'm guessing you know that
already. The publication of Copernicus's manuscript started the scientific revolution in the spring of
fifty three, but the first step to the road on that seminal event was
taken in a wood paneled classroom at the University of Vienna nearly a century earlier,
the spring semester of fourteen fifty four. The course taught in that room
in an old building surveyed the latest thinking on theoretical astronomy. It brought together
an inventive humanities professor named George Purebach and an eighteen year old student who would
be galvanized by the lectures and would quickly become the professor's research and observation partner.
His name was Johannes Mueller, but history doesn't know him by that name.
He actually goes by a Latin name, Reggio Montanas, which means King's
Mountain, a reference to his birthplace, and he would soon surpass his mentor
as the greatest astronomer of the fifteenth century. While neither Purebach nor Reggio Montanas
knew it, the timing of this astronomy class could not have been better.
The Renaissance had begun in northern Italy in fourteen fifty three, the Ottoman Turks
had sacked Constantinople, and a flood of Greek manuscripts poured into the west.
In fourteen fifty five, Johann Gutenberg produced his Bible. All the stars put
intended were aligned for something to pop. Frankly, the only reason that today
we don't know these two men, Reggiomontanus and pure Bach more as the fathers
of modern astronomy is that both of them were going to die at quite a
young age. Purebach dies at thirty eight, Reggiomontanus at age forty. Yet,
to be fair to Copernicus, I want to be clear that these men
might have become the fathers of modern astronomy. Had they lived, Neither that
we know of was really rethinking the Toolemaic system of geocentrism at the time that
they died. Thus, to guess that they would have at some point challenge
that notion is just at guessing. George Pierbach is an interesting case because he
wasn't even supposed to be thinking about astronomy, letting alone teaching a course on
the subject. He was hired by the University of Vienna in fourteen fifty three
as a humanities professor. He was supposed to teach Horace and the Anneeded,
as well as a class on rhetoric. The young intellectual also wrote poetry in
Latin, some of the best from this era yet. Beginning in fourteen fifty
one, when he recorded his first observations at the heavens, Pierbach became fascinated
with astronomy and astrology. He convinced the university to allow him to teach a
course on astronomy just one year after his appointment as a professor. There's no
record of Puerbach ever taking a formal course on the subject, so it appears
that he was entirely self taught. The major roomy textbook in the period was
called A Theory of the Planets, written by Girard of Cremona. Purebach used
it, but he was well aware of its deficiencies. Girard of Coroma's text
was based entirely on the source for all astronomical thinking at the time, which
was Ptolemay's Alma Guest. Ptolemy, who lived between eighty five and one sixty
five common Era, was a Greek who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Certainly, he was a scholar of what we would say prodigious talent today.
He was ingenious and prolific for the time. He wrote several critical works,
including Alma Guest, which surveyed everything known about the universe and the study
of it at the time. It included tables for locating heavenly bodies, which
most astrologers coveted. The arrangement described within the pages of the Alma Guest was
based on Aristotle's conception of the cosmos. The Earth was at the center it
did move. It was believed that if the Earth did move, the atmosphere
itself would blow away, and since it clearly was not blowing away, just
as clearly the Earth must be standing perfectly still. All of the planets,
which included the Moon and the Sun, revolved around the Earth, and they
did so in perfect circles, at constant speed and in the same plane.
The planet closest to the Earth was the Moon. Next closest was Mercury,
followed by Venus and the Sun, then Mars, Jupiter, and finely Saturn.
Neptune and Arranus, by the way, were not discovered until after the
invention of the telescope. The Sun and the Moon were considered unique, but
the five other planets were referred to as quote unquote wandering stars. That's because
they moved through the night sky or wandered. The word planet is actually derived
from the Greek word for wanderer. The wandering stars were viewed against fixed stars,
which were all the other illuminated objects in the sky. The fixed stars,
of course, also moved around the Earth, but they always maintained their
position relative to one another. So it was believed that the fixed stars were
attached to celestial sphere that marked the outer boundary of the universe just beyond Saturn,
and this sphere rotated around the Earth on a celestial axis once a day.
