The Sleepwalkers

  The unpublished astronomical manuscript is known as the Commentariolus 18 or Brief Outline; it will be discussed later. The other manuscript was printed in Cracow A.D. 1509, when Copernicus was thirty-six, and is, apart from the Revolutions, the only book he published in his life. It also represents his only excursion into the field of belles lettres, and as such sheds a light on his personality and tastes.

  The booklet is Canon Koppernigk's translation into Latin of the Greek epistles of one Theophylactus Simocatta. Theophylactus was a Byzantine historian of the seventh century, whose best-known work is a History of the reign of Emperor Mauritius. Of his literary merits, Gibbon says that he was voluble on trifles, short on essentials; 19 and Bernhardy remarks that " Theophylactus' style, shallow yet inflated by meaningless flourishes ... reveals, earlier and more completely than one would have imagined, the emptiness and effete nature of his time." 20 He also published a volume of eighty-five Epistles in the form of fictitious letters exchanged between various Greek characters; it was this work which Copernicus chose to translate into Latin, as his contribution to the literature of the Renaissance.

  Simocatta's Epistles are classified under three headings: "moral", "pastoral" and "amorous". The following samples (unabridged) of each of the three genres are re-translations from Copernicus' Latin version. 21 1They are the last three of the collection:

  The 83rd Epistle – Anthinus to Ampelinas (pastoral)

  "The grape harvest is close and the grapes are full of sweet juice. Guard, then, closely the road, and take as a companion an able dog from Crete. For the vagrant's hands are only too willing to grab, and to deprive the farmer of the fruits of his sweat."

  The 84th Epistle – Chrysippa to Sosipater (amorous)

  "'Thou art caught in the nets of love, Sosipater, thou lovest Anthusia. Well deserving of praise are the eyes that turn in love to a beautiful maiden. Do not complain that thou hast been conquered by love; for greater is the delight that will reward thy labour of love. Though tears pertain to grief, those of love are sweet, for they are mixed with joy and pleasure. The gods of love bring delight at the same time as sadness; with manifold passions is Venus girded."

  The 85th Epistle – Plato to Dionysius (moral)

  "If thou wouldst wish to obtain mastery over thy grief, wander among graves. There thou wilt find the cure for thine ailment. At the same time thou wilt realise that even the greatest happiness of man does not survive the grave."

  What on earth, or in the skies, moved Canon Koppernigk to spend his labours just on this collection of pompous platitudes? He was not a schoolboy but a mature man; not an uncouth provincial, but a humanist and a courtier who had spent ten years in Italy. This is what he has to say in explanation of this curious choice – in his dedicatory preface to Uncle Lucas:

  TO THE MOST REVEREND BISHOP LUCAS OF ERMLAND

  DEDICATED BY NICOLAUS COPERNICUS

  MOST REVEREND LORD AND FATHER OF THE FATHERLAND

  "With great excellence, so it seems to me, has Theophylactus the scholar compiled these moral, pastoral and amorous epistles. He was certainly guided in his work by the consideration that variety is pleasing and should therefore be preferred. Very varied are the inclinations of men, and very divers matters delight them. One likes weighty thoughts, the other responds to levity; one likes earnestness, the other is attracted by the play of fancy. Because the public takes pleasure in such different things, Theophylactus alternates light subjects with weighty ones, frivolity with earnestness, so that the reader, as if in a garden, may choose the flower which pleases him best. But everything he offers yields so much profit that his prose poems appear to be not so much epistles as rather rules and precepts for the useful ordering of human life. Proof of this is their substantiality and brevity. Theophylactus took his material from various writers and compiled it in a short and very edifying manner. The value of the moral and pastoral epistles will hardly be denied by anyone. A different judgment is perhaps invited by the epistles on love, which, because of their subject, may seem lighthearted and frivolous. But as the physician softens the bitter medicine by the admixture of sweet ingredients to make it more agreeable to the patient: even so are the lighthearted epistles added; they are, incidentally, kept so pure that they could just as well be called moral epistles. Under these circumstances I considered it unfair that Theophylactus' epistles could only be read in the Greek language. To make them more generally accessible, I have tried to translate them, according to my powers, into the Latin.

