The Sleepwalkers
So now Bishop Dantiscus was installed at Heilsberg Castle, where Copernicus had spent six years of his life as secretary to Uncle Lucas. In the autumn of 1538, he made an official tour of the towns of his new Bishopric, accompanied by Canons Reich – and Koppernigk. This, says Prowe "was the last friendly encounter between the former friends Dantiscus and Copernicus" 80 – though there is no evidence that they had ever been friends. In the course of that official tour, or perhaps a little later, Dantiscus must have broached an embarrassing subject. It concerned a certain Anna Schillings, a distant relative of Canon Koppernigk's, and his focaria. According to Copernicus' biographers, "focaria" meant housekeeper. According to Baxter and Johnson Medieval Latin Word List, 81 it meant "housekeeper or concubine". We know that one other Canon in Frauenburg, Alexander Sculteti, 82 also had a focaria, and several children by her. Now Dantiscus was anything but a prude, he kept sending money to his former mistress, and doted on portraits of his pretty daughter. But it was one thing to have amorous affairs in one's youth while travelling in distant countries, and another to live openly with a focaria in one's own diocese. Besides, not only the two men had aged, but their century too; the Counter Reformation was determined to restore clean living among the clergy, whose corruption had bred the Luthers and Savonarolas. Canon Koppernigk was sixty-three; it was time, both by the personal and historical clock, to say vale to his focaria.
However, it is not easy to change one's housekeeper and habits at sixty-three. Canon Koppernigk, understandably, hesitated and delayed, perhaps hoping that Dantiscus would forget about the matter. In November, Dantiscus reminded Copernicus of his promise. His letter is not preserved, but Copernicus' answer is:
"Reverendissime in Christo Pater et Domine Domine Clementissime mibique et omnibus observande!
Your Most Reverend Lordship's warning is fatherly enough and more than fatherly, I admit; I have received it in my innermost heart. As for Your Rev. Lordship's earlier intimation on the same subject, it was far from me to forget it. I intended to act accordingly; though it was not easy to find a proper person of my own kin, I intended nevertheless to terminate the matter before Easter. However, as I do not wish Your Rev. Lordship to think that I am seizing on pretexts for procrastination, I have reduced the period to one month, that is to Christmas; it cannot be shorter, as Your Rev. Lordship will understand. I wish to do my best to avoid giving offence to good manners, much less to Your Rev. Lordship, who has deserved to be revered, honoured and most of all to be loved by me; to which I devote myself with all my powers.
Ex Gynopoli, December 2, 1538.
Your Rev. Lordship's most obedient Nicolas Copernicus."
Even the devoted Prowe remarks that the letter is "repellent to read" and that "making allowance for the devotional manners of the curial style ... it remains humiliating enough." 83
Six weeks later, Copernicus wrote to Dantiscus a kind of consummatum est:
"Reverendissime in Christo Pater et Domine Domine Clementissime!
I have done what I neither would nor could have left undone, whereby I hope to have given satisfaction to Your Rev. Lordship's warning. As for the information you required of me how long Your Rev. Lordship's predecessor, my uncle Lucas Waczelrodt of blessed memory had lived: he lived 64 years, 5 months; was Bishop for 23 years; died on the last but one day of March, anno Christi 1522. With him came to an end a family whose insignia can be found on the ancient monuments and many [public] works in Torun. I recommend my obedience to Your Rev. Lordship.
Ex Frauenburg, January 11 of the year 1539.
Your Rev. Lordship's most devoted Nicolas Copernicus."
