Nicolaus Copernicus

Outstanding scientist, astronomer, economist, physician, humanist and canon of Warmia. Considered one of the founders of modern science. He turned the understanding of the cosmos that was valid during his lifetime upside down by creating the heliocentric conception of the universe.

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Nicolaus Copernicus, portrait held at the Nicolaus Copernicus Museum in Frombork, photo: Art Images / Getty Images

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The biography of Nicolaus Copernicus abounds in legends, speculations and duplicated misrepresentations, resulting in lively disputes among scholars. Many findings remain uncertain, and new research may still yield hitherto unknown facts about the life of the Polish astronomer.

Childhood & school years

He was born on 19 February 1473 in Toruń, then part of Old Prussia in the Crown Kingdom of Poland. No registry books were kept before the Council of Trent (1545–1563), so the justification for this date is a horoscope dating from 1541 and its later copies. The time of the birth, 4:48 in the afternoon, is also recorded, but such a precise timing raises doubts about the reliability of the record – clocks indicating minutes were not common at the time. Furthermore, Piotr Łopuszański, author of the biography Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe Oblicze Geniusza (Nicolaus Copernicus: The New Face of a Genius], points out that the date is given according to the old Julian calendar and has never been corrected according to the Gregorian calendar, according to which the date of the astronomer’s birth would have been 1 March.

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Copernicus’s house, Toruń, photo: Wojciech Strożyk / Reporter / East News

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The German version of his name, given to him at birth, was Niklas Koppernigk, but he later Latinised it himself, signing Nicolaus Copernicus. His parents were Mikołaj, a wealthy merchant who came to Toruń from Kraków due to professional commitments, and Barbara née Watzenrode, a very influential family in Toruń. We know of three siblings of the future astronomer, although it is highly likely that the Kopernik family had more offspring who probably died in infancy or childhood. However, it is certain that they had two daughters, Barbara, who joined the Benedictine order; and Katarzyna, later married to the merchant Bartłomiej Gertner and the mother of five children; as well as two sons. One of the biggest mistakes scholars made was to reproduce the information over the centuries that Nicolaus was the youngest child, which was the reason for numerous ambiguities. Krzysztof Mikulski’s research has shown, however, that the youngest son of the family was Andrzej.

An important role in the life of the future astronomer was played by his mother’s brother, his uncle Łukasz Watzenrode, who took over as protector after the death of his father, who died of cholera during its epidemic when Nicolaus was ten years old.

Copernicus, along with his brother Andrzej, probably began his education around 1480 at the parish school at St John’s Church in Toruń. It is possible that at that time he already had access to astronomical codices owned by Konrad Gesselen, the previous rector of the school, which may have awakened his scientific interests. There is still a dispute among scholars as to whether the young Nicolaus attended another school in preparation for higher education before attending university. In all likelihood, from 1488 he continued his studies at the parochial school of the Brethren of the Common Life in Chełmno. As Mikulski wrote, this school enjoyed an excellent reputation and, although it may not have had a significant impact on his academic development, it ‘undoubtedly influenced the formation of his personality’. Furthermore, an argument in favour of Copernicus’s attending the Chełmno school is the fact that his sister Barbara and his mother’s sister Katarzyna were associated with the Chełmno nunnery. It is also possible that the astronomer’s mother was also there after the death of her husband.

University in Kraków

In 1491, thanks to the support of his uncle, Copernicus went to study in Kraków. This was the heyday of the university in Kraków, then called the New Athens. He studied at the Faculty of Artes Liberales, the liberal arts, which were, according to the medieval division, grammar, rhetoric and dialectics (called the trivium) and, at a higher level, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy (quadrivium). As Łopuszański wrote, the works of Cicero, Seneca, Titus Livius, Pliny the Younger and Plato were taught in Copernicus’s time. Aristotle’s Topics, Physics and Metaphysics, the writings of Gregory the Great, Saint Augustine, the treatises of Averroes, as well as the poetry of Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, The Iliad, the works of Xenophon, Flavius Josephus and Lactantius were read. Copernicus was exposed to lectures by Bernard of Biskupie, Wojciech Krypa of Szamotuły, and probably astronomical lectures by Jan of Głogów, Michał of Wrocław, Wojciech of Pniewy and Marcin of Olkusz.

