How Renaissance Nürnberg became the Scientific Instrument Capital of Europe

This is a writen version of the lecture that I was due to hold at the Science and the City conference in London on 7 April 2020. The conference has for obvious reasons been cancelled and will now take place on the Internet. You can view the revised conference program here.

The title of my piece is, of course, somewhat hyperbolic, as far as I know nobody has ever done a statistical analysis of the manufacture of and trade in scientific instruments in the sixteenth century. However, it is certain that in the period 1450-1550 Nürnberg was one of the leading European centres both the manufacture of and the trade in scientific instruments. Instruments made in Nürnberg in this period can be found in every major collection of historical instruments, ranging from luxury items, usually made for rich patrons, like the column sundial by Christian Heyden (1526–1576) from Hessen-Kassel

Column Sundial by Christian Heyden Source: Museumslandschaft Hessen-Kassel

to cheap everyday instruments like this rare (rare because they seldom survive) paper astrolabe by Georg Hartman (1489–1564) from the MHS in Oxford.

Paper and Wood Astrolabe Hartmann Source: MHS Oxford

I shall be looking at the reasons why and how Nürnberg became such a major centre for scientific instruments around 1500, which surprisingly have very little to do with science and a lot to do with geography, politics and economics.

Like many medieval settlements Nürnberg began simply as a fortification of a prominent rock outcrop overlooking an important crossroads. The first historical mention of that fortification is 1050 CE and there is circumstantial evidence that it was not more than twenty or thirty years old. It seems to have been built in order to set something against the growing power of the Prince Bishopric of Bamberg to the north. As is normal a settlement developed on the downhill slopes from the fortification of people supplying services to it.

A fairly accurate depiction of Nürnberg from the Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493. The castles (by then 3) at the top with the city spreading down the hill. Large parts of the inner city still look like this today

Initially the inhabitants were under the authority of the owner of the fortification a Burggraf or castellan. With time as the settlement grew the inhabitants began to struggle for independence to govern themselves.

In 1200 the inhabitants received a town charter and in 1219 Friedrich II granted the town of Nürnberg a charter as a Free Imperial City. This meant that Nürnberg was an independent city-state, which only owed allegiance to the king or emperor. The charter also stated that because Nürnberg did not possess a navigable river or any natural resources it was granted special tax privileges and customs unions with a number of southern German town and cities. Nürnberg became a trading city. This is where the geography comes into play, remember that important crossroads. If we look at the map below, Nürnberg is the comparatively small red patch in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If your draw a line from Paris to Prague, both big important medieval cities, and a second line from the border with Denmark in Northern Germany down to Venice, Nürnberg sits where the lines cross almost literally in the centre of Europe. Nürnberg also sits in the middle of what was known in the Middle Ages as the Golden Road, the road that connected Prague and Frankfurt, two important imperial cities.

You can also very clearly see Nürnberg’s central position in Europe on Erhard Etzlaub’s  (c. 1460–c. 1531) pilgrimage map of Europe created for the Holy Year of 1500. Nürnberg, Etzlaub’s hometown, is the yellow patch in the middle. Careful, south is at the top.

Over the following decades and centuries the merchant traders of Nürnberg systematically expanded their activities forming more and more customs unions, with the support of various German Emperors, with towns, cities and regions throughout the whole of Europe north of Italy. Nürnberg which traded extensively with the North Italian cities, bringing spices, silk and other eastern wares, up from the Italian trading cities to distribute throughout Europe, had an agreement not to trade with the Mediterranean states in exchange for the Italians not trading north of their northern border.

As Nürnberg grew and became more prosperous, so its political status and position within the German Empire changed and developed. In the beginning, in 1219, the Emperor appointed a civil servant (Schultheis), who was the legal authority in the city and its judge, especially in capital cases. The earliest mention of a town council is 1256 but it can be assumed it started forming earlier. In 1356 the Emperor, Karl IV, issued the Golden Bull at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg. This was effectively a constitution for the Holy Roman Empire that regulated how the Emperor was to be elected and, who was to be appointed as the Seven Prince-electors, three archbishops and four secular rulers. It also stipulated that the first Imperial Diet of a newly elected Emperor was to be held in Nürnberg. This stipulation reflects Nürnberg’s status in the middle of the fourteenth century.

The event is celebrated by the mechanical clock ordered by the town council to be constructed for the Frauenkirche, on the market place in 1506 on the 150^th anniversary of the Golden Bull, which at twelve noon displays the seven Prince-electors circling the Emperor.

Mechanical clock on the Frauenkirche overlooking the market place in Nürnberg. Ordered by the city council in 1506 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the issuing of the Golden Bull at the Imperial Diet in 1356

Over time the city council had taken more and more power from the Schultheis and in 1385 they formally bought the office, integrating it into the councils authority, for 8,000 gulden, a small fortune. In 1424 Emperor, Sigismund appointed Nürnberg the permanent residence of the Reichskleinodien (the Imperial Regalia–crown, orb, sceptre, etc.).

The Imperial Regalia

This raised Nürnberg in the Imperial hierarchy on a level with Frankfurt, where the Emperor was elected, and Aachen, where he was crowned. In 1427, the Hohenzollern family, current holders of the Burggraf title, sold the castle, which was actually a ruin at that time having been burnt to the ground by the Bavarian army, to the town council for 120,000 gulden, a very large fortune. From this point onwards Nürnberg, in the style of Venice, called itself a republic up to 1806 when it was integrated into Bavaria.

In 1500 Nürnberg was the second biggest city in Germany, after Köln, with a population of approximately 40,000, about half of which lived inside the impressive city walls and the other half in the territory surrounding the city, which belonged to it.

Map of the city-state of Nürnberg by Abraham Ortelius 1590. the city itself is to the left just under the middle of the map. Large parts of the forest still exists and I live on the northern edge of it, Dormitz is a neighbouring village to the one where I live.

Small in comparison to the major Italian cities of the period but even today Germany is much more decentralised with its population more evenly distributed than other European countries. It was also one of the richest cities in the whole of Europe.

Nürnberg, Plan by Paul Pfinzing, 1594 Castles in the top left hand corner

Nürnberg’s wealth was based on two factors, trading, in 1500 at least 27 major trade routes ran through Nürnberg, which had over 90 customs unions with cities and regions throughout Europe, and secondly the manufacture of trading goods. It is now time to turn to this second branch of Nürnberg’s wealth but before doing so it is important to note that whereas in other trading centres in Europe individual traders competed with each other, Nürnberg function like a single giant corporation, with the city council as the board of directors, the merchant traders cooperating with each other on all levels for the general good of the city.

In 1363 Nürnberg had more than 1200 trades and crafts masters working in the city. About 14% worked in the food industry, bakes, butchers, etc. About 16% in the textile industry and another 27% working leather. Those working in wood or the building branch make up another 14% but the largest segment with 353 masters consisted of those working in metal, including 16 gold and silver smiths. By 1500 it is estimated that Nürnberg had between 2,000 and 3,000 trades and crafts master that is between 10 and 15 per cent of those living in the city with the metal workers still the biggest segment. The metal workers of Nürnberg produced literally anything that could be made of metal from sewing needles and nails to suits of armour. Nürnberg’s reputation as a producer rested on the quality of its metal wares, which they sold all over Europe and beyond. According to the Venetian accounts books, Nürnberg metal wares were the leading export goods to the orient. To give an idea of the scale of production at the beginning of the 16^th century the knife makers and the sword blade makers (two separate crafts) had a potential production capacity of 80,000 blades a week. The Nürnberger armourers filled an order for armour for 5,000 soldiers for the Holy Roman Emperor, Karl V (1500–1558).