  "To thee, most reverend Lord, I dedicate this small offering which, to be sure, bears no relation to the benefactions I received from thee. Whatever I achieve through my mind's capacity, I regard as thy property by right; for true beyond doubt is what Ovid once wrote to Caesar Germanicus: 'According to the direction of thy glance, falls and rises my spirit'." 22

  One must remember that this was an age of spiritual fermentation and intellectual revolution. It is depressing to compare Canon Koppernigk's taste and style with that of his illustrious contemporaries – Erasmus and Luther, Melanchton and Reuchlin, or Bishop Dantiscus in Copernicus' own Ermland. However, the translating enterprise was not a random whim; and if we look closer into the matter, the choice of the obscure Theophylactus was a shrewd one. For this was a time when translating the rediscovered Greek texts of antiquity was regarded as one of the foremost and noblest tasks of the humanists. It was the time when Erasmus' translation of the Greek New Testament, by revealing the corruptions of the Roman vulgate, "contributed more to the liberation of the human mind from the thraldom of the Clergy than all the uproar and rage of Luther's many pamphlets"; 23 and when a different kind of intellectual liberation was effected through the rediscovery of the Hyppocratics and Pythagoreans.

  Yet in Northern Europe, the more bigoted minority of the clergy was still fighting a rearguard action against the revival of antique learning. In Copernicus' youth, Greek was not taught at any German or Polish university; the first teacher of Greek at Cracow, Georg Libanius, complained that religious zealots were trying to prohibit his lectures and to excommunicate all who learned Hebrew and Greek. Some German Dominicans were particularly vociferous in denouncing as heretical all research into the unexpurgated Greek and Hebrew texts. One of them, the monk Simon Grunau, grumbled in his chronicle:

  "Some have not seen a Jew or Greek in all their days, and yet could read Jewish and Greek from books – they are obsessed." 24

  This obscure Grunau and the aforementioned Libanius are often quoted in the literature on Copernicus, in order to prove that it needed great courage on the Canon's part to publish a translation from the Greek; and that by this symbolic gesture he took demonstratively the side of the humanists against the obscurantists. The gesture was certainly a calculated one, but insofar as it implied a taking of sides, Copernicus was siding with the victors: at the time when he published his booklet, Erasmus and the humanists seemed to be carrying the day. It was the time of the great European revival before the Western world split into two hostile camps, before the horrors of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, before Rome countered the advance of the printing press with its index librorum prohibitorum. Erasmus was still the undisputed intellectual leader, who could write without boasting that his disciples included:

  "the Emperor, the Kings of England, France and Denmark, Prince Ferdinand of Germany, the Cardinal of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and more princes, more bishops, more learned and honourable men than I can name, not only in England, Flanders, France and Germany, but even in Poland and Hungary." 25

  These considerations may help to explain the peculiar choice of the text. It was a Greek text, and its translation therefore meritorious in the eyes of the humanists; yet it was not an antique Greek text, but written by a Byzantine Christian of the seventh century, with such unimpeachable dullness and piety that not even a fanatical monk could object to it. In short, the Epistles of Theophylactus were both fish and fowl, Greek and Christian, and generally speaking, safe as
houses. They attracted no attention whatsoever, either among humanists or obscurantists, and were soon forgotten.

  6. The Canon

  In 1512, Bishop Lucas suddenly died. He had journeyed to Cracow to attend the marriage of the Polish King, and had attended the ceremonies in full vigour. On the return journey he suddenly developed food poisoning and died in his native Torun. His faithful secretary and house physician, elusive as always, was not near him at his death; the reasons for his absence are unknown.

  Soon after the Uncle's death Copernicus, now a man of forty, left Heilsberg Castle and, after a delay of fifteen years, took up his duties as a Canon of Frauenburg Cathedral – which he carried out faithfully to the end of his life.