But the focarias were not so easy to get rid of. Sculteti's housekeeper, and mother of his children, "threatened and heatedly promised to damage the Chapter's obedient servant and shamelessly used shameful words of abuse". 84 As for Copernicus' Anna, she seems to have flatly refused to leave Frauenburg, and was determined to make things as awkward as possible for everybody concerned. More than two months after Copernicus' last letter to Dantiscus, another Canon, Plotowski, wrote to the Bishop as follows:
"As regards the Frauenburg wenches, Alexander's hid for a few days in his house. She promised that she would go away together with her son. Alexander [Sculteti] returned from Loebau with a joyous mien; what news he brought I know not. He remains in his curia with Niederoff and with his focaria, who looks like a beer-waitress tainted with every evil. The woman of Dr. Nicolas did send her things ahead to Danzig, but she herself stays on in Frauenburg..." 85
A full six months later the matter was still not finished. Dantiscus apparently tired of sending paternal admonitions to Copernicus, and of getting dripping letters in return; so be privately asked Giese (now Bishop of Kulm) to use his influence with Copernicus to put an end to the old man's secret meetings with Anna, and to avoid further scandal.
On 12 September, 1539, Giese answered as follows:
"... I have spoken earnestly to Dr. Nicolas on the matter, according to Your Most Rev. Lordship's wish, and have set the facts of the matter before his eyes. He seemed not a little disturbed [to learn] that although he had unhesitatingly obeyed the will of Your Rev. Lordship, malicious people still bring trumped up charges of secret meetings, and so on. For he denies having seen that woman since he dismissed her, except that on a journey to the Market in Koenigsberg she spoke to him in passing. I have certainly ascertained that he is not as much affected as many think. Moreover, his advanced age and his never-ending studies readily convince me of this, as well as the worthiness and respectability of the man; nevertheless I urged him that he should shun even the appearance of evil and this I believe he will do. But again I think it would be as well that Your Rev. Lordship should not put too much faith in the informer, considering that envy attaches so easily to men of worth and is unafraid of troubling even Your Most Rev. Lordship. I commend myself, etc." 86
Giese's last remark was in the nature of a friendly dig as from one Bishop to another. Though earlier on, they had been rivals for the see of Ermland, a compromise had been reached by giving Giese the Bishopric of Kulm, and they remained on excellent terms. This made it possible for Dantiscus to ask Giese on repeated occasions to intercede with Copernicus, in order to spare the old Canon further humiliation.
Concurrently with the unpleasantness concerning Anna, there was also political trouble in the Chapter. Its causes are extremely involved (for a brief outline, see note 87 ); but the central character was again the intrepid Canon Sculteti, who not only lived openly with his "beer-waitress" and brood of children, but led the resistance against Dantiscus' efforts to make East Prussia safe for the Polish crown. It was a struggle for high political stakes, which, a year later, led to Sculteti's proscription and banishment, and several years later to the temporary excommunication of the majority of the Ermland Chapter. Since Canon Koppernigk had been on friendly terms with Sculteti, and was in the same boat with him in the focaria scandal, Dantiscus was anxious to keep the old man from getting involved in all this. On 4 July, 1539, he wrote to Giese:
"I have been told that the Dr. Nic. Copernicus whom, as you know, I love as my own brother, is staying with you as your guest. He maintains close friendship with Sculteti. That is bad. Admonish him that such connections and friendships are harmful to him, but do not tell him that the warning originates from me. I am sure you know that Sculteti has taken a wife and that he is suspected of atheism." 88
It should be remembered that Dantiscus was Canon Koppernigk's immediate superior, and that Giese now ruled another diocese. The letter proves that Dantiscus went out of his way to save Copernicus embarrassment, to the extent of keeping his warning anonymous, since a direct admonishment from his ecclesiastic superior might be humiliating to the old Canon. Yet the Copernicus legend has it that Dantiscus "ordered him abruptly to break off relations with his friend Sculteti"; and that he persecuted Copernicus to prevent him from finishing his book. 89
The truth is that when, in 1541, Dantiscus learnt of Cop
ernicus' decision to publish, at long last, his Revolutions, he immediately wrote a warm and very friendly letter to Copernicus, enclosing a poetic epigram to serve as a motto for the book. Canon Koppernigk wrote back: 90
"Reverendissime in Christo Pater et Domine Domine Clementissime.
I have received Your Most Rev. Lordship's most humane and entirely intimate letter, in which he has condescended to send an epigram addressed to the readers of my book, soberly elegant and suited, not to my deserts, but to the extraordinary benevolence with which Your Rev. Lordship is wont to honour scholars. I should place it, therefore, at the title page of my work, if only the work might be worthy of deserving to be so greatly adorned by Your Rev. Lordship, although nevertheless very learned men, with whom it is fitting to comply, declare that I am of some account. Indeed, I desire so far as I have powers to earn it, to gratify the extraordinary benevolence and paternal affection towards me whereby Your Rev. Lordship does not cease to honour me; and to serve him, as is my duty, in all things in which I am able.
Frauenburg, June 27, 1541.
Your Rev. Lordship's Most obedient, Nicolaus Copernicus."
This is the last extant letter from Copernicus to Dantiscus, and probably the last he actually wrote him. The poet laureate's contribution did not appear in the book, nor on Copernicus' manuscript, and is lost. After thanking Dantiscus for his "extraordinary benevolence", Copernicus quietly dropped his epigram into the waste bin, as he had done with Dantiscus' earlier invitations. He really was an old sourpuss.
15. The Death of Copernicus
The last months of his life must have been very lonely indeed. He had forsaken Rheticus, and Rheticus had forsaken him. Giese now lived away from Frauenburg; Sculteti was exiled. One by one the Canons of his generation had died. He had not been much loved among his contemporaries; to the generation which now stepped into their place, he had even less appeal. They could not even regard the old man in his tower with the respectful boredom that decrepitude compels, for the scandal about Anna added to his reputation as a miser that of a lecher; and his past association with the Lutheran madman from Wittenberg did not help either. He was virtually ostracized.
The measure of his loneliness can be gleaned from a letter which, at the onset of Copernicus' last illness, Giese wrote from Loebau Castle to one of the Frauenburg Canons, George Donner: 91
"... Since he [ Copernicus] loved solitude even in his healthy days, so, I think, he has few friends to help him with his troubles now that he is ill – although we are all in his debt for his personal integrity and excellent teachings. I know that he has always had you among the most faithful. I beg you, therefore, since his nature is so formed, would you be in the place of a guardian to him and undertake the protection of the man whom we have both always loved, that he may not lack brotherly help in this necessity, and that we may not appear ungrateful to him, deserving as he is. Farewell.
Loebau, December 8, 1542."
Toward the end of 1542, Canon Koppernigk suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, followed by partial paralysis, and took permanently to his bed. At the beginning of 1543, Dantiscus wrote to the astronomer, Gemma Frisius in Louvain, that Copernicus was dying. But the end came only after several months, on 24 May. In a letter to Rheticus, written a few weeks later, Giese recorded the event in a single, tragic sentence:
"For many days he had been deprived of his memory and mental vigour; he only saw his completed book at the last moment, on the day he died." 92
We know that mind has the power to hang on to life and, within limits, to postpone the body's death. Copernicus' mind had been wandering, yet there was perhaps just enough determination left to hold out until that moment when his hand could caress the cover of his book.
His state of mind in the last period is expressed in a reflection on a text by Thomas Aquinas, which he jotted down in a small, shaky writing on a bookmark: 93
Vita brevis, sensus ebes, negligentiae torpor et inutiles occupationes nos paucula scire permittent. Et aliquotients scita excutit ab animo per temporum lapsum fraudatrix scientiae et inimica memoriae praeceps oblivio.
"The shortness of life, the dullness of the senses, the numbness of indifference and unprofitable occupations allow us to know but very little. And again and again swift oblivion, the embezzler of knowledge and the enemy of memory, shakes out of the mind, in the course of time, even what we knew."
The earliest monument to Copernicus, in St. John's Church in his native Torun, has a curious inscription which is assumed to have been copied from a note found in his possession. 94 It is a poem by Aeneas Silvius:
Non parem Pauli gratiam requiro,
Venian Petri neque Posco,
sed quam In crucis ligno dederas
latroni, Sedulus oro.
I crave not the Grace bestowed on Paul
Nor the remission granted to Peter
Only forgive me, I fervently pray
As thou forgavest the crucified thieves.
A more earthy epitaph appeared on a copper medallion coined in the seventeenth century by one Christian Wermuth in Gotha. Its face shows a bust with the inscription: Nicolaus Copernicus mathematicus natus 1473, D. 1543." On the reverse is a quatrain in German: 95
Der Himmel nicht die Erd umgeht
Vie die Gelebrten meynen
Ein jeder ist seines Wurms gewiss
Copernicus der seinen.
The sky walks not around the earth
Though so the Doctors concluded;
Each man is sure to meet his worm
Copernicus included.
In the Frankonian local dialect, "koepperneksch" still means a far-fetched, cockeyed proposition.
16. The Death of Rheticus
Rheticus survived his teacher by more than thirty years. He led a restless, colourful, hectic life, but the purpose had gone out of it, the mainspring was broken, and his activities became increasingly more crankish and fantastic. He held his new post at the University of Leipzig for less than three years; in 1545, he left for Italy, and in spite of two demands from the University, refused to return on the grounds of ill-health. He seems to have studied medicine in Switzerland for a while, but nobody knew what had become of him; thus a Wittenberg scholar named Gauricus wrote under Rheticus' horoscope: "Returned from Italy, became insane and died in April '47" – 95a which reminds one of Kepler's description of Rheticus going off his head in Loebau Castle.
In '48, however, he returned to Leipzig and tried to turn over a new leaf. Within the next three years two works of his were published, an astronomical yearbook for 1550, and a work on trigonometry with extensive tables. He referred in them to Copernicus as his teacher, mentioned that he had supervized the publication of his work, and said that "nothing should be altered in it". 96 This was probably said in self-defence, because Rheticus was pressed from all sides to correct the errors of calculation in the Revolutions and to continue expounding his teacher's doctrine. He did nothing of the sort. Instead, his Preface to the work on trigonometry contains the astonishing suggestion that the Commentaries of Proclus on the Ptolemaic system should be taught at the German universities! About the teaching of the Copernican system there is not a word. Nor does the ambitious list of future publications, which he announced in the same Preface, contain any mention of his biography of Copernicus, which he had completed in manuscript. 97
Two years after his return to Leipzig, Rheticus had to leave again, this time under more dramatic circumstances. An inscription in a book by one Jakob Kroeger provides the explanation: "He [ Rheticus] was a prominent mathematician, who for a while lived and taught in Leipzig, but flew from this town about 1550 because of sexual delicts (sodomy and the Italian perversion); I knew the man." 98 It was a repetition of the incidents which, eight years earlier, had caused his migration from Wittenberg to Leipzig, and which put Osiander in control of the printing of the Revolutions.
For the next seven years, Rheticus' movements are obscure. He seems to have left Germany for fear of being arrested. In
1557, he turned up in Cracow. His conscience was nagging him, for he announced that, in compliance with the wishes of his late Teacher, who had insisted on more and better observations of the stars, he, Rheticus, had erected an obelisk forty-five feet high: "for no device can be compared in excellence to the obelisk; armillaries, Jacob's staffs, astrolabes and quadrants are human inventions, but the obelisk, erected on God's advice, surpasses them all." He had chosen Cracow for his observations, "because it lies on the same meridian as Frauenburg." 99
But the enterprise seems to have come to nothing. Six years later he was again pressed by various scholars to continue, and to expound the work of Copernicus. He toyed with the idea, asked a colleague for his assistance; then dropped the matter again.
In 1567, he wrote to a friend that he loved astronomy and chemistry, but made his living as a physician, 100 and that he inclined toward the teachings of Paracelsus. A year later, he wrote about his plans to Pierre Ramus, the great French mathematician, explaining that the wobbly theory of Ptolemy must be replaced by a true system based on observation, and more specially on the use the Egyptians had made of the obelisk. Thus he would create "a German astronomy for my Germans". 101 He also mentioned numerous other projects: the completion of his monumental work on trigonometry on which he had spent twelve years; a work on astronomy in nine books, several books on astrology, and seven books on chemistry, which he had already drafted.