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Geometry workroom, Collegium Maius (Jagiellonian University’s oldest building), photo: Erich Lessing / Album / East News

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During his studies, the young man from Toruń became acquainted with numerous concepts and the arguments behind them. Thus, in Nicolas d’Oresme’s commentary on Aristotle’s work On the Heavens, he could read that ‘if the Earth moved from west to east, a strong wind would blow constantly from the east, so the Earth is stationary’. He was familiar with the commentaries of Jean Buridan, according to whom ‘God, when he created the universe, gave to each celestial sphere the motion he pleased and the momentum that has moved it ever since’, while his argument against the Earth’s motion was an experiment with an arrow that, when shot vertically, returns to the same place – after all, if the Earth rotated, it would fall somewhere else.

According to Aristotle, a scientific authority, the Earth was shaped like a sphere, behind it were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the sphere of fixed stars, and the planets orbit the aethereal spheres in a uniform motion, set in motion by the First Mover. The heat of the sun, according to Aristotle, resulted from its motion. The astronomical authority, however, was above all Claudius Ptolemy, one of the authors of the geocentric theory, which he described in the Almagest. Ptolemy’s hypothesis was close to Aristotle’s but somewhat more complicated. The ancient scientist also proclaimed that there was no vacuum in the Cosmos. As Łopuszański points out, ‘Ptolemy claimed that his concept was a hypothesis that facilitated the understanding of observed phenomena. He believed that if observations contradicted the theory, another concept would have to be adopted’.

All the knowledge he acquired trained Copernicus to think independently. He did not reject the works of ancient and medieval scholars, but he came up with his own conclusions after a thorough study of them. His studies in Kraków were the time of his first ‘admirable’ mathematical works and also the time of his first observations of the sky, such as the comet seen over Kraków in 1492. The young scientist did not confine himself to the sciences, however; he was a true humanist, a man of broad horizons.

He studied in Kraków for four years, so he may have obtained the title of bachelor, but there are no documents to confirm this. He most likely returned to Warmia in 1495, summoned by his uncle, then Bishop of Warmia. Łukasz Watzenrode’s plan was to settle the older of his nephews in a vacancy in Frombork after the recently deceased canon. He enrolled him at the College of Warmia Canons, which Copernicus then ultimately did not complete, most likely due to Watzenrode’s conflicts with the chapter house. After these setbacks, his uncle decided to send his nephew for further studies, this time in law to Bologna.

The period of his studies in Kraków was certainly a crucial time for Copernicus, which, as Jerzy Dobrzycki wrote, consolidated his interest in astronomy ‘and during which he became proficient in the practical practice of mathematical astronomy, not to mention familiar with the essential scientific literature’. There are many indications that it was during this time that the idea of a different conception of the universe (in today’s sense of the solar system), to the development of which he devoted his entire life, may have been born in him.

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‘De revolutionibus orbium coelestium’ (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus, exhibit at Jagiellonian University on occasion of 540th anniversary of his birth, photo: M. Lasyk / East News

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University in Bologna

Copernicus arrived at the oldest university in medieval Europe in the autumn (or summer) of 1496. There he studied law, first canon law, then Roman law, but certainly not, contrary to some sources, astronomy. Łopuszański wrote: ‘law bored him. He attended lectures out of a sense of obligation. He was more passionate about the liberal arts, philosophy, literature and astronomy’. He made contact with Domenico Maria Novara, an eminent astronomer and astrologer, with whom he made astronomical observations. The Polish student, as Rheticus, Copernicus’s pupil, later reported, acted more as an assistant than a pupil, which shows how much knowledge Copernicus gained from the university in Kraków. On 9 March 1497, they together carried out a famous observation of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus, which may have been crucial in cementing Copernicus’s doubts about the geocentric conception of the universe. Łopuszański wrote:

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The Moon in the first quarter was supposed to obscure the star. Copernicus’s calculations showed that the quarter Moon was the same distance from the Earth and the same size. Ptolemy’s theory of changes in the size of the Earth’s satellite and its distance proved to be wrong.

However, the young scientist still needed time and further observations to develop a different concept. Novara may also have been inclined to believe that the hitherto accepted order of the universe was wrong, but we know for certain that he was not the one who developed the heliocentric theory.

While in Bologna in 1497, Copernicus was granted a canonry in Frombork in absentia. The first mention of him as a Warmia canon dates from 23 October 1497, when a document records ‘canon of Warmia, scholar of Bologna, student of canon law’. This is not tantamount to saying that Copernicus was a priest, which is still the subject of much dispute and theory. It may be that he received minor orders and was not a priest, or perhaps, as Łopuszański suggests, he was ordained a priest towards the end of his life, which the newly introduced ordinances may have forced him to do. Copernicus entrusted the canonry he received in 1497 to other canons to take up on his behalf.