  The duties were not exacting. The sixteen Canons led the leisurely, worldly and opulent life of provincial noblemen. They carried arms (except at the meetings of the Chapter), and were required to uphold its prestige by keeping at least two servants and three horses a head. Most of them came from the patrician families of Torun and Danzig, and were related to each other by intermarriage. They each had a house or curia allotted to them inside the fortified walls – one of these was Copernicus' tower – and also two additional allodia, or small private estates in the countryside. Apart from all this, each Canon enjoyed the benefices of one or several additional prebends, and their income was considerable.

  Only one of the sixteen Canons had taken the higher vows and was entitled to officiate mass; the remainder were merely bound, when not absent on some official mission, to attend, and occasionally to assist in, the morning and evening services. The rest of their duties were of a worldly nature: the administration of the Chapter's vast estates, over which they exercised nearly absolute power. They levied taxes, collected rent and tithe, appointed the mayors and officials in the villages, sat in court, made and administered the Law. These activities must have appealed to Canon Koppernigk's thrifty and methodical nature, for during four years he held the appointment of Administrator of the Chapter's outlying domains, at Allenstein and Mehlsack, and for another stretch he was General Administrator of all the Chapter's possessions in Ermland. He kept a ledger and a business journal, in which all transactions with tenants, serfs and labourers are meticulously reported.

  In between – in 1519 – the feud between Poles and Teutonic Knights flared up again. There were no major battles, but the countryside of Ermland was devastated by the plundering soldiery of both sides. They killed the peasants, raped their women and set fire to their farms, but did not attack fortified towns. Fourteen out of the sixteen Canons spent that turbulent year in Torun or Danzig; Koppernigk preferred to remain, in the company of an aged confrater, in his tower behind the safe walls of Frauenburg, where he looked after the affairs of the Chapter. Subsequently he administered, for another year, Allenstein, and also seemed to have taken part in an abortive attempt at mediation between the hostile parties. When peace returned at last, in 1521, he was nearly fifty. His remaining twenty years, outwardly uneventful, were spent mainly in his tower.

  He had plenty of leisure. In 1530 or thereabouts, 26 he completed the manuscript of the Book of Revolutions and locked it away, making only occasional corrections in it. He did nothing else of much consequence. He wrote, by request of a friend, a critique of the theories of a fellow astronomer, 27 which, like the Commentariolus, was circulated in manuscript; he drew up a memorandum on the damages caused by the Teutonic Knights during the war; and he wrote a treatise on monetary reform for the Prussian diet. 28 No great philosopher or scientist has ever published less.

  In all these years he had acquired only one intimate friend, a fellow Canon at Frauenburg, later Bishop of Kulm and of Ermland, Tiedemann Giese. Canon Giese was a gentle and learned man who, though seven years younger than Copernicus, took a protective and affectionate interest in him. It was Giese who, after years of effort, and assisted by young Rheticus, finally talked his reluctant confrater into allowing the Book of the Revolutions to be published, and who, when Koppernigk became involved in a sordid conflict with his new Bishop, smoothed things out through his influence. Nicolas always needed a stronger personality to lean on; but while Uncle Lucas and brother Andreas had bullied and intimidated him, Giese guided him through the remaining years of his life with patience and gentle persuasion. He was, before Rheticus' last-minute arrival on the scene, the only one who had recognized the morose and unloved, ageing man's genius; who accepted the weaknesses of his friend's character and understood his tortuous ways, without letting them interfere with his intellectual admiration. It was a remarkable feat of charity and imagination, for in that age a man's intellect and his character were still perceived as an indivisible entity. A person was accepted or rejected as a whole; and most people who came into contact with Canon Koppernigk chose the second alternative. Tiedemann Giese, the firm yet tender protector, guide and spur, is one of the silent heroes of history, who smooth its path but leave no personal mark on it.

  There is a typical episode in the relationship between the two friends, which bears on their attitude to the central issue of their time: the Reformation of the Church they served.