The Nürnberger craftsmen did not only produce goods made of metal but the merchant traders, full blood capitalists, bought into and bought up the metal ore mining industry–iron, copper, zinc, gold and silver–of Middle Europe, and beyond, (in the 16th century they even owned copper mines in Cuba) both to trade in ore and to smelt and trade in metal as well as to ensure adequate supplies for the home production. The council invested heavily in the industry, for example, providing funds for the research and development of the world’s first mechanical wire-pulling mill, which entered production in 1368.

The wirepulling mills of Nürnberg by Albrecht Dürer

Wire was required in large quantities to make chainmail amongst other things. Around 1500 Nürnberg had monopolies in the production of copper ore, and in the trade with steel and iron.  Scientific instruments are also largely made of metal so the Nürnberger gold, silver and copper smiths, and toolmakers also began to manufacture them for the export trade. There was large scale production of compasses, sundials (in particular portable sundials), astronomical quadrants, horary quadrants, torquetum, and astrolabes as well as metal drawing and measuring instruments such as dividers, compasses etc.

The city corporation of Nürnberg had a couple of peculiarities in terms of its governance and the city council that exercised that governance. Firstly the city council was made up exclusively of members of the so-called Patrizier. These were 43 families, who were regarded as founding families of the city all of them were merchant traders. There was a larger body that elected the council but they only gave the nod to a list of the members of the council that was presented to them. Secondly Nürnberg had no trades and crafts guilds, the trades and crafts were controlled by the city council. There was a tight control on what could be produced and an equally tight quality control on everything produced to ensure the high quality of goods that were traded. What would have motivated the council to enter the scientific instrument market, was there a demand here to be filled?

It is difficult to establish why the Nürnberg city corporation entered the scientific instrument market before 1400 but by the middle of the 15^th century they were established in that market. In 1444 the Catholic philosopher, theologian and astronomer Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–1464) bought a copper celestial globe, a torquetum and an astrolabe at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg. These instruments are still preserved in the Cusanus museum in his birthplace, Kues on the Mosel.

The Cusanus Museum in Kue

In fact the demand for scientific instrument rose sharply in the 15^th & 16^th centuries for the following reasons. In 1406 Jacopo d’Angelo produced the first Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia in Florence, reintroducing mathematical cartography into Renaissance Europe. One can trace the spread of the ‘new’ cartography from Florence up through Austria and into Southern Germany during the 15^th century. In the early 16^th century Nürnberg was a major centre for cartography and the production of both terrestrial and celestial globes. One historian of cartography refers to a Viennese-Nürnberger school of mathematical cartography in this period. The availability of the Geographia was also one trigger of a 15^th century renaissance in astronomy one sign of which was the so-called 1^st Viennese School of Mathematics, Georg von Peuerbach (1423–1461) and Regiomontanus (1436–176), in the middle of the century. Regiomontanus moved to Nürnberg in 1471, following a decade wandering around Europe, to carry out his reform of astronomy, according to his own account, because Nürnberg made the best astronomical instruments and had the best communications network. The latter a product of the city’s trading activities. When in Nürnberg, Regiomontanus set up the world’s first scientific publishing house, the production of which was curtailed by his early death.

Another source for the rise in demand for instruments was the rise in interest in astrology. Dedicated chairs for mathematics, which were actually chairs for astrology, were established in the humanist universities of Northern Italy and Krakow in Poland early in the 15^th century and then around 1470 in Ingolstadt. There were close connections between Nürnberg and the Universities of Ingolstadt and Vienna. A number of important early 16th century astrologers lived and worked in Nürnberg.

The second half of the 15^th century saw the start of the so-called age of exploration with ships venturing out of the Iberian peninsular into the Atlantic and down the coast of Africa, a process that peaked with Columbus’ first voyage to America in 1492 and Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India (1497–199). Martin Behaim(1459–1507), son of a Nürnberger cloth trading family and creator of the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, sat on the Portuguese board of navigation, probably, according to David Waters, to attract traders from Nürnberg to invest in the Portuguese voyages of exploration.  This massively increased the demand for navigational instruments.

The Erdapfel–the Behaim terrestial globe Germanische National Museum

Changes in the conduct of wars and in the ownership of land led to a demand for better, more accurate maps and the more accurate determination of boundaries. Both requiring surveying and the instruments needed for surveying. In 1524 Peter Apian (1495–1552) a product of the 2^nd Viennese school of mathematics published his Cosmographia in Ingolstadt, a textbook for astronomy, astrology, cartography and surveying.

The Cosmographia went through more than 30 expanded, updated editions, but all of which, apart from the first, were edited and published by Gemma Frisius (1508–1555) in Louvain. In 1533 in the third edition Gemma Frisius added an appendix Libellus de locorum describendum ratione, the first complete description of triangulation, the central method of cartography and surveying down to the present, which, of course in dependent on scientific instruments.

In 1533 Apian’s Instrumentum Primi Mobilis 

was published in Nürnberg by Johannes Petreius (c. 1497–1550) the leading scientific publisher in Europe, who would go on ten years later to publish, Copernicus’ De revolutionibus, which was a high point in the astronomical revival.

All of this constitutes a clear indication of the steep rise in the demand for scientific instruments in the hundred years between 1450 and 1550; a demand that the metal workers of Nürnberg were more than happy to fill. In the period between Regiomontanus and the middle of the 16^th century Nürnberg also became a home for some of the leading mathematici of the period, mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, cartographers, instrument makers and globe makers almost certainly, like Regiomontanus, at least partially attracted to the city by the quality and availability of the scientific instruments.  Some of them are well known to historians of Renaissance science, Erhard Etzlaub, Johannes Werner, Johannes Stabius (not a resident but a frequent visitor), Georg Hartmann, Johannes Neudörffer and Johannes Schöner.**

There is no doubt that around 1500, Nürnberg was one of the major producers and exporters of scientific instruments and I hope that I have shown above, in what is little more than a sketch of a fairly complex process, that this owed very little to science but much to the general geo-political and economic developments of the first 500 years of the city’s existence.

One of the most beautiful sets on instruments manufactured in Nürnberg late 16th century. Designed by Johannes Pretorius (1537–1616), professor for astronomy at the Nürnberger University of Altdorf and manufactured by the goldsmith Hans Epischofer (c. 1530–1585) Germanische National Museum

 

**for an extensive list of those working in astronomy, mathematics, instrument making in Nürnberg (542 entries) see the history section of the Astronomie in Nürnberg website, created by Dr Hans Gaab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 into 2 does go!

It would of course be totally unethical for me to review a book of which I am one of the authors. However, as my contribution is only six of two-hundred pages, of which three are illustrations, and the book is one that could/would/should interest some (many) of my readers, I’m going to be unethical and review it anyway.

Thinking 3D is an intellectual idea, it is a website, it is exhibitions and other events, it is a book but above all it is two people, whose idea it is: Daryl Green, who was Fellow Librarian of Magdalen College, Oxford and is now Special Collections Librarian of the University of Edinburg and Laura Moretti, who is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. The Thinking 3D idea is the historical investigation of the representation of the three-dimensional world on the two-dimensional page particular, but not exclusively, in print.

The Thinking 3D website explains in great detail what it is all about and contains a full description of the activities that have been carried out. For those quarantined there is a fairly large collection of essays on various topics from the project.

In 2019 Thinking 3D launched a major exhibition with The Bodleian Libraries Oxford as part of the commemorations of the 500^th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Thinking 3D From Leonardo to the Present, which ran from March 2019 to February 2020 and which I have been told was quite exceptional.

As an extension and permanent record of that exhibition Bodleian Libraries published a book, Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present[1], which appeared in autumn 2019. This is both a coffee table book but also, at the same time, a piece of serious academic literature.

The book opens with a long essay by Green and Moretti, The history of thinking 3D in forty books, which delivers exactly what the title says. This is an excellent survey of the topic and it is worth reading the book just for this. However, it does contain one historical error that I, in my alter ego of the HIST_SCI HULK, simply cannot ignore, at least not if I want to maintain my hard won reputation. Having introduced the topic of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus the authors write:

As mentioned above, the oft-published heliocentric diagram, and its theoretical propositions, are what launched this book into infamy (the book was immediately put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books [my emphasis]), but the execution of this relational illustration is simple and reductive.