Jubilee year

Pope Alexander VI declare the year 1500 to be a Jubilee Year, a Holy Year, and crowds of pilgrims headed for Rome as a result. In the spring of 1500, the Copernicus brothers Nicolaus and Andrzej also came to celebrate the Anno Santo. Chaos reigned, as Łopuszański wrote:

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Religion had become an irrelevant decoration, with personal wealth, a life of luxury and power at the forefront of aspirations. The institutional church was corrupt. […] Nicolaus saw this, and only his deep faith, his sincere religiosity, his conviction that the creator of the world was a good God, saved the astronomer from leaving the church. […] Copernicus saw the errors and sins of men, but he did not carry these over to the whole church and religion. He simply did not intend to make a career in the church and did not win any lucrative positions in the Frombork chapter.

In Rome, Copernicus was also exposed to great works of art, including Michelangelo’s just-completed Pieta, and to new Renaissance ideas. According to some legends, the brothers came to Rome to practise law in the Papal Curia, but this statement refers rather only to Andrzej. Nicolaus was said to be making astronomical observations and reading books at the time, and, according to legend, lecturing at the university, from where an image of Copernicus in professorial robes entered the iconography. However, it is highly doubtful that these lectures actually took place. But what is known is that the astronomer was observing a lunar eclipse on the night of 5-6 November during the jubilee year.

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‘Copernicus Lecturing on Astronomy in Rome’, photograph of a cartoon preparatory to a painting by Wojciech Gerson, prior to 1939, photo: National Library Polona

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Studies in Padua

According to the statutes of the Warmia chapter at the time, every canon should have completed at least three years of higher education, confirmed by a diploma, but it was possible to extend this period. It is not entirely clear why Copernicus returned to Warmia in 1501, as he could certainly also have obtained an extension by letter. The Warmia chapter agreed to two years of medical studies – he was seen as a future medical advisor to the chapter. He was also to devote this time to completing his legal studies.

Copernicus trained in medical science at the university in Padua from the autumn of 1501 to the summer of 1503. This was a time for him not only to acquire medical knowledge but also to develop his Hellenistic interests: he studied Greek language and culture. According to speculation, he received a doctorate in philosophy and in medicine, but there is no evidence for this. He most likely did not complete his medical studies, as the programme lasted five years, of which the astronomer only completed two. However, he was certainly a diligent student, as evidenced by the notes he took and the extensive book collection he amassed (unfortunately, Copernicus’s library was looted by Swedish troops in the 17th century, so some of his books are now in Uppsala and Stockholm, and some were lost during World War II). One of Copernicus’s notes reads:

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‘Remember this, doctor! True is Avicenna’s saying that not knowing leads to murder, and therefore his saying should be in the memory of every careful doctor’.

Łopuszański draws attention to the fact that, in this area too, Copernicus exercised sober judgement and scepticism regarding some medical recommendations, as evidenced by the remarks he wrote down, such as, ‘These are either false, or things so incredible that they are rightly not believed’. Thus, Łopuszański is critical of the comments by some biographers who deemed that the astronomer may have believed in the power of such medicines as the unicorn horn detailed in Copernicus’s notes – the scientist in all likelihood recorded this as a curiosity.

Postage stamps depicting Nicolaus Copernicus – Image Gallery

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It was in Padua, too, that Copernicus made important astronomical calculations. In 1503, in October and December, as well as twice the following year, conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter were visible in the sky. The Pole determined the date of the fourth conjunction calculated according to the heliocentric theory; this date, to his knowledge, would occur on 12 May, not 10 June as other scholars believed. Copernicus was much closer to the truth, which did not escape the attention of scholars curious about the Polish astronomer.

At the end of his studies, Copernicus obtained a doctorate in canon law. He took his examinations in Ferrara. After all formalities, he returned to Padua and then travelled to Poland, thus completing the university stage of his life. This was not, however, the end of his acquisition of knowledge, which he continued to explore throughout his life.

Doctor & translator

Both brothers, Nicolaus and Andrzej, returned to Warmia in the autumn of 1503. They had their canons in Frombork, while their uncle, the bishop, resided in Lidzbark.