  Copernicus was forty-four when, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. No more than five years had to pass, and "behold, the whole world is dragged into the fight, storming to wild struggle and slaughter, and all Churches are defiled by abuse as if Christ, on returning to Heaven, had bequeathed us not peace but war," – as the gentle Giese wrote in despair. 29 From its very beginnings, the Lutheran movement spread rapidly through Prussia and even into Poland. The former Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights who, when the Order was at last dissolved in 1525, assumed the title of Duke of Prussia, embraced the new faith; the King of Poland, on the other side, remained faithful to Rome and forcibly quelled a Lutheran rising in Danzig. Thus, little Ermland became once again a no-man's-land between two hostile camps. Bishop Fabian von Lossainen, the successor of Uncle Lucas, could still observe an attitude of benevolent neutrality toward Luther, whom he called "a learned monk who has his own opiniones regarding the Scriptures; he must be a daring man who will stand up in disputation against him." But his successor, Bishop Mauritius Ferber, no sooner installed, started a determined fight against Lutheranism; his first edict, issued in 1524, threatened that all who listened to the schismatics "will be cursed for eternity and smitten with the sword of anathema". In the same week in which this edict was issued in Ermland, the Bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Samland also published an edict in which he admonished his clergy to read Luther's writings diligently and, following Lutheran practice, to preach and baptize in the language of the common people.

  Two years later Canon Giese published a little book. 30 Its ostensible purpose was the refutation of a tract by that Lutheran fellow-traveller next door, the Bishop of Samland; in fact, it was a plea for tolerance and reconciliation, written entirely in the Erasmian vein. In the preface, Canon Giese said bluntly, "I reject the battle"; and he ended the book with the plea:

  "Oh, if only the Christian spirit informed the Lutheran attitude to the Romans, and the Romans' toward the Lutherans – verily, then our Churches would be spared these tragedies of which no end can be seen... Verily, the wild beasts deal more kindly with each other than Christian deals with Christian."

  Now, at the beginning of his book Giese, in a rather deliberate manner, brings in Copernicus' name. The curious passage is contained in a prefatory letter by Giese to another Canon, one Felix Reich. Giese begs Reich not to let personal affection interfere with his critical judgment "as, I believe, was the case with Nicolao Copphernico (sic), who advised me to have this my writing printed, though otherwise he is of discerning taste." No doubt Canon Giese had obtained his friend's consent to this mention of his name, as a way of indicating that Copernicus endorsed his views. No doubt Giese and Copernicus – and the rest of the Chapter – had endlessly discussed the great schism and their attitude to it; it is also probable, in
view of the intimate friendship between the two men, and the passage in the preface, that Copernicus had directly or indirectly collaborated on Giese's book. Its contents were so irreproachable that Giese eventually became a bishop. However, there were a few passages in it – such as the opening "I reject the battle", and certain admissions regarding corruption in the clergy – which, in the view of an over-cautious mind, might incur the disfavour of one's superiors. The tortuous reference in the preface was probably a compromise formula arrived at after long discussions between the gently persuasive Giese and his anxiety-ridden friend. 31

  But, though Canon Giese prevailed in extracting from Canon Koppernigk an indirect public statement of his religious views, he did not succeed for another fifteen years in persuading him to publish his views on astronomy. And when the first version of the Copernican system appeared in print it was, as a climax of Copernican obliqueness, not written or signed by him, but by a disciple, Joachim Rheticus.

  7. The Commentariolus

  The first intimation of the Copernican system was contained in the short treatise which Canon Nicolas wrote at Heilsberg Castle, or at the beginning of his stay in Frauenburg. 32 It was, as I mentioned before, circulated in manuscript only, and bore the title:

  "A brief outline of Nicolai Copernicus' hypotheses on the heavenly motions." 33

  The treatise begins with a historical introduction, in which Copernicus explains that the Ptolemaic system of the universe was unsatisfactory, because it did not fulfil the basic demand of the ancients that each planet should move with uniform speed in a perfect circle. Ptolemy's planets move in circles, but not with uniform velocity. 34 "Having become aware of these defects, I often considered whether there could perhaps be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles ... in which everything would move uniformly about its proper centre, as the rule of absolute motion requires." Copernicus then claims that he has constructed a system which solves "this very difficult and almost insoluble problem" in a manner much simpler than Ptolemy's, provided that certain basic assumptions or axioms, seven in number, are granted to him. He then sets down, without further ado, his seven revolutionary axioms, which, translated into modern language, are: