A More Perfect Heaven (24 page)

The letter, had it been merely a letter, might have ended there. But Giese, together with Copernicus, hoped to see Rheticus’s report published as a test of acceptability for the heliocentric theory, and therefore the ending necessarily took a political turn. In his effusive concluding pages, Rheticus sang the praises of Prussia.

“You might say that the buildings and the fortifications are palaces and shrines of Apollo; that the gardens, the fields, and the entire region are the delight of Venus, so that it could be called, not undeservedly, Rhodes. What is more, Prussia is the daughter of Venus, as is clear if you examine either the fertility of the soil or the beauty and charm of the whole land.”

Rheticus extolled the Prussian forests teeming with stag, doe, bear, boar, aurochs, elk, and bison; the beehives, orchards, and plains; the rabbit warrens and birdhouses; and the lakes, ponds, and springs that he deemed “
the fisheries of the gods.”
He cited the famous personages of the land as well, bowing respectfully to “the illustrious prince, Albrecht, Duke of Prussia” and that “eloquent and wise Bishop, the Most Reverend Johann Dantiscus.”

Sometime between mid-May 1539, when Rheticus arrived in Varmia, and September 23, the date he concluded his report, Bishop Dantiscus likely discovered his presence through his network of informants. But he took no legal action. Perhaps Giese convinced Dantiscus of the visiting professor’s value in publicizing Canon Copernicus’s life work as a credit to Varmia. Or perhaps the Rheticus affair paled, in the bishop’s eyes, in comparison to the continuing “trysts” between Copernicus and Anna Schilling. She had never left town, according to the gossip Dantiscus heard from his closest ally in Frauenburg, Provost Pawel Plotowski. Here Giese in fact interceded by letter, imploring Dantiscus not to believe such groundless rumors. Further aspersions from Plotowski, however, continued to inflame Dantiscus’s anger.

“At his old age,”
Dantiscus complained of Copernicus in reply to Giese, “almost at the end of his allotted time, he is still said to receive his concubine frequently in furtive assignations.” Dantiscus beseeched Giese to remonstrate with Copernicus on his behalf, and to speak as though he, Giese, were dispensing his own good advice. Reporting back to Dantiscus on September 12, 1539, Giese said he had reprimanded Copernicus as promised, but that his good friend denied all of Plotowski’s pernicious charges.

Winding up the final pages of his report, Rheticus crafted an elaborate thank you to Giese for his goodness and kindness, crediting the prelate with having served as Copernicus’s inspiration.

“His Reverence mastered with complete devotion the set of virtues and doctrine, required of a bishop by Paul. He realized that it would be of no small importance to the glory of Christ if there existed a proper calendar of events in the Church and a correct theory and explanation of the motions. He did not cease urging my teacher, whose accomplishments and insight he had known for many years, to take up this problem, until he persuaded him to do so.”
This scenario, though otherwise undocumented, suggests that Giese became muse to Copernicus even before the heliocentric idea was born.

“Since my teacher was social by nature,”
Rheticus continued, “and saw that the scientific world also stood in need of an improvement of the motions, he readily yielded to the entreaties of his friend, the reverend prelate. He promised that he would draw up astronomical tables with new rules and that if his work had any value he would not keep it from the world. … But he had long been aware that in their own right the observations in a certain way required hypotheses which would overturn the ideas concerning the order of the motions and spheres that had hitherto been discussed and promulgated and that were commonly accepted and believed to be true; moreover, the required hypotheses would contradict our senses.”

On the horns of that dilemma, Rheticus said, Copernicus had decided to
“compose tables with accurate rules but no proofs.”
In other words, he would offer instructions for deriving planetary positions without mentioning his mind-boggling rationale. Rheticus doubtless knew from his weeks in their company that Giese and Copernicus had reached just such a compromise in 1535. Their friend Bernard Wapowski, recipient of the
Letter Against Werner
, visited them in Frauenburg in the autumn of that year, while Copernicus was completing an abbreviated treatise with a complete set of tables. Wapowski took a copy of this almanac with him back to Krakow. In October he tried, through his royal connections, to have the work printed in Vienna, but the negotiations ended in November, with Wapowski’s death.