Copernicus was secretary, confidant and physician-in-chief in the service of Łukasz Watzenrode at the Lidzbark castle. The bishop involved his nephew in political, ecclesiastical and administrative-economic matters; Nicolaus also accompanied him on trips to Malbork, Elbląg, Gdańsk, Toruń, Grudziądz and Radom. His duties at his uncle’s side consumed a lot of his time – in his spare time he developed mainly in the medical and legal sciences. It is said that he did not refuse medical assistance to anyone – he treated poor people and did not expect any payment for doing so.

In addition, he also took up the task of translating the letters of Theophylact Simocatta from Greek into Latin – at that time there was no chair of Greek in Poland, so, as Łopuszański wrote, Copernicus can also be described as a forerunner in humanistic studies. However, it was not an outstanding translation and contained numerous errors. It is likely that in 1509 Copernicus was present at the Kraków diet, and on that occasion he submitted for printing in Jan Haller’s publishing house a Latin translation of 85 fictitious 7th-century moral, rural and erotic letters under the title Theophilacti Scolastici Simocati Epistolae Morales, Rurales et Amatoriae Interpretatione Latina (Theophilactus Scholasticus Simocatus’s Moral, Rural and Amorous Letters with a Latin Interpretation).

This was Copernicus’s literary debut, and the collection was accompanied by a laudatory letter from the translator addressed to his uncle, the bishop (he called him ‘Most Reverend Lord and Father of our homeland’), as well as a rhymed preface titled Pożegnanie Prus (Farewell to Prussia), written by Laurentius Corvinus, Copernicus’s friend from his time as a student in Kraków. Scholars find references to Copernicus’s heliocentric theory in Corvinus’s work. Corvinus wrote in the preface about the author:

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He studies the swift course of the Moon and the variable movements of its fraternal celestial body, as well as the entire firmament with the stars wandering upon it, a marvellous creation of the Almighty. He is capable of tracing the hidden causes of all things based upon admirable assumptions.

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trans. K. Radziwiłł and J. Zeltzer, after: Łopuszański, P. (2022). 'Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe oblicza geniusza'. Warsaw: Fronda

Another expression of the astronomer’s literary and philological interests was the Greek epigram Epithalamium, composed by him most probably in 1512 on the occasion of the wedding of Sigismund I and Barbara Zápolya.

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Castle in Lidzbark Warmiński, photo: Wojciech Wojcik / Forum

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‘Komentarzyk’

During his stay in Lidzbark, before 1514, Copernicus developed his first outline of a heliocentric theory. He set it out in a manuscript treatise known from copies, under a title most likely given by one of the copyists: Nicolai Copernici de hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus (Commentary of Nicolaus Copernicus on the Hypotheses of Celestial Motions Formulated by Himself). The text is also known under the titles Zarys nowego mechanizmu świata i ruchów ciał niebieskich (An Outline of the New Mechanism of the World and of the Motions of Celestial Bodies) and Zarys podstaw astronomii (An Outline of the Foundations of Astronomy) and is commonly referred to as the Komentarzyk (Little Commentary). As the authors of Copernicus’s biography in the Polski Słownik Biograficzny (Polish Biographical Dictionary) wrote:

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it was a concise descriptive lecture of a theoretical nature on the heliocentric mechanism of the world, devoid of a mathematical apparatus and differing in quite significant details of geometrical construction (concentro-bi-epicyclic) from the solutions contained in the work ‘On the Revolutions […]’ but already based on the same assumptions of the triple motion of the Earth.

The Komentarzyk was not intended for print. Copernicus shared it only with those closest to him, and the work circulated in copies. It reached scientific centres in Kraków, Rostock, Prague and most probably Rome. It did not appear in print until 1878.

In his work, Copernicus demonstrated the shortcomings of the theories of Eudoxus of Knidos and Ptolemy, and articulated the following postulates:

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FIRST ASSUMPTION

There is no single centre of all the celestial spheres.

SECOND ASSUMPTION

The centre of the Earth is not the centre of the world but only the centre of gravity and the sphere of the moon.

THIRD ASSUMPTION

All spheres revolve around the Sun as the centre, and therefore the centre of the world is located near the Sun.

FOURTH ASSUMPTION

The ratio of the Sun’s distance from the Earth to the height of the firmament is so much smaller than the ratio of the Earth’s radius to the Sun’s distance that the distance is imperceptible compared to the size of the firmament.