De revolutionibus was published in 1543 but was first placed on the Index sixty-three years later in 1616 and more importantly, as I wrote very recently, not for the first time, it was placed on the Index until corrected. These corrections, which were fairly minimal, were carried out surprisingly quickly and the book became available to be studied by Catholics already in 1621.

Other than this I noticed no other errors in the highly informative introductory essay, which is followed by an essay from Matthew Landrus, Leonardo da Vinci, 500 years on, which examines Leonardo’s three-dimensional perception of the world and everything in it. It was for me an interesting addition to my previous readings on the Tuscan polymath.

The main body of the book is taken up by sixteen fairly short essays in four categories: Geometry, Astronomy, Architecture and Anatomy.

Geometry starts off with Ken Saito’s presentation of a ninth century manuscript of The Elements of Euclid, where he demonstrates very clearly that the author has no real consistent, methodology for presenting a 3D space on a 2D page.   This is followed by Renzo Baldasso’s essay on Luca Pacioli’s De divina proportione (1509). Here the three dimensional solids are presented perfectly by Pacioli’s friend, colleague and one time pupil Leonardo. We return to Euclid for Yelda Nasifoglu’s investigation of the English translation of The Elements by Henry Billingsley in 1570. This volume is totally fascinating as three-dimensional figures are present as pop-up figure like those that we all know from our children’s books. The geometry section closes with a book that I didn’t know, Max Brückner’s Vielecke und Vielflache (1900) presented by George Hart. This is a vast collection of photographs of paper models of three-dimensional figures, which I learnt also influenced M. C. Escher a master of the third dimension.

Luca Pacioli De divina proportione

 

Karl Galle, Renaissance Mathematicus friend and guest blogger, kicks of the astronomy section with Johannes Kepler’s wonderfully bizarre presentation of the planetary orbits embedded in the five regular Platonic solids from his Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). Yours truly is up next with an account of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (1610) and it’s famous washes of the Moon displaying three-dimension features. Also covered are the later pirate editions that screwed up those illustrations. Stephanie O’Rourke presents one of the most extraordinary nineteenth century astronomy books James Nasmyth’s and James Carpenter’s The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite(1874). This contains stunningly realistic photographic plates of the Moon’s surface but which are not actually real. The two Jameses constructed plaster models that they then lit and photographed to achieve the desired effect. We close the astronomy section with Thinking 3D’s co-chef, Daryl Green, taking on a survey of the surface of Mars with the United Stated Geological Survey, Geological Map of Mars (1978).

Johannes Kepler Mysterium Cosmographicum

Turning our attention to architecture, we travel back to the twelfth century, with Karl Kinsella as our guide, to Richard of St Victor’s In visionen Ezekielis; a wonderfully modern in its presentation but somewhat unique medieval architectural manuscript. The other half of the Thinking 3D team, Laura Moretti now takes us up to the sixteenth century and Sebastiano Serlio’s catalogue of the buildings of Rome (1544), which has an impossibly long Italian title that I’m not going to repeat here. We remain in the sixteenth century for Jacques Androuet du Cerceau’s Le premier [et second] volume des plus excellent bastiment de France (1576–9), where our guide is Frédérique Lemerle. Moving forward a century we close out the architecture section with Francesco Marcorin introducing us to Hans Vredeman de Vries’s absolutely stunning Perspective (1604–5).

Hans Vredeman de Vries Perspective

It would not be too difficult to guess that the anatomy section opens with one of the greatest medical books of all time, Andreas Vesalius’ De fabrica but not with the full version but the shorter (cheaper?) De humani corporis fabrica libroum epitome, like the full version published in 1543 in Basel. Our guide to Vesalius’ masterpiece is Mark Samos. Camilla Røstvik introduces us to William Hunter’s The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774), as she makes very clear a milestone in the study of women’s bodies with its revolutionary and controversial study of the pregnant body. For me this essay was a high point in a collection of truly excellent essays. We stay in the eighteenth century for Jacques Fabien Gautier D’Agoty’s Exposition anatomique des organes des sens (1775). Dániel Margócsy present a fascinating guide to the controversial work of this pioneer of colour printing. Anatomy, and the book as a whole, closes with Denis Pellerin’s essay on Arthur Thomson’s Anatomy of the Human Eye (1912). Thomson’s book was accompanied by a collection of stereoscopic images of the anatomy of the eye together with a stereoscope with which to view the 3D images thus created; a nineteenth century technology that was already dying out when Thomson published his work.

William Hunter The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus

The book closes with a bibliography of five books for further reading for each essay, brief biography of each of the authors, a glossary of technical terms and a good general index. All sixteen of the essays are short, informative, light to read, easily accessible introductions to the volumes that they present and maintain a high academic quality throughout the entire book.

I said at the outset that this is also a coffee table book and that was not meant negatively. It measures 24X26 cm and is printed on environmentally friendly, high gloss paper. The typeface is attractive and light on the eyes and the illustrations are, as is to be expected for a book about the history of book illustration, spectacularly beautiful. The publishing team of the Bodleian Libraries are to be congratulated on an excellent publication. If you leave this on your coffee table then your visitors will soon be leafing though it admiring the pictures, whether they are interested in book history or not. I don’t usually mention the price of books that I review but at £35 this beautifully presented and wonderfully informative volume is very good value for money.

[1] Thinking 3D: Books, Images and Ideas from Leonardo to the Present, edited by Daryl Green and Laura Moretti, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2019.

The emergence of modern astronomy – a complex mosaic: Part XXXII

In the seventeenth century large parts of Europe were still Catholic; in 1616 the Catholic Church had placed De revolutionibus and all other texts promoting a heliocentric world-view on the Index of Forbidden Books and in 1632 they added Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems), so the question arises, how was knowledge of the heliocentric model disseminated? The answer is, somewhat surprisingly, that the dissemination of the heliocentric hypothesis was, even in Catholic countries, widespread and through diverse channels.

First off, although De revolutionibus was placed on the Index in 1616, it was only placed there until corrected. In fact, somewhat against the norm, it was actually corrected surprisingly quickly and, with a few rather minor changes, became freely available again for Catholic scholars by 1621. The astronomers within the Church had been able to convince the theologians of the importance of Copernicus’ work as an astronomy book even if one rejected the truth of the heliocentric hypothesis. The only changes were that any statements of the factual truth of the hypothesis were removed, so anybody with a censured copy could quite happily think those statements back into place for himself.

The Lutheran Protestant Church also rejected the heliocentric hypothesis but never formally banned it in anyway. In fact, from very early on, the astronomers and mathematicians at the Lutheran universities had begun teaching Copernicus’ work as a purely mathematical, instrumentalist thesis, whilst rejecting it as a true account of the cosmos. It was used, for example, by Erasmus Reinhold (1511–1553) using Copernicus’ data and mathematical models to calculate the Prutenicae Tabulae (1551), without however committing to heliocentricity. They maintained this instrumentalist approach throughout the seventeenth century utilising the most up to date books as they became available, without crediting the hypothesis with any truth. From about 1630 onwards, Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (3 Vols. 1617–1621) and his Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627) became the leading textbooks for teaching the heliocentric hypothesis. The latter was used both sides of the religious divide because it was quite simply vastly superior in its accuracy to any other volume of planetary tables on the market.

However, the mainstream pro heliocentricity texts were not the only published sources spreading the information of the heliocentric hypothesis and making the information available across Europe. One, perhaps surprising, source was the yearly astrological almanacs.

