That the heavenly bodies do not all move round the same centre;
That the earth is not the centre of the universe, only of the moon's orbit and of terrestrial gravity;
That the sun is the centre of the planetary system and therefore of the universe;
That, compared to the distance of the fixed stars, the earth's distance from the sun is negligibly small;
That the apparent daily revolution of the firmament is due to the earth's rotation on its own axis;
That the apparent annual motion of the sun is due to the fact that the earth, like the other planets, revolves around the sun; and
That the apparent "stations and retrogressions" of the planets are due to the same cause.
Then, in seven short chapters, the new circles and epicycles of sun, moon and the planets are described in crude outline, but without proof or mathematical demonstrations "reserving these for my larger work". The last paragraph of the treatise proudly announces:
"Then Mercury runs on seven circles in all; Venus on five; the earth on three; and round it the moon on four; finally, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on five each. Altogether, therefore, thirty-four circles suffice to explain the entire structure of the universe and the entire ballet of the planets."
I shall discuss the scientific relevance of the Commentariolus in the next chapter; at present we are only concerned with its repercussions. The names of the scholars to whom Canon Koppernigk sent his manuscript are unknown, and so is their number; but its reception was disappointing, and its echo, at the beginning, practically nil. Nevertheless, the first pebble had fallen into the pond and gradually, in the course of the following years, the ripples spread by rumour and hearsay in the Republic of Letters. This led to the paradoxical result that Canon Koppernigk enjoyed a certain fame, or notoriety, among scholars for some thirty years without publishing anything in print, without teaching at a university or recruiting disciples. It is a unique case in the history of science. The Copernican system spread by evaporation or osmosis, as it were.
Thus in 1514, Canon Koppernigk was invited, among a number of other astronomers and mathematicians, to participate in a Lateran Council on the reform of the calendar. The invitation was sent by Canon Sculteti, the benefactor who had arranged the famous loan for the Koppernigk brothers, and who had meanwhile become domestic chaplain to Leo X. Copernicus refused to attend on the grounds that the calendar could not be satisfactorily reformed until the motions of the sun and moon were more precisely known; but he mentioned the fact of the invitation nearly thirty years later, in the dedication of the Book of Revolutions.
The next ripple on record is a request, in 1522, by the learned Canon Bernhard Wapowsky in Cracow, for Copernicus' expert opinion on Johann Werner's astronomical treatise, On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere. Copernicus complied.
Ten years later, the personal secretary of Pope Leo X gave a lecture on the Copernican system, to a select company in the Vatican gardens, which was favourably received.
Another three years later, Cardinal Schoenberg, who enjoyed the Pope's special confidence, urgently entreated Copernicus "to communicate your discoveries to the learned world" by word of print.
Yet, in spite of these encouragements, Canon Koppernigk hesitated for another six years, before he had his book printed. Why?
8. Rumour and Report
News travelled fast and far in the sixteenth century. The pulse of all humanity was quickening as if our planet, after traversing, on its journey through space, some somnolent and bemused zone of the Universe, were now emerging into a region bathed in vivifying rays, or filled with cosmic benzedrine in the interstellar dust. It seemed to act simultaneously on all levels of the nervous system of mankind, on the higher as well as on the lower centres, as a stimulant and aphrodisiac, manifesting itself as a thirst of the spirit, an itch of the brain, a hunger of the senses, a toxic release of passions. The human glands seemed to produce a new hormone which caused the sudden surge of a novel greed: curiosity – the innocent, lecherous, creative, destructive, cannibalistic curiosity of the child.
The new machines – type foundry and printing press – ministered to this devouring curiosity by a flood of broadsheets, news letters, almanacs, libellea, pasquils, pamphlets and books. They spread the news at a hitherto unknown speed, increased the range of human communication, broke down isolation. The broadsheets and brochures were not necessarily read by all the people on whom they exercised their influence; rather, each printed word of information acted like a pebble dropped into a pond, spreading its ripples of rumour and hearsay. The printing press was only the ultimate source of the dissemination of knowledge and culture; the process itself was complex and indirect, a process of dilution and diffusion and distortion, which affected ever increasing numbers, including the backward and illiterate. Even three and four centuries later, the teachings of Marx and Darwin, the discoveries of Einstein and Freud, did not reach the vast majority of people in their original, printed text, but through second- and third-hand sources, through hearsay and echo. The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books – they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ-carriers, by the most varied forms of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.
There are slow-spreading epidemics, like polio, and others that strike swiftly, like the plague. The Darwinian revolution struck like lightning, the Marxian took three-quarters of a century to hatch. The Copernican revolution, which so decisively affected the fate of man, spread in a slower and more devious manner than all. Not because the printing press was new, or the subject obscure: Luther's theses created an immediate all-European turmoil, though they were less easy to compress into a single slogan than: "The Sun does not go round the Earth, but the Earth goes round the Sun". The reason why it took Rome three-quarters of a century to ban Canon Koppernigk's book, and why the book itself had almost no impact upon his contemporaries, is of a different order.