FIFTH ASSUMPTION

Any movement visible in the firmament is caused not by its own motion but by the motion of the Earth. Thus, the Earth, together with the elements around it, rotates throughout the day all in its unchanging poles, while the firmament and the highest sky remain stationary.

SIXTH ASSUMPTION

Whatever we perceive as the movement of the Sun is not its own movement but the result of the movement of the Earth and our sphere, with which we revolve around the Sun like any other planet; the Earth therefore makes several movements.

SEVENTH ASSUMPTION

What appears as retrograde motion or advancing motion of the planets does not come from them but from the Earth. Its movement alone, then, is sufficient to explain so many of the irregularities seen in the sky.

Copernicus thus pointed out the rotational and circular motion of the Earth and that all the spheres revolve around the Sun, and he also wrote out the correct order of the spheres. This was something completely revolutionary: he rejected the centuries-old tradition hitherto regarded as the only true one.

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‘Nicolaus Copernicus Among the World’s Astronomers’, engraving by Jan Styfi, photo: public domain (CC BY 4.0)

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Numerous responsibilities

In 1512, Łukasz Watzenrode died. Around this time, Copernicus moved from Lidzbark to Frombork. This was a time when Warmia was in a politically difficult situation as it was threatened from the outside by the aggression of the Teutonic Knights and Albrecht’s plans for its incorporation, and on the other hand it was facing internal separatist crises. In the face of all these challenges, Copernicus publicly demonstrated his commitment to protecting Poland’s interests. In 1520, the Teutonic Knights attacked Frombork and burned down the city, including the chanceries of the canons. The astronomer then went to Olsztyn, where he actively prepared the castle for a possible invasion, making him famous as a defender of the town.

Although Copernicus lost his protectorate after the death of his uncle, he gained freedom and the liberty to decide his own destiny. It is puzzling that he did not decide to return to the university and devote himself solely to his studies but took up further positions in the chapter. Łopuszański wrote:

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Doktor Mikołaj w 1512 roku został zarządcą przedsiębiorstw gospodarczych kapituły, młynów, piekarni i browarów, zajmując się aprowizacją. W listopadzie ponownie został kanclerzem kapituły. […] W listopadzie 1516 roku Kopernika mianowano administratorem dóbr wspólnych Czcigodnej Kapituły Warmińskiej […]. Był to najważniejszy urząd kapitulny. Współbracia docenili pracowitość, rzetelność i mądrość Kopernika na stanowisku kanclerza i wizytatora, toteż okazali mu najwyższe uznanie nominacją na administratora.

In 1521, he was given an even higher title, not provided for in the statutes – commissioner of Warmia. As Łopuszański wrote, he had authority similar to that of a bishop, but it did not require higher ordination. He was valued in the circle of canons as a physician, mathematician and expert in law. At the request of Paul of Middelburg, a friend from Italy, he assisted in the reform of the calendar by carrying out calculations and sending suggestions to the Vatican to improve the Julian calendar. The calendar was not finally reformed until 1582, but all indications are that Aloysius Lilio, the author of the reform, used Copernicus’s calculations.

The astronomer also became known as an expert in economic problems. In 1517, at the request of Fabian Luzjański, bishop of Warmia, he prepared the outline of a monetary reform, which he included in the missive N.C. Meditata (Meditations). Subsequent editions of this treatise were published in later years.

‘On the Revolutions’

Copernicus set up his permanent observation point in the tower of the fortress. He used ancient tools, as if he wanted to arrive at the truth with the same instruments that Ptolemy also had at his disposal. According to scholars, the entire work On the Revolutions was written between 1515 and 1530 or 1533 and was later supplemented and edited – Łopuszański surmises that Copernicus began work on his opus magnum soon after writing the Komentarzyk.

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Kopernik ze złota, czyli nowe życie starych ksiąg

In 1533, Copernicus was already 60 years old and the oldest canon in Frombork. This was a period in which he was slowly losing his strength and declining in health. He still had many responsibilities in the chapter, and in 1532 he was probably also ordained a priest. Interestingly, in 1537 he was put forward as one of the four candidates for the new Bishop of Warmia, but this was merely a courtesy prompted by the scholar’s merits.

The arrival in 1539 of 25-year-old Georg Joachim von Lauchen, known as Rheticus (Retyk in Polish), to join Copernicus was a historical turning point. The Polish astronomer’s discoveries had reached the attention of scholars all over Europe, so Rheticus wanted to get to know their author better and learn from him more about the concept he had developed. He was the Polish astronomer’s only pupil. Copernicus shared with him the work On the Revolutions, which was essentially complete but still required additions and rewriting. Rheticus decided to help complete the edition of the work.