The wandering stars were always seen in a thin band on the dark horizon,
which meant that only a few constellations of fixed stars served as their background.
The twelve special constellations were called the houses of the Zodiac, which means
circuit or circle. Tallavay's model of the universe was founded on Aristotle's dictates,
coupled with what that Alexandria knew about the actual behavior of the heavenly bodies based
on years of his own careful observation. A troubling difficulty that he had to
explain was called retrograde motion, the concept that the wandering stars what we know
is the planets, during their annual rotation around the Earth, appeared to stop
and then actually go in reverse before stopping again and then resuming their proper course.
Ptolemy cleverly solved this mystery. In his conception, the planets revolved around
the Earth by being attached to one of two spheres. Each planet had two
spheres. The main sphere, the one that had the Earth at its center,
was always called the deferent. The second, smaller sphere to which the
planet was attached was called the epicycle. The epicycle revolved around a point on
the defferent, So the construct was a sphere whose center was on the edge
of a much larger sphere. So the way you have to imagine this is
a series of planes or circles. So the big circle, that's where all
the planets are rotating around the Earth in theory, including the Sun. But
then on that line on that circle, each planet has its own smaller circle
that continues to spin. So that's how you explain retrograde motion and still keep
geocentrism. But there were two other big problems. First, Ptolemy's observations made
him sure that the Earth wasn't quite the precise center of the universe, so
he created a point close to the Earth and he called it the eccentric.
The eccentric was the center of all the planetary deference the big circles. Second,
the planets did not move at a constant unifor form speed either, as
Aristotle suggests that they should have. This problem was solved by adding a final
piece to the puzzle. On the other side of the eccentric at the center
point, exactly opposite the Earth and at the same distance from the eccentric,
was another point that was called the equant. The equant that is equalizing point
was the point around which the planet revolved at a uniform speed. So the
different and the epicycle addressed the problem of retrograde motion, and the eccentric and
equant address the problems of locating the true center of revolution and non uniform speed.
But a planet revolved around the eccentric at a uniform distance, not a
uniform speed. Likewise, a planet moved with uniform speed along the equant,
but not a uniform distance. One scholar at the time remarked, quote Ptolemy
broke sharply away from previous requirement that circular motion must be uniform around its own
center end quote. This break would deeply trouble Copernicus. Now, of course,
all of this is sort of heavy ancient science, and I gave you
a bunch of terms there, and to a large extent, I'm not going
to refer to equals and deference because I think it's too confusing. But I
wanted to give you a short overview of the Ptolemaic system so that you at
least understood to some extent what everybody was criticizing. Again, I think the
easiest way to understand it are circles within circles. So if you picture one
big circle around the Earth with everything rotating, and then individual circles on that,
sort of like if you had a carousel, and on that carousel,
each individual horse was also on its own circular carousel, so that they were
at one point moving further and closer to the center of the carousel as they
moved around it. That's probably the easiest way to picture it. All of
these qualifications in Ptolemaic geocentric model caused King Alfonso of Castile, who is the
sponsor of a new table compiled in the thirteenth century and which would be the
standard source for locating planet and star positions during Copernicus's time, to quip,
probably apocryphally, and we don't know that he actually said this, but according
to him he said, quote, if the Lord Almighty had consulted me before
embarking upon creation, I should have recommended something simpler than quote. And I
think that's the best criticism that anybody ever gave prior to Copernicus of the Ptolemaic
system. It might work, but it was hopelessly, hopelessly complicated. Talmad's
universe was much much more complicated than Aristotle's, but it had advantages that if
you didn't look too closely and worked, or at least it seemed to work.
