MYSTERY OF DELPHI QUEST FOR THE ORACLE

STONE AGE CITY LIFE CLOSE QUARTERS IN ÇATALHÖYÜK COSMIC CONTROVERSY THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS OF COPERNICUS FIGHTING WORDS YELLOW JOURNALISM AND THE SPANISH- AMERICAN WAR PLUS: Mesmerized! MARCH/APRIL 2019 The Man Who Discovered Animal Magnetism The Reluctant Revolutionary

As new ideas about science and religion were dividing Europe, a Polish clergyman quietly pieced together a unifying theory that reorganized the heavens.

ERNEST KOWALCZYK HIS LIFE’S WORK Copernicus is shown at work in a 20th-century painting by Jean-Léon Huens, commissioned by the National Geographic Society. On the left is the frontispiece of the 1566 second edition of Copernicus’s life work, Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs, printed in Basel. PORTRAIT: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE/ALAMY/ACI FRONTISPIECE: CULTURE CLUB/GETTY IMAGES The Sacred and the Stars 1473 Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, . After his father’s death, his uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, a senior cleric, cares for Nicolaus. 1491 Copernicus begins his education in Krakow. Later, he will study law and medicine at Italian universities while also learning astronomy. 1503 Copernicus returns to his homeland and works for his uncle, who has become the Bishop of , a region near the Baltic Sea. 1512 His uncle dies. Soon after, handwritten copies of Copernicus’s , are circulated to a select group of scholars. GOD AND umors were circulating in the 1530s 1533 COMMERCE that Nicolaus Copernicus, a cathe- German humanist The son of a dral cleric in a small Polish city, had J. A. Widmannstetter lectures merchant, Nicolaus written a revolutionary theory on the Copernicus was born R on the Copernican theory at cosmos. To the frustration of many, in Torun (above) in the Vatican during an audience however, the secretive clergyman was refusing with Pope Clement VII. 1473. Looming over the Vistula River, the to publish it. 1540 Gothic cathedral Curiosity came from many quarters. One let- reflects the city’s ter, written in 1536, begged for more informa- G. J. Rheticus, a follower medieval wealth. of the elderly Copernicusss, KRIVINIS/GETTY IMAGES tion. It praised Copernicus’s “new theory of the persuades him to publis Universe according to which the Earth moves one-volume summary of his and the Sun occupies the basic, and hence, cen- working theories. tral, position.” Its author was Cardinal Nikolaus 1543 von Schönberg, a prince of the . One year after Copernicus By placing the sun at the center, Copernicus’s agrees to publish his theorri s idea overturned the ideas devised by the second- in full, De revolutionibus l century astronomer Ptolemy. In Ptolemy’s the- off the press. Shortly after, ory the sun and planets orbited the Earth, which Copernicus dies on May 4. was regarded as the orthodox model across the A 1566 EDITION OF ONE VOLUME Christian world. Through decades of work, Co- IN COPERNICUS’S SIX-TOME WORK, pernicus had slowly and carefully found a new CONCERNING THE REVOLUTIONS OF HEAVENLY ORBS (DE REVOLUTIONIBUSS)S . way of organizing the heavens, but his reticence BRIDGEMAN/ACI kept these new ideas isolated from the public, who could only speculate about them.

52 MARCH/APRIL 2019 POPE GREGORY XIII PRESIDES OVER DISCUSSIONS FOR A NEW CALENDAR. 16TH- CENTURY PAINTING ORONOZZ/

FAITH IN ASTRONOMY

A CENTURY BEFORE Galileo’s persecution, the church’s attitude to- ward astronomy was more open. The Julian calendar, then in use, had become so inexact that it fell out of time with the seasons. Copernicus submitted a statement to a 1512-16 council convened to address the problem, in which he called for more accurate ob- servations. A new “Gregorian” calendar with leap years was in- troduced under Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and is still in use today.

A man of both science and faith, Coperni- SYSTEM that he and his family dealt in copper, an asso- cus lived during a time of great change in Eu- UPDATE ciation which gave rise to the family name. rope. A new flowering of humanist thought was Ptolemy, whose When Copernicus was 10 years old, his father spreading throughout the continent, as scholars venerated Earth- died, and he went to live with his mother’s centered system and artists looked back to the classical era and was challenged brother, Lucas Watzenrode. Later appointed the brought its influence to bear on art, architecture, by Copernicus, is Bishop of Warmia in northern Poland, Watzen- literature, politics, and science. After Martin Lu- depicted in this rode became an important patron to his nephew. ther published his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, 1476 painting by Copernicus began his university studies in a religious revolution began that would roil the Pedro Berruguete. 1491 at the Academy of Krakow (today the Jagi- BRIDGEMAN/ACI Catholic Church and form new denominations. ellonian University), which was then attracting Throughout all this tumult, Copernicuus held some of Europe’sE finest minds in mathemat- fast at the center, methodically craftingh is own ics and astronomy.s Cosmopolitan Krakow, full astronomical revolution. of merchantsa and intellectuals, was an exciting place to receiver an education. Reports of star- A Renaissance Man tlingdiscoverieso of new lands across the Atlantic Copernicus was born Mikolaj Kopernikin by aGenoeseG sailor, Christopher Columbus, 1473, in Torun, Poland. (Following thee andn the new humanist teachings of the custom among scholars in the Renais- Renaissance,R were arriving in Poland sance, he later latinized his name.) A frrom southern Europe. Krakow was the major port on the Vistula River, Torun adoptived home of the flamboyant Italian was part of a loose grouping of rich, scholarh Filippo Buonaccorsi, secretary to northern trading cities known as the the Polish king and tutor to his children. Hanseatic League. Copernicus’s father AfterA several years, Copernicus was was a merchant, and historians speculate drawnw to Italy, the epicenter of humanist