“Then His Reverence pointed out that such a work would be an incomplete gift to the world,”
Rheticus went on, “unless my teacher set forth the reasons for his tables and also included, in imitation of Ptolemy, the system or theory and the foundations and proofs upon which he relied.” Thus Copernicus’s book had come to be. Though the author later put it aside, Giese had never stopped agitating for its release.

“By these and many other contentions, as I learned from friends familiar with the entire affair, the learned prelate won from my teacher a promise to permit scholars and posterity to pass judgment on his work. For this reason men of good will and students of mathematics will be deeply grateful with me to His Reverence, the bishop of Kulm, for presenting this achievement to the world.”

The other patron Rheticus esteemed loudly at the end of his report was Johann of Werden, the mayor of Danzig.
“When he heard about my studies from certain friends, he did not disdain to greet me, undistinguished though I am, and to invite me to meet him before I left Prussia. When I so informed my teacher, he rejoiced for my sake and drew such a picture of the man that I realized I was being invited by Homer’s Achilles, as it were. For besides his distinction in the arts of war and peace, with the favor of the muses he also cultivates music. By its sweet harmony he refreshes and inspires his spirit to undergo and to endure the burdens of office.”

One would think Rheticus had laid on his hyperbole a bit thick, but his gushing got the
First Account
into the Danzig civic printing office, where it was published early in 1540. As soon as the first three sheets came off the press in March, a friend and classmate of Rheticus sent them to Philip Melanchthon in Wittenberg—evidence of what Rheticus, absent from the university for nearly two years now, had been doing with his time.

The title page of the
First Account
did not identify its author by name, but only as “a certain youth.”

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS GENTLEMAN
MR. JOHANN SCHÖNER, CONCERNING
THE BOOKS OF THE REVOLUTIONS
Of the most learned Gentleman and
Most distinguished Mathematician,
The revered Doctor Mr. Nicolaus
Copernicus of Torun, Canon of
Varmia, By a certain youth
Most zealous for
Mathematics— A FIRST ACCOUNT.

Rheticus, who had cleverly inserted his full name into the salutation in the
First Account
’s first paragraph, could afford to be modest on the title page. He sent copies of the finished book to friends and acquaintances who had helped him along the way, beginning naturally with Schöner.

Among the early plaudits to reach Rheticus in reply was a congratulatory note from Andreas Osiander, the Lutheran theologian who had initiated Duke Albrecht’s conversion. As other excited letters from scholars also greeted the
First Account
, Rheticus realized he was about to become famous. He could return to Saxony a hero.

From Giese’s perspective, however, the publication of the
First Account
merely paved the way for
On the Revolutions
. He wanted the talented Rheticus to stay on in Frauenburg and help Copernicus prepare his lengthy manuscript for publication. Weary of finessing Rheticus’s illegal residence in Varmia, Giese wished to find him a new sponsor—especially after April 15, 1540, when Bishop Dantiscus enforced the king’s anti-Protestant decree by recalling all Varmian subjects
“from the poisoned places of heretical Lutheranism,”
and calling also for the destruction of Lutheran books or songs in anyone’s possession anywhere in Varmia. On April 23, Giese dispatched a copy of the
First Account
to Duke Albrecht at his palace in Königsberg. Writing in German to introduce the little Latin treatise, Giese asked
“that Your Princely Eminence might look graciously upon this highly learned guest on account of his great knowledge and skill, and grant him your gracious protection.”

Rheticus apparently came under the duke’s aegis soon afterward, because he remained in residence. Except for a brief return visit to Wittenberg to give two lectures late in 1540, Rheticus continued working alongside Copernicus. Together they reorganized and rewrote several sections of
On the Revolutions
. They reviewed all the demonstrations describing the planetary motions and the directions for deriving specific positions in celestial latitude and longitude. Rheticus likely assisted Copernicus’s measurement of the partial solar eclipse that occurred over Frauenburg on April 7, 1540. Sixteen months later, when another partial solar eclipse visited the region on August 21, 1541—the fourth and last one that Copernicus observed—Rheticus was still at his side.

From conversations sustained over their long intimacy, Rheticus composed the only authorized biography of his teacher. Giese commended this prose portrait of Copernicus, but, unfortunately, Rheticus never published it, and the text disappeared.

However much Rheticus feared for his safety or suffered other anguish during the days and nights he spent in Varmia, he comforted himself with the pleasures of the new astronomy.
“This and other like sports of Nature,”
he reported, “often bring me great solace in the fluctuating vicissitudes of my fortunes, and gently soothe my troubled mind.”

In August 1540, several months after the
First Account
appeared, the expert printer Petreius penned an open letter to Rheticus and published it as an appendix to an astrology text he issued. Petreius hailed Rheticus for having traveled
“to the farthest corner of Europe”
to find Copernicus, and for writing such a “splendid description” of his system. “Although he does not follow the common system by which these arts are taught in the schools, nevertheless I consider it a glorious treasure if some day through your urging his observations will be imparted to us, as we hope will come to pass.” This encouragement was tantamount to an imprimatur from Petreius. A preeminent press—the leading printer in Nuremberg—stood ready to publish
On the Revolutions
.

Copernicus, however, had not yet committed himself to publication, but only to teaching Rheticus the intricacies of his theory. He devoted considerable time to instructing and sheltering his new disciple, while still shouldering his various administrative duties for the chapter. In September 1540, he registered with Rome his official request for a coadjutor. He was sixty-seven years old, and wished to see his young Danzig relative Jan Loitz, a boy of twelve, groomed to assume his canonry.

As part of the campaign to win Albrecht’s protection of Rheticus, Copernicus had offered to make his medical acumen available to the duke on demand. Albrecht found occasion to test this promise in April of 1541, when he wrote to say that
“Almighty Sempiternal God is inflicting on one of my counselors and subordinates an affliction and severe illness which does not get better.”
That same day, April 6, Albrecht also alerted the Varmia Chapter to the situation, in the expectation they would excuse Copernicus to make a house call. The chapter consented on April 8, expressing all the canons’ sympathy and announcing that Copernicus, “without any troublesome excuse, at his advanced old age,” would gladly comply.

Copernicus left immediately for Königsberg to do Albrecht’s bidding. Rheticus went along, as he could hardly remain in Frauenburg without his teacher—or pass up the opportunity to meet his royal patron. Soon after Duke Albrecht received them, he informed the chapter that Copernicus would need to stay a long while by the sick counselor’s bedside,
“recalling that it is quite Christian and praiseworthy in such a case to act as a fellow-sufferer.”
During the three weeks Copernicus tended to the invalid, he conferred by mail with the king’s physician in Krakow. Neither doctor could do much to soothe the patient, but at least he lived, and Albrecht felt thankful for that. Meanwhile Rheticus and Albrecht explored their mutual interests, which included mathematics, maps, and mapmaking.

Letters from Germany awaited both Rheticus and Copernicus when they got back to Frauenburg in May. Andreas Osiander had written to each of them individually, answering their requests for his advice. Osiander’s standing as both a theologian and an amateur mathematician—and a friend of the printer Petreius—uniquely qualified him to consult on how to publish Copernicus’s book without offending religious or Aristotelian sensibilities. To Copernicus, he suggested writing an introduction to make the point that mathematical hypotheses
“are not articles of faith but the basis of computation; so that even if they are false it does not matter, provided that they reproduce exactly the phenomena of the motions.”