These annual pamphlets or booklets contained the astronomical and astrological data for the coming year, phases of the moon, hours of sunlight, any eclipse or planetary conjunctions etc. They also included basic horoscopes for the year covering political developments, weather forecasts, health issues and whatever. These were immensely popular and printed on cheap paper and not bound were reasonably cheap, so they sold in comparatively vast numbers, having much larger editions than any printed books. The market was fiercely contested so to make sure that their product was preferred by the potential customers, who came from all levels of society, the authors and/or publishers included editorials covering a wide range of topic. These editorials often contained medical issues but in the seventeenth century they also often contained popular expositions of the heliocentric hypothesis. Given the widespread consume of these publications it meant that basic knowledge of heliocentricity reached a large audience.

Another important source for the dissemination of the heliocentric hypothesis was in the writings of some of those who, nominally at least, opposed it. I will now take a brief look at two of those authors the Italian, Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and physicist Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671) and the French, priest, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) both of whom were highly influential and widely read scholars in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Pierre Gassendi is one of those figures in the history of science, who deserve to be better known than they are. Well known to historians of science and philosophy he remains largely unknown to those outside those disciplines. He was a central figure in the intellectual life of Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century part of the philosophical circle in Paris that included René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Baptiste Morin amongst others. He also travelled to Holland and made the acquaintance of Isaac Beeckman. Probably his most important contribution to the evolution of science was his attempt to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christian theology.

Pierre Gassendi after Louis-Édouard Rioult. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Throughout his life he actively promoted the work of both Kepler and Galileo. He wrote and published a biography of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), his patron, an astronomer and another supporter of the works of Galileo.  Shortly before the end of his life he published a collective biography of Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, Georg von Peuerbach and Johannes Regiomontanus: Tychonis Brahei, equitis Dani, astronomorum Coryphaei, vita; accessit Nicolai Copernici; Georgii Peurbachii, et Joannis Regiomontani, astronomorum celebrium vita (1654).

In 1645 Gassendi was appointed professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris and during his time there he wrote and published an astronomy textbook presenting both the Tychonic and heliocentric astronomical systems, Institvtio astronomica, iuxta hypothesis tam vetervm, qvam Copernici, et Tychonis. Dictata à Petro Gassendo … Eivsdem oratio inauguralis iteratò edita (1647).

Although, as a Catholic priest, he presented the Tychonic system as the correct one his treatment of heliocentricity was detailed, thorough and very sympathetic. Perhaps somewhat too sympathetic, as it led to him being investigated by the Inquisition, who however gave him a clean bill of health. Because of his excellent reputation his book was read widely and acted as a major source for the dissemination of the heliocentric hypothesis.

Like Gassendi, Riccioli was an important and influential figure in seventeenth century science. From 1636 he was professor in Bologna where did much important work in astronomy and physics as well as being the teacher of Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712), who we will meet later in this series.

Riccioli as portrayed in the 1742 Atlas Coelestis (plate 3) of Johann Gabriel Doppelmayer. Source: Wikimedia Commons

He is perhaps best known for his pioneering selenology together with his former student, Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663), which provided the nomenclature system for the moons geological features still in use today.  As stated earlier it was Riccioli, who provided the necessary empirical proof of Galileo’s laws of fall. He also hypothesised the existence of, what later became known as the Coriolis effect, if the Earth did in fact rotate.

If a ball is fired along a Meridian toward the pole (rather than toward the East or West), diurnal motion will cause the ball to be carried off [that is, the trajectory of the ball will be deflected], all things being equal: for on parallels of latitude nearer the poles, the ground moves more slowly, whereas on parallels nearer the equator, the ground moves more rapidly.

Having failed to detect it, it does exist but is too small to be measured using the methods available to Riccioli, he concluded that the Earth does not in fact rotate.

This was just one of many arguments pro and contra the heliocentric hypothesis that Riccioli presented in his Almagestum novum astronomiam veterem novamque complectens observationibus aliorum et propriis novisque theorematibus, problematibus ac tabulis promotam (Vol. I–III, 1651), a vast astronomical encyclopaedia that became a standard astronomical textbook throughout Europe. Although Riccioli rejected the heliocentric hypothesis his very detailed and thorough analysis of it with all its strengths and weaknesses meant that his book became a major source for those wishing to learn about it.

Frontispiece of Riccioli’s 1651 New Almagest. Source: Wikimedia Commons

This famous frontispiece shows a semi-Tychonic system being weighed against a heliocentric system and being found more substantial. Ptolemaeus lies on the ground under the scales obviously defeated but he is saying “I will rise again”.

As we have seen, although not provable at that stage and nominally banned by the Catholic Church, information on and details of the heliocentric hypothesis were widespread and easily accessible throughout the seventeenth century from multiple sources and thus knowledge of it and interest in it continued to spread throughout the century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The emergence of modern astronomy – a complex mosaic: Part XXI

A widespread myth in the popular history of astronomy is that Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was the first or even the only astronomer to realise the potential of the newly invented telescope as an instrument for astronomy. This perception is very far from the truth. He was just one of a group of investigator, who realised the telescopes potential and all of the discoveries traditionally attributed to Galileo were actually made contemporaneously by several people, who full of curiosity pointed their primitive new instruments at the night skies. So why does Galileo usually get all of the credit? Quite simply, he was the first to publish.

Galileo’s “cannocchiali” telescopes at the Museo Galileo, Florence

Starting in the middle of 1609 various astronomers began pointing primitive Dutch telescopes at the night skies, Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) and his friend and student William Lower (1570–1615) in Britain, Simon Marius (1573–1625) in Ansbach, Johannes Fabricius (1587–1616) in Frisia, Odo van Maelcote (1572–1615) and Giovanni Paolo Lembo (1570–1618) in Rome, Christoph Scheiner (1573 or 1575–1650) in Ingolstadt and of course Galileo in Padua. As far as we can ascertain Thomas Harriot was the first and the order in which the others took up the chase is almost impossible to determine and also irrelevant, as it was who was first to publish that really matters and that was, as already stated, Galileo.

Harriot made a simple two-dimensional telescopic sketch of the moon in the middle of 1609.

Thomas Harriot’s initial telescopic sketch of the moon from 1609 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Both Galileo and Simon Marius started making telescopic astronomical observations sometime late in the same year. At the beginning Galileo wrote his observation logbook in his Tuscan dialect and then on 7 January 1610 he made the discovery that would make him famous, his first observation of three of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter.

It was on this page that Galileo first noted an observation of the moons of Jupiter. This observation upset the notion that all celestial bodies must revolve around the Earth. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Galileo realised at once that he had hit the jackpot and immediately changed to writing his observations in Latin in preparation for a publication. Simon Marius, who made the same discovery just one day later, didn’t make any preparations for immediate publication. Galileo kept on making his observations and collecting material for his publication and then on 12 March 1610, just two months after he first saw the Jupiter moons, his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger of Starry Message, the original Latin is ambiguous) was published in Padua but dedicated to Cosimo II de Medici, Fourth Grand Duke of Tuscany. Galileo had already negotiated with the court in Florence about the naming of the moons; he named them the Medicean Stars thus taking his first step in turning his discovery into personal advancement.

Title page of Sidereus nuncius, 1610, by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). *IC6.G1333.610s, Houghton Library, Harvard University Source: Wikimedia Commons

What exactly did Galileo discover with his telescope, who else made the same discoveries and what effect did they have on the ongoing astronomical/cosmological debate? We can start by stating quite categorically that the initial discoveries that Galileo published in his Sidereus Nuncius neither proved the heliocentric hypothesis nor did they refute the geocentric one,

The first discovery that the Sidereus Nuncius contains is that viewed through the telescope many more stars are visible than to the naked-eye. This was already known to those, who took part in Lipperhey’s first ever public demonstration of the telescope in Den Haag in September 1608 and to all, who subsequently pointed a telescope of any sort at the night sky. This played absolutely no role in the astronomical/cosmological debate but was worrying for the theologians. Christianity in general had accepted both astronomy and astrology, as long as the latter was not interpreted deterministically, because the Bible says  “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:” (Gen 1:14). If the lights in the heavens are signs from God to be interpreted by humanity, what use are signs that can only be seen with a telescope?