What we call the Copernican revolution was not made by Canon Koppernigk. His book was not intended to cause a revolution. He knew that much of it was unsound, contrary to evidence, and its basic assumption unprovable. He only half believed in it, in the split-minded manner of the Middle Ages. Besides, he was denied the essential qualities of the prophet: awareness of a mission, originality of vision, the courage of conviction.
The relationship between Canon Koppernigk as a person, and the event known as the Copernican revolution, is summed up in the dedication of his book to Pope Paul III. The relevant passage reads:
"I may well presume, most Holy Father, that certain people, on learning that in this my book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres I ascribe certain movements to the Earth, will cry out that, holding such views, I should at once be hissed off the stage... Therefore I have doubted for a long time whether I should publish these reflections written to prove the earth's motion, or whether it would be better to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and others, who were wont to impart their philosophic mysteries only to intimates and friends, and then not in writing but by word of mouth, as the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus witnesses... In considering this matter, fear of the scorn which my new and [apparently] absurd opinion would bring upon me, almost persuaded me to abandon my project."
He then goes on to explain that only the constant and reproachful admonitions of his friends persuaded him in the end to publish his book which he had kept to himself and withheld from the public "not for nine years but for nearly four times nine years".
Copernicus' infatuation with the Pythagorean cult of secrecy started early, and stems from the very roots of his personality. The letter by Lysis, which he mentions in his dedication, plays a curious part in it. It was a recent, apocryphal concoction; young Nicolas Koppernigk had found it in the same collection of Greek epistolography, published in 1499, which contained the work of Simocatta. 35 He had bought the book a
s a student in Padua, and later translated the Lysis letter into Latin. It is apparently, apart from Simocatta, the only lengthy translation from the Greek that Copernicus ever made – although a printed Latin version of the letter was already in existence, and in Copernicus' possession. This was contained in a work by Cardinal Bessarion, also published by Aldus in Padua; 36 the Lysis letter is specially marked in Copernicus' copy (another marked passage is in praise of celibacy). It is worth while to quote a few passages from this forgery which made such a deep impression on Copernicus.
"Lysis greets Hipparchus.
After the death of Pythagoras, I could not believe that the ties between his pupils would be broken. Though against all expectation we were, as if by a shipwreck, cut adrift and dispersed hither and yon, it remains our sacred duty to remember the divine teaching of our master and not to divulge the treasures of philosophy to those who have not undergone preliminary purification of the mind. For it is not proper to divulge to all and sundry what we have acquired with such great effort, just as it is not permitted to let ordinary men into the sacred mysteries of the Elysian goddesses... Let us remember how long it took us to purify our minds of their stains until, after five years had run their course, we became receptive to his teaching... Some of his imitators achieve many and great things, but in the improper way and not in the manner in which youth should be taught; thus their audience is encouraged to ruthlessness and insolence, for they stain the pure tenets of philosophy with rash and impure demeanour. It is as if one were to pour clean, fresh water into a well filled with dirt – for the dirt will only get agitated, and the water will be wasted. This is what happens to those who teach and are taught in this manner. Thick and dark forests cover the minds and hearts of those who have not been initiated in the proper manner, and disturb the mild contemplation of ideas... Many tell me that you teach philosophy in public, which was forbidden by Pythagoras... If you mend your ways I shall love you, if not, you are dead in my eyes..." 37
Why did Copernicus, after ten years spent in the bubblebath of Renaissance Italy, adopt this arrogantly obscurantist and anti-humanistic attitude? Why did he hug that apocryphal letter for forty years so close to his heart, like a talisman, make a new translation of it and quote it to the Pope? How could a Renaissance philosopher, a contemporary of Erasmus and Reuchlin, Hutten and Luther, approve of the preposterous notion that one should not pour the clear water of truth into the muddy wells of the human mind? Why was Copernicus so afraid of the Copernican Revolution?
The answer is given in the text: because the pure water would be wasted and the dirt would only get agitated. Here is the core of that anxiety which paralysed his work and crippled his life. The hocus-pocus about the Pythagorean mysteries was a rationalization of his fear of getting sprayed with dirt if he published his theory. It was quite enough to be an orphan at ten, with a leper for a brother and a sombre bully for a ward. Was it necessary to expose oneself to the scorn and ridicule of one's contemporaries, to the risk of being "hissed off the stage"?
It was not, as legend would have it, religious persecution that he had to fear. Legend pays little attention to dates; yet it is essential to remember that the Book of Revolutions was not put on the Index until seventy-three years after it was published, and that the notorious trial of Galileo took place ninety years after Copernicus' death. By then, owing to the Counter-Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, the intellectual climate of Europe had radically changed – almost as radically as between the mid-Victorian and the Hitler-Stalin era. Canon Koppernigk's youth and middle years were spent in the golden age of intellectual tolerance: the age of Leo X, patron of learning and the arts; at a time when the highest dignitaries of the Church freely indulged in liberal, sceptical, revolutionary philosophizing. Savonarola was burnt and Luther was excommunicated, but only after they had openly defied the Pope, and after all attempts to appease them had been exhausted. Scholars and philosophers had no reason to fear persecution for their opinions so long as they refrained from directly and explicitly challenging the authority of the Church. If they exercised a minimum of discretion in their choice of words, they could not only say pretty well what they liked, but were even encouraged to do so by ecclesiastic patronage; and this is what actually happened to Copernicus himself. The astonishing proof of this is a document, included by Copernicus in the prefatory matter of the Book of Revolutions, and preceding his dedication to the Pope. It is a letter which I have already mentioned, written to Copernicus by Cardinal Schoenberg, who occupied a position of special trust under three succeeding Popes – Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III.