The first hurdle for early astronomers was just data. There simply wasn't enough
data from which you could start to question the old system. You needed charts
and tables showing the location of stars, and they had to be accurate,
or I suppose accurate enough to begin to draw some conclusions. And that's where
pure Box and Reggiomontanus come in. Reggiomontanas, born in fourteen thirty six,
was a genuine child prodigy. He was the son of a miller, but
sent to the University of Leipzig in fourteen forty seven at the age of only
eleven. The boys studied there for three years, after which time he enrolled
at the University of Vienna. The young Reggiomontanus was already constructing complicated astronomical tables
even before arriving in Vienna at fourteen fifty, so he jumped at the chance
to take purebox new class on astronomy. Regiomont Thanas's astute observations and questions led
Peerbach to quickly understand that he had more than just a gifted student sitting before
him. He had a partner. From this point on, they became colleagues
and partners in astronomical observations. Despite the fact that Reggio Montanas was thirteen years
younger than Peerbach. The next few years were a whirlwind of activity. It
almost seems as if Pierbach had a premonition of his impending death because he accomplished
a tremendous amount in a short period of time. He and Reggio Montanas made
a number of accurate astronomical observations. Together, Peerbach built dozens of well crafted
instruments such as astrolabs and sundials, and he formulated innovative triggonometric tables. Most
importantly, he wrote two of the most important works of the fifteenth century.
First, he refined his lecture notes from his fourteen fifty four course to produce
the new theory of the planets in manuscript form. The actual innovations in Puerbeck's
text were minor. However, by correcting certain errors and simplifying parts of Ptolemy's
model, peerbox text marked a significant improvement over Gerard of Cremonas, which was
overly complicated and full of mistakes. Second, he created the Table of Eclipses
in fourteen fifty nine, which accurately projected lunar and solar eclipses for many decades
a hand and became a sort of must have reference for astronomers or astrologers.
The tables consisted of approximately one hundred dense pages of careful calculations. Future astronomers
and astrologers were saved hours of painful mathematics because of him. In addition,
Pureboch wrote annual astronomical yearbooks I guess, like farmers almanacs that projected the movement
of the Sun, the moons, and the planets for any of a year.
Peerbach also definitely practiced astrology, and this is a crucial point that I
want to make. There was no distinction between astronomy and astrology in science packing
order at this point in history. In fact, Peerbach was the court astrologer
to the King of Hungary for a period of time. But then in fourteen
sixty one Peerbach fell ill. On his deathbed, he begged Reggiomontanas to continue
their work. Reggiomontanus agreed, of course, how could he say no to
his dying mentor and pass away. Peerbach did at the age of thirty eight
in April fourteen sixty one, So now it was all up to Reggiomontanas.
Reggiomontanas essentially inherited Peerbak's number one patron, the guy who had been footing the
bill for all this astronomical research, Cardinal Bessarion. Six months after Peerbach's death,
Reggiomontanus left the universe Sta Vienna and accompanied the good cardinal back to Rome.
Their relationship was doubly important to Reggio Montanas because Bizarian taught him Greek.
Now he was a gifted mathematician and astronomer who could read the original Ptolemay and
Aristotle. In fourteen sixty two, Reggio Montanas finished pure box work, The
Epitome of Alma Guest. It was not published until fourteen ninety six. One
of the things you're going to notice here is how early on there's this huge
disconnect between when a work was finished and when it was published. Certainly this
delay made scientific progress early on much slower than it could have been. Still,
the book was hugely important. Not only did Reggiomontanas write in Latin,
thereby exposing a wide range of Europeans to Ptolema for the first time, but
he augmented his translation with commentary and new tables of Observations. In fourteen sixty
seven, Reggio Montanus to travel to the Hungarian court to join the staff of
the Royal Library. While in Hungary, Reggio Montanus completed several more works in
trigonometry that were actively used in the early sixteenth century. The most important was
titled the Tables of Directions, which was printed in fourteen ninety. The tables
helped to determine the positions of heavenly bodies based on the perceived daily rotation of
the night sky. The work was used as astrologers were trying to determine the
houses of the zodiac. It would be one of the first books owned by
Copernicus. In fourteen seventy one, Reggio Montanus packed up his instruments, manuscripts,
and other personal belongings and moved to Nuremberg. He explained his reasons to
a correspondent quite recently, I have made observations in the city of Nuremberg,
for I have chosen it as my permanent home. Not only an account of
the availability of instruments, particularly the astronomical instruments on which the entire science is
based, but also on account of the great ease of all sorts of communication
with learned men living everywhere. Since this place is regarded as the center of
Europe because of the journeys of merchants end Once there, Reggio Montanas was befriended
by one of those rich merchants, a man by the name of Bernard Walther.
