Part 2 (2/2)

[Footnote 64: Cusa.n.u.s: _De Docta Ignorantia_, Bk. II, c. 11-12: ”Centrum igitur mundi, coincideret c.u.m circ.u.mferentiam, nam si centrum haberet et circ.u.mferentiam, et sic intra se haberet suum initium et finem et esset ad aliquid aliud ipse mundus terminatus, et extra mundum esset aluid et locus, quae omnia veritate carent. c.u.m igitur non sit possibile, mundum claudi intra centrum corporale et circ.u.mferentiam, non intelligitur mundus, cuius centrum et circ.u.mferentia sunt Deus: et c.u.m hic non sit mundus infinitus, tamen non potest concipi finitus, c.u.m terminis careat, intra quos claudatur.

Terra igitur, quae centrum esse nequit, motu omni carere non potest, nam eam moveri taliter etiam necesse est, quod per infinitum minus moveri posset. Sicut igitur terra non est centram mundi.... Unde licet terra quasi stella sit, propinquior polo centrali, tamen movetur, et non describit minimum circulum in motu, ut est ostensum.... Terrae igitur figura est mobilis et sphaerica et eius motus circularis, sed perfectior esse posset. Et quia maximum in perfectionibus motibus, et figuris in mundo non est, ut ex iam dictis patent: tunc non est verum quod terra ista sit vilissima et infima, nam quamvis videatur centralior, quo'ad mundum, est tamen etiam, eadem ratione polo propinquior, ut est dictum.” (pp. 38-39).]

[Footnote 65: Riccioli: _Alm. Nov._, II, 292.]

[Footnote 66: Cusa.n.u.s: _Opera_, 549: Excitationum, Lib. VII, ex sermone: _Debitores sumus_: ”Est enim oratio, omnibus creaturis potentior. Nam angeli seu intelligentiae, movent orbes, Solem et stellas: sed oratio potentior, quia impedit motum, sicut oratio Josuae, fecit sistere Solem.”]

[Footnote 67: Di Bruno: 284, 286a; Walsh: _An Early Allusion_, 2-3.]

Copernicus[68] himself was born in Thorn on February 19, 1473,[69]

seven years after that Hansa town founded by the Teutonic Order in 1231 had come under the sway of the king of Poland by the Second Peace of Thorn.[70] His father,[71] Niklas Koppernigk, was a wholesale merchant of Cracow who had removed to Thorn before 1458, married Barbara Watzelrode of an old patrician Thorn family, and there had served as town councillor for nineteen years until his death in 1483.[72] Thereupon his mother's brother, Lucas Watzelrode, later bishop of Ermeland, became his guardian, benefactor and close friend.[73]

[Footnote 68: _Nicolaus Coppernicus_ (Berlin, 1883-4; 3 vol.; Pt. I, Biography, Pt. II, Sources), by Dr. Leopold Prowe gives an exhaustive account of all the known details in regard to Copernicus collected from earlier biographers and tested most painstakingly by the doc.u.mentary evidence Dr. Prowe and his fellow-workers unearthed during a lifetime devoted to this subject. (_Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie._) The ma.n.u.script authority Dr. Prowe cites (Prowe: I, 19-27 and footnotes), requires the double p in Copernicus's name, as Copernicus himself invariably used the two p's in the Latinized form _Coppernic_ without the termination _us_, and usually when this termination was added. Also official records and the letters from his friends usually give the double p; though the name is found in many variants--Koppernig, Copperinck, etc. His signatures in his books, his name in the letter he published in 1509, and the Latin form of it used by his friends all bear testimony to his use of the double p. But custom has for so many centuries sanctioned the simpler spelling, that it seems unwise not to conform in this instance to the time-honored usage.]

[Footnote 69: Prowe: I, 85.]

[Footnote 70: _Ency. Brit._: ”Thorn.”]

[Footnote 71: Prowe: I, 47-53.]

[Footnote 72: These facts would seem to justify the Poles today in claiming Copernicus as their fellow-countryman by right of his father's nationality and that of his native city. Dr. Prowe, however, claims him as a ”Prussian” both because of his long residence in the Prussian-Polish bishopric of Ermeland, and because of Copernicus's own reference to Prussia as ”unser lieber Vaterland.” (Prowe: II, 197.)]

[Footnote 73: Prowe: I, 73-82.]

After the elementary training in the Thorn school,[74] the lad entered the university at Cracow, his father's former home, where he studied under the faculty of arts from 1491-1494.[75] Nowhere else north of the Alps at this time were mathematics and astronomy in better standing than at this university.[76] Sixteen teachers taught these subjects there during the years of Copernicus's stay, but no record exists of his work under any of them.[77] That he must have studied these two sciences there, however, is proved by Rheticus's remark in the _Narratio Prima_[78] that Copernicus, after leaving Cracow, went to Bologna to work with Dominicus Maria di Novara ”non tarn discipulus quam adjutor.” He left Cracow without receiving a degree,[79] returned to Thorn in 1494 when he and his family decided he should enter the Church after first studying in Italy.[80] Consequently he crossed the Alps in 1496 and was that winter matriculated at Bologna in the ”German nation.”[81] The following summer he received word of his appointment to fill a vacancy among the canons of the cathedral chapter at Ermeland where his uncle had been bishop since 1489.[82] He remained in Italy, however, about ten years altogether, studying civil law at Bologna, and canon law and medicine at Padua,[83] yet receiving his degree as doctor of canon law from the university of Ferrara in 1503.[84] He was also in Rome for several months during the Jubilee year, 1500.

[Footnote 74: Ibid: I, 111.]

[Footnote 75: Ibid: I, 124-129.]

[Footnote 76: Ibid: I, 137.]

[Footnote 77: Ibid: I, 141-143.]

[Footnote 78: Rheticus: _Narratio Prima_, 448 (Thorn edit.).]

[Footnote 79: Prowe: I, 154.]

[Footnote 80: Ibid: I, 169.]

[Footnote 81: Ibid: I, 174.]

[Footnote 82: Ibid: I, 175. This insured him an annual income which amounted to a sum equalling about $2250 today. Later he received a sinecure appointment besides at Breslau. (Holden in _Pop. Sci._, 111.)]

[Footnote 83: Prowe: I, 224.]

[Footnote 84: Ibid: I, 308.]

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