Although the Pole was not the first scientist in history to present a heliocentric view of the world (Aristarchus of Samos did so previously, for example), this was no longer one of the ancient concepts but modern astronomy and a contradiction of the prevailing sciences. It is not true that Copernicus was afraid to publish his concept. His delay was only dictated by his meticulousness and his constant desire to discover the whole truth. In the first book, containing the general principles of the heliocentric concept, Copernicus referred to ancient scholars and their observations. He described the motion of the planets – circular and uniform – and presented the errors of the geocentric theory with an indication of the places where the ancients got it wrong. It was not until the following century that Kepler discovered that the planets travel in ellipse-shaped orbits with non-uniform motion, hence not all of the Pole’s calculations were correct.

In his work, Copernicus also expressed his admiration for the world: ‘And what is more beautiful than the sky, which, after all, embraces everything that is beautiful,’ he wrote. As Łopuszański noted:

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The astronomer described in exultation the harmony of the Universe, where everything ‘is in the best order and guided by divine will’. He asked rhetorically: ‘who would not admire the Creator of all things in whom all happiness and all goodness is contained?’ These are the words not only of a scholar but also of a priest.

Rheticus urged the scholar to have the work published in Nuremberg by the printer Petreius, supported by the astronomer’s friend, the Bishop of Chełm, Tiedemann Giese. Copernicus agreed, but, as Łopuszański notes, it took a long time to rewrite such an extensive text, make additions and corrections, and so the work was not published until 1543. Rheticus first came up with a proposal to publish a summary, which was published under the title Ad Clarissimum virum D. Joannem Schonerum, de libris revolvtionum eruditissimi viri et mathematici excellentissimi Reverendi D. Doctoris Nocolai Copernici Torunnaei canonici Varmiensis per quendam iuvenem mathematicae studiosum Narratio prima (For the Illustrious Master Johannes Schöner, From the Books On the Revolutions of the Great Learned Man and Excellent Mathematician Reverend Master Doctor Nicolaus Copernicus of Toruń, Canon of Warmia, Written by a Certain Young Mathematician a First Novel [Report]).

The abstract came out in the spring of 1540 in Gdańsk in the publishing house of Franciszek Rhode. Another work related to On the Revolutions, which was published earlier, consisted of isolated chapters on trigonometry titled De lateribus et angulis triangulorum (On the Sides and Angles of Triangles). The edition included a preface by Rheticus and, rather peculiarly, his dedication.

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‘Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God’ by Jan Matejko, 1873, oil on canvas, photo: Museum of the Jagiellonian University

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Copernicus was persuaded by Rheticus and the printers to publish his opus magnum in Nuremberg. Since the work needed to be placed in someone else’s hands, this was not the best decision. Andreas Osiander, a Protestant theologian who was critical of the Polish scholar’s ideas, undertook this editorial care.

According to correspondence that has been found, Copernicus intended to begin the work with an epigram by the bishop of Warmia, Jan Dantyszek, in his honour, and he also came up with the idea of dedicating the work to Pope Paul III. On the one hand, these efforts may have been aimed at protecting the work from accusations of incompatibility with Scripture; on the other, Copernicus’s close links with the church cannot be denied, so such a solution may have been something obvious to him. Copernicus also sent a dedicatory letter to the Pope in which he explained his motives for writing and publishing the work. Above all, he explained his need to ‘seek the truth’, and wrote that:

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[I] was prompted to think of a different principle for calculating the motions of the spheres of the world by nothing other than the observation that mathematicians are at odds with themselves in their research.

Copernicus’s work consisted of six books and contained a catalogue of 1,025 stars from 48 constellations. The astronomer presented the correct order of the planets and was not far off in calculating the radii of the planets’ orbits and the average distances from the Sun.

In the spring of 1542, Rheticus submitted the work for printing in Nuremberg, where it was taken up by Osiander. He wrote to Rheticus and Copernicus suggesting that a preface be inserted indicating that the work contained hypotheses rather than a full-fledged and true picture of the universe. Despite the Polish astronomer’s opposition, Osiander included such a preface, which later came to be regarded as the words of the author himself. The work was published in April 1543 with this falsified preface, without Dantyszek’s epigram but with errors in the tables, so that part of the edition contained a list of errata. Moreover, the title was De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres VI Books), which was also inconsistent with the title given by the author (De revolutionibus). Rheticus crossed out the preface and the words added in the title in several copies. Printing took a long time – a year.