Walter became his patron and student and paid for the construction of one of
his first formal astronomical observatories in Europe. It was built outside the protective walls
to the northeast, on a rise above the city. Upon its completion,
the two set out on one of the most ambitious astronomical observation programs in history,
and certainly the boldest ever taken up to that point. Reggio Montanas's plan
for reforming astronomy consisted of two parts. The first was new observations, the
second was the publication of important works in mathematics and astronomy. As with the
observatory, Walter provided the funds necessary for the now legendary astronomer to start the
first publishing operation, devoted to the production of mathematical and scientific works. His
second published work was probably the most popular, called The Epermades. This appeared
in fourteen seventy four, and it accurately projected the positions for celestial bodies for
every single day from January the first, fourteen seventy five to December thirty first,
fifteen o six. The main purpose of this book was to assist in
astrological readings. The book became even more legendary when it was later reported that
Columbus, who traveled with a copy on his voyages, was able to frighten
the hostile natives of Jamaica by relying on Reggiomontanas to predict a lunar eclipse on
February nineteenth, fifteen o four, which, if you'll recall from several years
ago, we did discuss in our chapters on Columbus. Not only did Reggiomontanas
want to get important works into print, he was also just as serious about
having them published well. He recognized that there were unique challenges to publishing mathematical
books. These were difficult works to set because of the need to include numerous
diagrams and often elaborate tables. Not only must the pages be clear and legible,
but they had to be free of error, so accuracy became paramount.
Yet these were precisely the kinds of titles inherently prone to errors. Consider this
following quotation from Reggiomontanas. For if I am not mistaken, we are sinning
when we obscure the opinions of noble authors by contaminating them with our own ignorance,
and infecting posterity with erroneous copies of books. For who does not realize
that the admirable art of printing, recently devised by her countrymen is harmful to
men if it multiplies erroneous works, as it is useful when it publishes properly
corrected editions. Perhaps because Reggiomontanus was so careful, he did not succeed in
getting many works published before he died in fourteen seventy six. Reggiomontanus, by
late in his life, had become a very difficult person to work with.
He had a huge ego and was absolutely a genius, as we would consider
the term today. He had no hesitation whatsoever in identifying inferior scholar in print,
which to him was just about everyone. In fourteen seventy five, Reggio
Montanas was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus the Fourth to assist in the reform
of the calendar. One of the most important uses of astronomy was for creating
accurate calendars. By the late fifteenth century, everyone knew that the calendar in
use, the Julian Calendar, had grown terribly inaccurate, and it was becoming
embarrassing for the church as it sought to identify the proper Sunday for Easter and
other holy days. The church still insisted on observing Easter on the first Sunday
following the first full moon after the spring equinots, so you had to have
astronomical position to figure all this stuff out. Reggio Montanas left in the summer
and died one year later on July sixth, fourteen seventy six, while still
in Rome. He was only forty years old and had left Nuremberg in perfect
health. There are two theories about his death. The first and most likely
is that he died from plague, which recurred that year in and around Rome.
The second is more sensational. He was rumored to have been murdered by
the two sons of George Trezebond, whom Reggiomontanus had scathingly criticized in print for
being a flawed mathematician and astronomer. Either way, it was a horrible end
for one of the greatest minds in history. Certainly, I'm sure there were
many in Europe who thought Reggiomontanus's successor would be fast in coming, but he
wasn't. In fact, the gifted human who would succeed Reggiomontanus was only an
infant when Reggiomontanus was publishing his works in Nuremberg. On February fourteen seventy three,
in the town of Turin that in the Hanseatic League, on the north
coast of what is today much of Germany and Poland, Mikoja Kopernik was born.