Next up we have the fact that some of the nebulae, indistinct clouds of light in the heavens, when viewed with a telescope resolved into dense groups of stars. Nebulae had never played a major role in Western astronomy, so this discovery whilst interesting did not play a major role in the contemporary debate. Simon Marius made the first telescopic observations of the Andromeda nebula, which was unknown to Ptolemaeus, but which had already been described by the Persian astronomer, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (903–986), usually referred to simply as Al Sufi. It is historically interesting because the Andromeda nebula was the first galaxy to be recognised outside of the Milky Way.

Al Sufi’s drawing of the constellation Fish with the Andromeda nebula in fount of it mouth

Galileo’s next discovery was that the moon was not smooth and perfect, as required of all celestial bodies by Aristotelian cosmology, but had geological feature, mountains and valleys, just like the earth i.e. the surface was three-dimensional and not two-dimensional, as Harriot had sketched it. This perception of Galileo’s is attributed to the fact that he was a trained painter used to creating light and shadows in paintings and he thus recognised that what he was seeing on the moons surface was indeed shadows cast by mountains.

As soon as he read the Sidereus Nuncius, Harriot recognised that Galileo was correct and he went on to produce the first real telescopic map of the moon.

Thomas Harriot’s 1611 telescopic map of the moon Source: Wikimedia Commons

Galileo’s own washes of the moon, the most famous illustrations in the Sidereus Nuncius, are in fact studies to illustrate his arguments and not accurate illustrations of what he saw.

Galileo’s sketches of the Moon from Sidereus Nuncius. Source: Wikimedia Commons

That the moon was earth like and for some that the well-known markings on the moon, the man in the moon etc., are in fact a mountainous landscape was a view held by various in antiquity, such as Thales, Orpheus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Pythagoras, Philolaus, Plutarch and Lucian. In particular Plutarch (c. 46–c. 120 CE) in his On the Face of the Moon in his Moralia, having dismissed other theories including Aristotle’s wrote:

Just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive, one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Herakles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs, so those features are depths and hollows of the Moon. The largest of them is called “Hecate’s Recess,” where the souls suffer and extract penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become spirits; and the two long ones are called “the Gates,” for through them pass the souls now to the side of the Moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces Earth. The side of the Moon towards heaven is named “Elysian plain,” the hither side, “House of counter-terrestrial Persephone.”

So Galileo’s discovery was not so sensational, as it is often presented. However, the earth-like, and not smooth and perfect, appearance of the moon was yet another hole torn in the fabric of Aristotelian cosmology.

Of course the major sensation in the Sidereus Nuncius was the discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter.

Galileo’s drawings of Jupiter and its Medicean Stars from Sidereus Nuncius. Image courtesy of the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. Source: Wikimedia Commons

This contradicted the major premise of Aristotelian cosmology that all of the celestial bodies revolved around a common centre, his homo-centricity.  It also added a small modicum of support to a heliocentric cosmology, which had suffered from the criticism, if all the celestial bodies revolve around the sun, why does the moon continue to revolve around the earth. Now Jupiter had not just one but four moons, or satellites as Johannes Kepler called them, so the earth was no longer alone in having a moon. As already stated above Simon Marius discovered the moons of Jupiter just one day later than Galileo but he didn’t publish his discovery until 1614. A delay that would later bring him a charge of plagiarism from Galileo and ruin his reputation, which was first restored at the end of the nineteenth century when an investigation of the respective observation data showed that Marius’ observations were independent of those of Galileo.

The publication of the Sidereus Nuncius was an absolute sensation and the book quickly sold out. Galileo went, almost literally overnight, from being a virtually unknown, middle aged, Northern Italian, professor of mathematics to the most celebrated astronomer in the whole of Europe. However, not everybody celebrated or accepted the truth of his discoveries and that not without reason. Firstly, any new scientific discovery needs to be confirmed independently by other. If Simon Marius had also published early in 1610 things might have been different but he, for whatever reasons, didn’t publish his Mundus Jovialis (The World of Jupiter) until 1614. Secondly there was no scientific explanation available that explained how a telescope functioned, so how did anyone know that what Galileo and others were observing was real? Thirdly, and this is a very important point that often gets ignored, the early telescopes were very, very poor quality suffering from all sorts of imperfections and distortions and it is almost a miracle that Galileo et al discovered anything with these extremely primitive instruments.

As I stated in the last episode, the second problem was solved by Johannes Kepler in 1611 with the publication of his Dioptrice.

A book that Galileo, always rather arrogant, dismissed as unreadable. This was his triumph and nobody else was going to muscle in on his glory. The third problem was one that only time and improvements in both glass making and the grinding and polishing of lenses would solve. In the intervening years there were numerous cases of new astronomical discoveries that turned out to be artefacts produced by poor quality instruments.

The first problem was the major hurdle that Galileo had to take if he wanted his discoveries to be taken seriously. Upon hearing of Galileo discoveries, Johannes Kepler in Prague immediately put pen to paper and fired off a pamphlet, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (Conversation with the Starry Messenger) congratulating Galileo, welcoming his discoveries and stating his belief in their correctness, which he sent off to Italy. Galileo immediately printed and distributed a pirate copy of Kepler’s work, without even bothering to ask permission, it was after all a confirmation from the Imperial Mathematicus and Kepler’s reputation at this time was considerably bigger than Galileo’s.

A reprint of Kepler’s letter to Galileo, originally issued in Prague in 1610

However, Kepler’s confirmations were based on faith and not personal confirmatory observations, so they didn’t really solve Galileo’s central problem. Help came in the end from the Jesuit astronomers of the Collegio Romano.

Odo van Maelcote and Giovanni Paolo Lembo had already been making telescopic astronomical observations before the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius. Galileo also enjoyed good relations with Christoph Clavius (1538–1612), the founder and head of the school of mathematics at the Collegio Romano, who had been instrumental in helping Galileo to obtain the professorship in Padua. Under the direction of Christoph Grienberger (1561–1636), soon to be Clavius’ successor as professor for mathematics at the Collegio, the Jesuit astronomers set about trying to confirm all of Galileo’s discoveries. This proved more than somewhat difficult, as they were unable, even with Galileo’s assistance via correspondence, to produce an instrument of sufficient quality to observe the moons of Jupiter. In the end Antonio Santini (1577–1662), a mathematician from Venice, succeeded in producing a telescope of sufficient quality for the task, confirmed for himself the existence of the Jupiter moons and then sent a telescope to the Collegio Romano, where the Jesuit astronomers were now also able to confirm all of Galileo’s discovery. Galileo could not have wished for a better confirmation of his efforts, nobody was going to doubt the word of the Jesuits.

In March 1611 Galileo travelled to Rome, where the Jesuits staged a banquet in his honour at which Odo van Maelcote held an oration to the Tuscan astronomer. Galileo’s strategy of dedicating the Sidereus Nuncius to Cosimo de Medici and naming the four moons the Medicean Stars paid off and he was appointed court mathematicus and philosophicus in Florence and professor of mathematics at the university without any teaching obligations; Galileo had arrived at the top of the greasy pole but what goes up must, as we will see, come down.

 

 

 

 

The emergence of modern astronomy – a complex mosaic: Part XI

Despite the high level of anticipation De revolutionibus cannot be in anyway described as hitting the streets running; it was more a case of dribbling out very slowly into the public awareness. There are several reasons for this. Today there is a well-oiled machine, which goes into operations when an important new book is published. Book reviews and adverts in the relevant journals and newspapers, books delivered in advance to bookshops all over the country, radio and television interviews with the author and so on.