" Nicolaus Schoenberg, Cardinal of Capua, sends his greetings to Nicolaus Copernicus.
When several years ago I heard your diligence unanimously praised, I began to feel an increasing fondness for you and to deem our compatriots lucky on account of your fame. I have been informed that you not only have an exhaustive knowledge of the teachings of the ancient mathematicians, but that you have also created a new theory of the Universe according to which the Earth moves and the Sun occupies the basic and hence central position; that the eighth sphere [of the fixed stars] remains in an immobile and eternally fixed position and the Moon, together with the elements included in its sphere, placed between the spheres of Mars and Venus, revolves annually around the Sun; moreover, that you have written a treatise on this entirely new theory of astronomy, and also computed the movements of the planets and set them out in tables, to the greatest admiration of all. Therefore, learned man, without wishing to be inopportune, I beg you most emphatically to communicate your discovery to the learned world, and to send me as soon as possible your theories about the Universe, together with the tables and whatever else you have pertaining to the subject. I have instructed Dietrich von Rheden [another Frauenburg Canon] to make a fair copy of this at my expense and to send it to me. If you will do me these favours, you will find that you are dealing with a man who has your interests at heart, and wishes to do full justice to your excellence. Farewell.
Rome, November 1, 1536." 38
It should be noted that this "most emphatic" (atque etiam oro vehementer) request that Copernicus should publish his theory is expressed independently from the Cardinal's demand for a fair copy – there is no question of any preliminary vetting or censorship.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that the Cardinal would have gone as far as he did in urging publication of the book entirely on his own initiative; and there is further evidence of early benevolent interest in the Copernican theory shown by the Vatican. This has come to light through one of the bizarre hazards of history. There exists, at the Royal Library in Munich, a Greek manuscript – a treatise by one Alexander Aphrodisius On the Senses and Sensibilities which is of no interest to anyone whatsoever, except that the title page contains the following inscription:
"Clement VII, High Pontiff, made me a present of this manuscript, A.D. 1533, in Rome, after I had, in the presence of Fra Urbino, Cardinal Joh. Salviato, Joh. Petro, Bishop of Iturbo, and Mattias Curtio, Physician, explained to him, in the Vatican gardens, Copernicus' teaching about the movement of the Earth. Joh. Albertus Widmanstadius.
Cognominatus Lucretius.
Private and Personal Secretary to our serene Lord." 39
In other words, Clement VII, who had followed Leo X's example in his liberal patronage of the Arts, gave the Greek manuscript to his learned Secretary as a reward for his lecture on the Copernican system. It seems fairly plausible to assume that his successor, Paul III, heard about Copernicus through Schoenberg or Widmanstad, and, his curiosity awakened, encouraged the Cardinal to write to the astronomer. At any rate, Copernicus himself perfectly understood the importance of the letter, otherwise he would not have printed it in the Book of Revolutions.
In spite of this semi-official encouragement which ought to have given him complete reassurance, Copernicus, as we saw, hesitated for another six years before he published his book. The whole evidence indicates that it was not martyrdom he f
eared but ridicule – because he was torn by doubt regarding his system, and knew that he could neither prove it to the ignorant, nor defend it against criticism by the experts. Hence the flight into Pythagorean secretiveness, and the reluctant, piecemeal yielding of his system to the public.
Yet, in spite of all his caution, the slowly spreading ripples did stir up some of the mud which Canon Koppernigk held in such dread. Not much, merely a few splashes – more exactly, three splashes, held carefully in evidence by his biographers. There is, firstly, Luther's coarse but harmless after-dinner joke about "that new astrologer who wants to prove that the Earth goes round", 40 made about ten years before the publication of the Revolutions; secondly, a single remark in a similar vein contained in a private letter by Melanchton, 41 dated 1541; lastly, in 1531 or thereabouts, a carnival farce was enacted in the Prussian city of Elbing, in which the star-gazing Canon was included in a grotesque procession, ridiculing monks, prelates and dignitaries, according to the custom of the time. This is all the persecution which Canon Koppernigk had to endure in his lifetime – an after-dinner remark, a passage in a private letter, and a carnival joke. Yet even these harmless squirts from the dreaded bottom of the well were sufficient, notwithstanding all private and official encouragement, to keep his lips sealed. Until the one great dramatic turn in his life – the bursting onto the scene of Georg Joachim Rheticus.