We know him by his Latinized name Kapernicus Nicolas. Kapernicus lived and spent
most of his adult life in what we would say today it's a very unusual
region for producing scientists. The Baltic region of northwestern Poland was in Kapernicus's time
known as Prussia. It was a territory roughly traced by a triangle formed by
major cities of Gansk to the northwest, Taurin to the southwest, and Kralist
to the northeast as the main focal points. These were sizable cities, and
in between them were gently rolling hills, forests, fertile farmlands, streams,
ponds, and countless small towns and villages. Forming the northern border of our
triangle is the Baltic Sea. The territory had been fought over many times in
history, It's going to be fought over in World War Two, it will
be fought over by Napoleon. Yet it still bears the unmistakable mark from the
people who first built its first permanent structures and towns in the region, and
those were, of course, the Teutonic Knights. If you're interested in learning
more about the Teutonic Knights, I did an entire deep dive episode on my
Patreon page. You can check that out links in the show notes. It's
one of the many bonus episodes that dives deep into a different aspect that we
don't cover in the relative narrative of the show, but it's sort of in
general. The Teutonic Knights were one of the military orders, so you think
of them in the same sort of veins the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar.
Instead of trying to conquer the Holy Land, they were in charge of
trying to christianize one of the few remaining pagan enclaves in Europe, which was
in the Baltic Sea region in today what we would call Lithuania, Estonia and
also parts of Poland. And they were very successful in doing so, and
they were actually very successful in establishing their own state. The Teutonic Knights actually
were able to develop a sizeable kingdom for themselves that they sort of cut out
well of what was today parts of Germany and mostly parts of Poland as well
as Lithuania. However, the Teutonic Knights are decisively defeated by a joint Lithuanian
Polish army later on, so by Copernicus's time they're a distant memory. Kapernicus's
ancestors were native Germans who migrated east in the thirteenth century. They originally settled
in the province of Silesia in western Poland. From there, the family moved
to Krakau in the middle of the fourteenth century. There they became successful merchants.
Copernicus's father, also named Nicholas left Krakau for the smaller city of Turin
in the late fourteen fifties. As I mentioned before, in fourteen sixty six,
the Prussians and Poles finally and decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights, and so
per the terms of the treaty, Taurin was to be incorporated into the Kingdom
of Poland. Copernicus was the youngest of four children. The Copernicus family was
extremely well off when baby Nicholas joined. Nicholas Senior was at least forty five
years old and probably closer to fifty. The family and its servants lived in
a spacious three story townhouse, which it had inherited from Copernicus's mother's father.
The structure was built around the year thirteen fifty and was located near the center
of town. It had an elaborate designed brick facade with large windows facing in
narrow cobblestone street. We know there was a courtyard in the rear, high
ceilings, murals, and expensive furniture, which would have made it very comfortable
for the time. It was well heated with fireplaces throughout. Seven years later,
Nicholas Senior, having grown in wealth and prestige moved his family into an
even larger, more impressive house. The new home was located right on the
town square. The family also owned a vineyard and other properties outside the city
walls. There is no doubt that Copernicus and his brother and sisters led privileged
lives. Turin itself in terms of the town lies beside the Vistula River,
which flows into the Baltic Sea about one hundred miles to the north of the
city. By the late fifteenth century, Turan was a thriving market town with
around ten thousand inhabitants. Sadly for Nicholas and his when he was about ten
years old, his father died. Fortunately, Nicholas's uncle, Lucas waz Introbe,
was already becoming well established in the hierarchy of the church. In fourteen
eighty nine, he would be elected Bishop of Warmia, in the northeast corner
of modern day Poland. It would be from that position that Uncle Lucas would
be able to support Nicholas and his older brother. Note the sisters were quickly
married off at this stage of his life. There's no indication that Nicholas was
destined for anything other than life as a merchant, he would live like his
father and his grandfather before him. We do not have any idea of what
motivated him to start gazing toward that night sky. We'll leave it there for
now and pick it up next week as we continued to fall Copernicus as he
attends university and begins to develop an interest in astronomy. In the meantime,
if you're interested in additional content, there's a series of links in the show
notes that you can check out that provide the opportunity to both support the show
and what we're doing, as well as to get bonus content that will fill
your days on til the next Western Cive episode.