Absolutely none of this apparatus existed in anyway in the fifteenth century. There were no journals or newspapers, where reviews and adverts could be published. Information about a new publication was distributed over the academic grapevine by mail; the grapevine was quite efficient with scholars communicating with each other throughout Europe but the mail system wasn’t. Letters often took months and quite often never arrived at all. There were no bookstores, as we know them today and no book distribution network. Petreius had a stall on the local market place but he probably would not have sold many copies of De revolutionibus in Nürnberg itself.

A 19th century painting of the Nürnberg market place

In this context it is interesting that the town library doesn’t own a copy of the 1^st edition. For other sales, other than by mail, Petreius would have transported copies of the book packed into barrels to the annual fairs in Leipzig and Frankfurt, where, as well as private customers, other printer publishers would buy copies of the book to take back to their home towns to supplement their own production for their local customers. The Leipzig fair took place at Easter and in autumn, the Frankfurt fair only in autumn. Easter 1543 was in April so the distribution of De revolutionibus only really began in the autumn of that year.

Frankfurt Book Fair 1500

The next factors that slowed the reception of De revolutionibus were the price and the content. As a large book with a complex mathematical content with lots of tables and diagrams, De revolutionibus was a very expensive book putting it outside of the financial range of students or anybody without a substantial income or private fortune. A first edition bought by the astrologer Valentin Engelhart (1516-1562) in 1545 cost 1 florin = 12 groschen. A students university matriculation fees at this time cost between 6 and 10 groschens. It is indicative that Kepler could only afford to acquire a second hand copy. Owen Gingerich speculates that the high cost of the book is the reason for the comparatively high survival of copies, Gingerich estimates about fifty per cent. It was very expensive so people took good care of it. The high price and the complex contents very much limited potential sales.

De Revolutionibus woodcut of the heliocentric cosmos Source: Latin Wikisource

In terms of content this was a major, heavy duty, large-scale mathematical text and not in anyway something for the casual reader, no mater how well read. Copernicus’ Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur was meant very seriously. This suggests that the potential circle of purchasers was fairly strictly limited to the comparatively small group of mathematical astronomers, who would be capable of reading and understanding Copernicus’ masterpiece. Given his record in the field of mathematical and astronomical/astrological publishing Petreius naturally already had a group of customers to whom he could offer his latest coup in this genre, otherwise he probably would not have published De revolutionibus. However, even if he could get this very specialist book to its specialist group of readers, they would require a comparatively long time to read, work through and digest its complex contents. The earliest known published reaction to De revolutionibus was Gemma Frisius’ De radio astronomico et geometrico a booklet of a multipurpose astronomical and geometrical instrument published in 1545 two years after Copernicus’ volume.

De radio astronomico et geometrico 

Here at this comparatively early point Frisius, who knew of Copernicus’ hypothesis through the Narratio Prima and and had been invited by Dantiscus, Prince-Bishop of Frombork, one of his patrons, to come to Frombork and work with Copernicus, displays a very cautious attitude towards the new heliocentric astronomy although he is very critical towards Ptolemaeus’ work.

Johannes Dantiscus Source: Wikimedia Commons

Given that the main purpose of astronomy was, at this time, still to provide astronomical data for astrology, navigation and cartography many of those potentially interested in the new astronomy were waiting for new planetary tables and ephemerides before passing judgement. The earliest planetary tables, the Tabulae prutenicae (Prutenic Tables) based on De revolutionibus, but not exclusively, were produced by the professor for the higher mathematics (music and astronomy) at Wittenberg Erasmus Reinhold (1511–1553) and first published in 1551.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

These tables were financed by Albrecht I, Duke of Prussia hence the name Prutenic i.e. Prussia.

Albrecht, Duke of Prussia portrait by Lucas Cranach the elder Source: Wikimedia Commons

Interestingly Reinhold was not a supporter of heliocentricity. Ephemerides based on the Prutenic Tables were produced in the Netherlands by Johannes Stadius (1527–1579) a pupil of Gemma Frisius in 1554 with an introductory letter by his old teacher.

Johannes Stadius Source: Wikimedia Commons

A second set of ephemerides, also based on the Prutenic Tables, were produced in England by John Feild (c. 1525–1587), a pupil of John Dee (1527–1608) in 1557. Dee was another pupil of Gemma Frisius, so this might be a case of the academic grapevine in operation. These tables and ephemerides played an important roll in spreading awareness of the new heliocentric hypothesis.

Whereas with a modern publication reception will probably be judged in terms of months or even weeks for a popular book and a few years for a serious academic title; looking at De revolutionibus to judge its reception we really need to cover the sixty plus years following its publication up to the invention of the telescope, the next major game changer in astronomy.

There is a popular misconception that that reception can be quantified in terms of those for and those against the heliocentric hypothesis. This is very much not the case. As I tried to make clear at the beginning of this series the sixteenth century was very much characterised by very lively debates on various aspects of astronomy–the nature, status and significance of comet, a lively revival of the Aristotelian homocentric spheres model of the cosmos and a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of the available astronomical data. There were small smouldering fires of debate everywhere within the European astronomical community, Copernicus’ De revolutionibus turned them into a raging bush fire; the reactions to its publication were multifaceted and the suggested changes it provoked were wide-ranging and highly diverse. It would be more than a hundred years before the smoke cleared and a general consensus could be found within the astronomical community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The emergence of modern astronomy – a complex mosaic: Part IX

In 1542 the manuscript of De revolutionibus arrived at Petreius’ printing office in Nürnberg followed by Rheticus who intended to see it through the press. I argued in Part VII that Johannes Petreius had in fact commissioned Rheticus to see if Copernicus had written anything substantial on his astronomical theories and if so to persuade him to allow Petreius to publish it. Petreius’ printing office was certainly the right address for the publication of a major new work on astronomy, as he was certainly the leading scientific publisher–astrology, astronomy, mathematics–in the Holy Roman Empire of German States and probably the whole of Europe but who was Johannes Petreius?

The Petreius printing office in Nürnberg Photo by the author

He was born Hans Peter, whereby Peter is the family name, into a family of wealthy farmers in the Lower Franconia village of Langendorf near Hammelburg in 1496 or 1497. He matriculated at the university of Basel in 1512, graduating BA in 1515 and MA in 1517. He next appears as a witness in a court case in Basel in 1519, where he is described, as working as a proofreader for the Basler printer publisher Adam Petri. This explains why he had chosen to study in Basel, as Adam Petri was his uncle. Petri is the Swizz German version of the name Peter. Presumably, having learnt the black art, as printing was known, from his uncle he moved to Nürnberg in 1523 and set up his own printing office. The was almost certainly an attempt by the Peter family to cash in on the gradual collapse of the Koberger printing office following the death of Aton Koberger in 1513. The Petri-Froben-Amerbach printing cooperative had been Koberger’s licensees in Basel, printing his titles on commission.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hans Peter now sporting the Latinised name, Johannes Petreius, succeeded in establishing himself against the local competition and by 1535 was the leading printer publisher in Nürnberg. Like most other printer publishers Petreius’ main stock in trade was printing religious volumes but in the 1530s he began to specialise in printing scientific texts. Exactly why he chose to follow this business path is not known but it was probably the ready availability of the large number of mathematical, astrological and astronomical manuscripts brought to Nürnberg by Regiomontanus when he set up his own printing office in 1471. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that several of Petreius’ earliest scientific publications were all of manuscripts from this collection, all of which were edited for publication by Johannes Schöner, who would later be the addressee of Rheticus’ Narratio  Prima.

This series of publications started with Schöner’s edition of Regiomontanus’ own De Triangulis in 1533, a very important work in the history of trigonometry. This was also one of the volumes that Rheticus took with him to Frombork, as a present for Copernicus.

Source:

Schöner followed this with Regiomontanus’ Tabulae astronomicaein 1536. Petreius’ activities in the area were not however restricted to Schöner’s output. Earlier he published the first Greek edition of Ptolemaeus’ Tetrabiblos, under the title Astrologica, edited by Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), which included Camerarius’ translation into Latin of Books I & II and partial translations of Books III & IV together with his notes on Books I & II and the Greek text of the Centiloquium, a collection of one hundred astrological aphorism falsely attributed to Ptolemaeus, with a Latin translation by Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503).