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F. Cynk, ‘The Final Moments of Copernicus’, 1927–1936, Kraków, photo: National Library Polona

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The 70-year-old Copernicus suffered a stroke, as a result of which he became partially paralysed. He had previously made a will in which he distributed his money to his sister Katarzyna’s children and grandchildren, bequeathed his book collection to the chapter in Frombork (mathematical and astronomical works) and to Fabian Emerich and the Lidzbark library (medical works). According to Bishop Giese’s notes of July 1543, Copernicus ‘lost his memory and consciousness of mind’ long before his death. His life’s work arrived in Frombork in May 1543. The astronomer was probably still alive and received it on his deathbed, but he was no longer fully conscious. He died on 24 May (according to the Gregorian calendar) and was buried in Frombork’s cathedral.

The fate of the Copernican concept

Copernicus’s friend Giese, who received the manuscript of On the Revolutions, was (as he wrote in a letter to Rheticus) outraged by the action of the printer Petreius, who had altered the edition of the work. He even accused the printer at the Nuremberg city council, but the councillors were convinced that the preface had been written by the author, so Bishop Giese did nothing. He did, however, ask Rheticus to prepare a second edition without the forged preface, but for unknown reasons the latter never fulfilled this request. It was not until the Warsaw edition of 1854 that Osiander’s preface was removed.

The Copernican concept met with both opposition (its critic was, for example, Blaise Pascal) and approval. Copernicus’s theory was improved by Johannes Kepler, who used ellipse-shaped orbits rather than circles in his calculations. Later, Isaac Newton discovered that gravity was the force that maintains the solar system. Galileo Galilei, who zealously defended the teachings of Copernicus, discovered further truths about the universe through the achievements of the aforementioned scientists. These four scientists – Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and Galileo – are considered the founders of modern science.

On 5 March 1616, On the Revolutions was placed on the Index of books forbidden by the church. According to the Inquisition, the work contained doctrines contrary to Scripture and was to be corrected. Copernicus’s work did not disappear from the list until the 19th century – more than 200 years later.

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Monument to Copernicus, Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw, 1938, photo: Konstanty Wojutyński / Biblioteka Narodowa Polona

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In 1854, the fourth, Warsaw edition, already mentioned, was published. This came about thanks to the efforts of Magdalena Łuszczewska, the mother of Jadwiga, known as Deotyma. Łuszczewska hosted the intellectual elite in Warsaw and, in return for a dinner in her honour, asked them to raise funds for the publication of Copernicus’s work. This edition was published in Polish translation (the first full translation into a modern language) and also included minor writings. It also had the forged preface removed.

Currently, the manuscript of On the Revolutions is in the possession of the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, although it lacks a title page and the letter to Pope Paul III. It is one of the greatest treasures of Polish written culture.

Finally

The figure and achievements of Nicolaus Copernicus played an important role in the life of the Polish nation, and his biography has been compiled by numerous eminent biographers over the centuries. In 1802, at the request of the Society of Friends in Warsaw, Jan Śniadecki undertook to write a monograph on Copernicus. It was an extremely important work, highlighting the merits of the Polish astronomer for the development of world astronomy. Śniadecki also took up the subject of Copernicus’s nationality, dispelling all doubts and proving that the scientist was certainly a Pole and not a German. Subsequent anniversaries of the astronomer’s birth were occasions for new research into his life and achievements. One of the most famous images of Copernicus, the painting Rozmowa Kopernika z Bogiem (Copernicus’s Conversation with God), was presented by Jan Matejko in 1873 on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the scientist’s birth.

Copernicus’s achievements had both a natural-science and an anthropological significance – in his conception, no longer was man at the centre of the universe. The Polish astronomer became famous not only for his research but also for his character, consistency and belief in the essence of truth.

_Sources:

_{Dobrzycki, J., and Hajdukiewicz, L. ‘Mikołaj Kopernik’. In}_{Polski Słownik Biograficzny}_{, vol. 14. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich – Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1969. Łopuszański, P.}_{Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe oblicze geniusza}_{. Warsaw: Fronda, 2022.}

_{Mikulski, K.}_{Mikołaj Kopernik − środowisko społeczne, pochodzenie i młodość}_{. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2015.}

Nicolaus Copernicus