Opening chapter of the first printed edition of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, transcribed into Greek and Latin by Joachim Camerarius (Nuremberg, 1535). Source: Wikimedia Commons

A year earlier Petreius had published Johann Carion’s Practica new – auffs 1532 mit einer auslegung des gesehen cometen. Through these publications it is clear that the principle interest is in astrology and it is here that money was to be made. Over the next twenty plus years Petreius published more texts from Regiomontanus edited by Schöner, some of Schöner’s own works on astronomy and cartography, reckoning and algebra books from Christoph Rudolff  (c. 1500–before 1543) and Michael Stifel (1487–1567). Various scientific texts edited by Peter Apian including his and Georg Tannstetter’s edition of Witelo’s Perspectiva (1535), another of the volumes that Rheticus took with him to Frombork for Copernicus. Various Arabic astrological texts, the Tractatus astrologicae (1540) of Lucas Gauricus (1575–1558), who along with Schöner and Cardano was one of the most important astrologers of the first half of the sixteenth century. Petreius became the publisher of Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) north of the Alps, publishing his works on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, astrology and philosophy, all of which were highly successful.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

He also published alchemical works from Abū Muḥammad Jābir ibn Aflaḥ better known in the West as Geber. As well as all this, Petreius commissioned and published the first German translation of Vitruvius’ De architectura, a bible for Renaissance artist-engineers.

Petreius’ scientific catalogue was very wide but also had depth, including as it did various classics by Regiomontanus, Schöner, Stifel, Cardano and Witelo. If anybody could adequately present Copernicus’ masterpiece to the world then it was Johannes Petreius.

Rheticus had originally intended seeing Copernicus’ manuscript through the press but Philipp Melanchthon had other plans for his errant protégée. In the meantime Rheticus had, at the request of Joachim Camerarius, who was now rector of the University of Leipzig and had obviously been impressed by Rheticus during their meeting in Tübingen, been offered a chair in mathematics at Leipzig.

Joachim Camerarius, 18th-century engraving by Johann Jacob Haid. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the autumn of 1542 Rheticus, under pressure from Melanchthon, left Nürnberg and preceded to Leipzig, where he was appointed professor of higher mathematics i.e. astronomy and music and his direct involvement in De revolutionibus came to an end. Petreius still needed an editor to see Copernicus’ weighty tome through the press and this duty was taken over, with serious consequences by Nürnberg’s Lutheran Protestant preacher, Andreas Osiander (1496 or 1498–1552).

Andreas Osiander portrait by Georg Pencz Source: Wikimedia Commons

Osiander was born in the small town of Gunzenhausen to the south of Nürnberg, the son of Endres Osiander a smith and Anna Herzog. His father was also a local councillor who later became mayor. He matriculated at the University of Ingolstadt in 1515 where he, amongst other things, studied Hebrew under the great humanist scholar and great uncle of Melanchthon, Johannes Reuchlin. In 1520 he was ordained a priest and called to Nürnberg to teach Hebrew at the Augustinian Cloister, a hot bed of reformatory debate, where he also became a reformer. In 1522 he as appointed preacher at the St Lorenz church and became a leading voice for religious reform. Osiander achieved much influence and power in Nürnberg when the city-state became the very first Lutheran Protestant state.

Osiander first became involved with Petreius when the latter started publishing his religious polemics. Petreius also published numerous religious works by both Luther and Melanchthon. Where or how Osiander developed his interest and facility in the mathematical sciences is simply not know but they are attested to by Cardano in the preface to one of his books published by Petreius. In fact it was Osiander, who was responsible for the correspondence between Cardano and the Petreius printing office and he edited Cardano’s books there. When or how Osiander became an editor for Petreius is also not known. In his capacity as editor of De revolutionibus Osiander committed what many have as one of the greatest intellectual crimes in the history of science, he added the infamous ad lectorum, an address to the reader with which the book opens.

Latin Wikisource

The ad lectorum is an essay that it pays to read in full but here we will just consider the salient points, Osiander writes:

There have already been widespread reports about the new novel hypothesis of this work, which declares that the earth moves whereas the sun is at rest in the centre of the universe.

Here Osiander lets us know that knowledge of Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis was already widespread–spread by the Commentariolus, the Narratio Prima and by rumour–indicating that there was going to be a high level of expectancy to learn the mathematical details of the system. He goes on:

Hence certain scholars, I have no doubt, are deeply offended and believe that the liberal arts, which were established long ago on a sound basis, should not be thrown in confusion.

Anticipating criticism from conservative circles Osiander goes into defensive mode:

But if these men are willing to examine the matter closely, they will find that the author has done nothing that is blameworthy. For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study. Then he must conceive and devise the causes of these motions or hypotheses about them. Since he cannot in any way attain to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of geometry for the future as well as the past.

Here we have the crux of Osiander’s defence. Astronomers are here to produce geometrical models in order to provide accurate predictions of celestial motions and not to determine the unobtainable true causes of those motions. This argument has been dubbed instrumentalist and some hail Osiander as the first instrumentalist philosopher of science. Instrumentalism is a metaphysical attitude to scientific theories that enjoyed a lot of popularity in modern physics in the twentieth century; it doesn’t matter if the models we use describe reality, all that matters in that they predict the correct numerical results. Osiander expands on this viewpoint:

For these hypotheses need not be true or even probable. On the contrary, if they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough.

Here we have the core of why the ad lectorum caused so much outrage over the centuries. Osiander is stating very clearly that the mathematical models of astronomers are useful for predictive purposes but not for describing reality. A view that was fairly commonplace over the centuries amongst those concerned with the subject. Copernicus, however, very clearly deviates from the norm in De revolutionibus in that he presents his heliocentric system as a real model of the cosmos. Osiander’s ad lectorum stands in clear contradiction to Copernicus’ intentions. Osiander then goes into more detail illustrating his standpoint before closing his argument as follows:

…the astronomer will take as his first choice that hypothesis which is easiest to grasp. The philosopher will perhaps rather seek the semblance of the truth. But neither of them will understand or state anything certain, unless it has been divinely revealed to him.

Here we have Osiander restating the standard scholastic division of responsibilities, astronomers provide mathematical models to deliver accurate predictions of celestial motions for use by others, philosophers attempt to provide explanatory models of those motions but truth can only be delivered by divine revelation. The modern astronomy, whose gradual emergence we are tracing had to break down this division of responsibilities in order to become accepted as we shall see in later episodes. Osiander closes with a friendly appeal to the reader to permit the new hypotheses but not to take them too seriously, and thereby make a fool of himself.

Therefore alongside the ancient hypotheses, which are no more probable, let us permit these new hypotheses also the become known, especially since they are admirable as well as simple and bring with them a huge treasure of very skilful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than he entered it. Farewell.

There is a widespread belief that Osiander somehow smuggled his ad lectorum into De revolutionibus without the knowledge of either Copernicus or Petreius but the historical evidence speaks against this. There are surviving fragments of a correspondence between Osiander and Copernicus that make it clear that Osiander discussed the stratagem of presenting De revolutionibus as a hypothesis rather that fact with him; although we don’t know how or even if Copernicus reacted to this suggestion. More telling is the situation between Petreius and Osiander.

There is absolutely no way that Osiander could have added the ad lectorum without Petreius’ knowledge. This is supported by subsequent events. When the book appeared Tiedemann Giese was outraged by the presence of the ad lectorum and wrote a letter to the city council of Nürnberg demanding that it be removed and the book reissued without this blemish. The council consulted Petreius on the subject and he let them know in no uncertain terms that it was his book and what he put in it was his business and nobody else’s.

Petreius’ reaction illustrates an important point that modern commentators often overlook. Our concept of copyright didn’t exist in the sixteenth century, the rights to a publish work in general lay with the publisher and not the author. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that when a publication provoked the ire of the authorities, civil or clerical, it was the printer publisher, who first landed before the court and then in goal rather than the author.

The ad lectorum was anonym but any reader, who was paying attention should have realised through the phrasing that Copernicus was not the author. The Nürnberger astronomer and instrument maker Johannes Pratorius (1537–1615), another Wittenberg graduate, wrote in his copy of De revolutionibus that Rheticus, when Pratorius visited him in 1569, had revealed to him that Osiander was the author of the ad lectorum.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Michael Maestlin’s copy contains the same information also from Rheticus via Peter Apian. Kepler’s second hand copy had this information added by its original owner Hieronymus Schreiber (birth date unknown–1547), yet another Wittenberg graduate, who had received a gift copy signed by Petreius, because he had substituted for Rheticus in Wittenberg during the latter’s time in Frombork. All of this indicates that Osiander’s authorship of the ad lectorem was circulating on the astronomers’ grapevine by 1570 at the latest. It was first put into print, and thus made general public, by Kepler in his Astronomia Nova in 1609.

As with most books in the Early Modern Period there was no publication date for De revolutionibus but it seems to have been finished by 20^thApril 1543, as Rheticus signed a finished copy on this date. According to a legend, put in the world by Tiedemann Giese, Copernicus received his copy, which was placed into his hands, on his dying day the 24^thMay 1543. Owen Gingerich, who is the expert on the subject, estimates that the 1^stedition probably had a print run of about 400 copies, which carried the mathematical details of Copernicus’ hypothesis out into the wide world.

 

 

 

 

 

Renaissance Heavy Metal

One of the most fascinating and spectacularly illustrated Renaissance books on science and technology is De re metallica by Georgius Agricola (1494–1555). Translated into English the author’s name sounds like a figure from a game of happy families, George the farmer. In fact, this is his name in German, Georg Pawer, in modern German Bauer, which means farmer or peasant or the pawn in chess. Agricola was, however, anything but a peasant; he was an extraordinary Renaissance polymath, who is regarded as one of the founders of modern mineralogy and geology.

Georg Bauer was born in Glauchau on 24 March 1494, the second of seven children, to Gregor Bauer (born between 1518 and 1532) a wealthy cloth merchant and dyer. He was initially educated at the Latin school in Zwickau and attended the University of Leipzig, where he studied theology, philosophy and philology from 1514 to 1517. From 1518 to 1522 he worked as deputy director and then as director of schools in Zwickau. In 1520 he published his first book, a Latin grammar. The academic year 1522-23 he worked as a lecturer at the University of Leipzig. From 1523 to 1526 he studied medicine, philosophy and the sciences at various Northern Italian university graduating with a doctorate in medicine. In Venice he worked for a time for the Manutius publishing house on their edition of the works of Galen.

From 1527 to 1533 Agricola worked as town physician in St. Joachimsthal*, today Jáchymov in the Czech Republic. In those days Joachimsthal was a major silver mining area and it is here that Agricola’s interest in mining was ignited.

Silver mining in Joachimsthal (1548) Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1530 he issued his first book on mining, Bermannus sive de re metallica, published by the Froben publishing house in Basel. It covered the search for metal ores, the mining methods, the legal framework for mining claims, the transport and processing of the ores. Bermannus refers to Lorenz Bermann, an educated miner, who was the principle source of his information. The book contains an introductory letter from Erasmus, who worked as a copyeditor for Froben during his years in Basel.

Source

In 1533 he published a book on Greek and Roman weights and measures, De mensuris et ponderibus libri V, also published Froben in Basel.

From 1533 to his death in 1555 he was town physician in Chemnitz. He was also district historian for the Saxon aristocratic dynasty. From 1546 onwards he was a member of the town council and served as mayor in 1546, 1547, 1551 and 1553. In Chemnitz he also wrote a book on the plague, De peste libri tres, his only medical book,  as ever published by Froben in 1554.

Source: Internet Archive

Having established himself as an expert on mining with the Bermannus, Agricola devoted more than twenty years to studying and writing about all aspects of mining and the production of metals. He wrote and published a series of six books on the subject between 1546 and 1550, all of them published by Froben.

De ortu et causis subterraneorum libri V, Basel 1546

The origin of material within the earth

De natura eorum, quae effluunt ex terra, Basel 1546

The nature of the material extruded out of the earth

De veteribus et novis metallis libri II, Basel 1546

Ore mining in antiquity and in modern times

De natura fossilium libri X, Basel 1546

The nature of fossils whereby fossils means anything found in the earth and is as much a textbook of mineralogy

De animantibus subterraneis liber, Basel 1549

The living underground

De precio metallorum et monetis liber III, 1550

On precious metals and coins

At the same time he devoted twenty years to composing and writing his magnum opus De re metallica, which was published posthumously in 1556 by Froben in Basel, who took six years to print the book due to the large number of very detailed woodcut prints with which the book is illustrated. These illustrations form an incredible visual record of Renaissance industrial activity. They are also an impressive record of late medieval technology. Agricola’s pictures say much more than a thousand words.

De re metallicahas twelve books or as we would say chapters. What distinguishes Agricola’s work from all previous writings on mineralogy and geology is the extent to which they are based on empirical observation rather than philosophical speculation. Naturally this cannot go very far as it would be several hundred years before the chemistry was developed necessary to really analyse mineralogical and geological specimens but Agricola’s work was a major leap forward towards a modern scientific analysis of metal production.

 

Book I: Discusses the industry of mining and ore smelting

Book II: Discusses ancient mines, finding minerals and metals and the divining rod

Book III: Discusses mineral veins and seams and plotting with the compass

Book IV: Discusses the determination of mine boundaries and mine organisation

Book V: Discusses the principles of mining, the metals, ancient mining and mine surveying

Book VI: Discusses mining tools and equipment, hoists and pumps, ventilation and miners’ diseases

Book VII: Discusses assaying ores and metals and the touchstone

Book VIII: Discusses preparing ores for roasting, crushing and washing and recovering gold by mercury

Book IX: Discusses ores and furnaces for smelting copper, iron and mercury and the use of bellows

Book X: Discusses the recovery of precious metals from base metals as well as separating gold and silver by acid

Book XI: Discusses the recovery of silver from copper by liquidation as well as refining copper

Book XII: Discusses salts, solvents, precipitates, bitumen and glass

Agricola’s wonderfully illustrated volume became the standard reference work on metal mining and production for about the next two hundred years. The original Latin edition appeared in Basel in 1556 and was followed by a German translation in 1557, which was in many aspects defective but remained unchanged in two further editions. There were further Latin editions published in 1561, 1621, and 1657 and German ones in 1580, and 1621, with an improved German translation in 1928 and 1953. There was an Italian translation published in 1563.

 

Of peculiar interest is the English translation. This was first published in 1912 in London, the work of American mining engineer Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) and his wife the geologist Lou Henry (1874–1944). A second edition was published in 1950. Hoover is, of course, better know as the 31^stPresident of the USA, who was elected in 1928 and served from 1929–1933.

Herbert Hoover in his 30s while a mining engineer Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lou Henry, circa 1930 Source: Wikimedia Commons

Agricola’s tome also represents an important development in the history of trades and professions. Before De re metallicaknowledge of trades and crafts was past from master to apprentice verbally and kept secret from those outside of guild, often on pain of punishment. Agricola’s book is one of the first to present the methods and secrets of a profession in codified written form for everyone to read, a major change in the tradition of knowledge transfer.

*A trivial but interesting link exists between St. Joachimsthal and the green back. A silver coin was produced in St. Joachimsthal, which was known as the Joachimsthaler. This got shortened in German to thaler, which mutated in Dutch to daalder or daler and from there in English to dollar.

All illustrations from De re metallica are taken from Bern Dibner, Agricola on Metals, Burndy Library, 1958