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 53 LIFE OF learning at the time. Whatever diffidence he mathematics and anatomy. In his later career THE MIND later showed in his scientific theories, Coperni- Copernicus would also be known as much as a An engraving (below) cus did not lack funds or time to pursue a solid physician as a mathematician. of Filippo Buonaccorsi student career there. In 1497 his uncle appointed Another discipline that intrigued Copernicus in the Dominican Monastery of Krakow, him a canon at the cathedral of Frombork in his was the study of the stars, which encompassed shows the Italian own diocese, even though Copernicus had be- both astronomy and astrology. Today astronomy humanist in his study. gun his Italian studies a year before. The po- is regarded as a science, based on observation, Buonaccorsi helped sition gave him ample financial security. Well while astrology—the idea that heavenly bod- foster the Renaissance over a decade would pass before the absentee ies affect the health and fortunes of people— spirit of Krakow that molded Copernicus. canon took up his duties on the chilly shores of is not. In Copernicus’s time, however, scholars MARY EVANS/AGE FOTOSTOCK the Baltic; in the interim, Copernicus dedicated made no clear-cut distinction between the two. himself to university life, first at Bologna, Bologna University’s astronomer, for example, then at Padua, finally emerging as a doctor Domenico Maria de Novara, was tasked with from the small in 1503. providing astrological predictions for the city’s Higher education in this period was much rulers and nobility. more far-ranging than the specialism of a Novara proved to be an important influence modern university. His studies included the on the young Polish stargazer. For a while, Co- intricacies of civil and church law, deemed pernicus lodged with him, and the two scholars essential for a high-ranking career in the made observations together. The invention of clergy. In addition, Copernicus immersed the telescope would not take place for over a himself in medicine and mathematics. This century, so the two men relied on naked-eye pairing was regarded as natural, epitomized observation, using their knowledge of Greek in the 16th-century humanist scholar Jakob to consult treatises translated from Arabic, or Milich, who served as both a professor of the ancient classical works, such as the writings COPERNICUS OBSERVING THE HEAVENS FROM HIS TOWER AT FROMBORK. 1873 OIL PAINTING BY JAN MATEJKO

BRIDGEMAN/ACI

CLEAR SKIES

A TRADITION holds that Copernicus made astronomical observa- HIGHER LEARNING tions from a tower in the cathedral complex at Frombork. He found The 16th-century Archiginnasio of Bologna his adoptive home far from ideal for this purpose, and in De revo- was once part of the city’s university, the oldest in Europe. Copernicus’s studies at the lutionibus expresses his conservative view that things were better university in the late 1490s were influenced by in classical times, especially in the land of Ptolemy: “The ancients the astronomer Domenico Maria de Novara. had the advantage of a clearer sky; the Nile does not exhale such ROSSHELEN/GETTY IMAGES misty vapors as those we get from the Vistula.”

of Ptolemy. Some of Ptolemy’s assertions were the duties of a church canon, which were large- already being questioned by Novara. He intro- ly administrative: collecting rents, managing duced Copernicus to the work of Johann Müller, finances, securing military resources, and over- known by his humanistic sobriquet Regiomon- seeing the local businesses (bakeries, breweries, tanus, another skeptic of the Ptolemaic model. and mills) of the diocese. On March 9, 1497, together with Novara, During this time Copernicus also continued Copernicus made his first known astronomi- his astronomical work. He earned a solid repu- cal observation: At 11 p.m. both watched as the tation as a leading mind of the time. In 1514 Co- moon briefly eclipsed a distant star, Aldebaran, pernicus was invited to contribute to a council an event that cast doubt on Ptolemy’s theory of to reform the calendar, so as to enable the church the distance of the moon from the Earth. The to fix feast days with more accuracy. Later, as idea that the Sun was fixed in the center of the an administrator at the Bishop’s Castle in the cosmos was starting to take hold in Coperni- Warmian city of Olsztyn, he produced an astro- cus’s mind. nomical table, or heliograph, still visible on one of the walls of the castle cloister, for observing A Theory Evolves the movements of the sun. In 1503 Copernicus returned north to his uncle’s Sometime before 1514, Copernicus wrote a diocese in Poland. He spent several years work- small treatise, the Commentariolus (“little com- ing alongside his uncle as both his secretary and mentary” in Latin). He circulated a few hand- personal physician. He took part in minor acts written copies among a learned elite. This small of diplomacy on trips around Poland and also work, described by scholars as “a manuscript published a translation into Latin of a work by a of six leaves,” first presented Copernicus’s no- seventh-century Byzantine historian. After his tion that the Earth and other planets move while uncle’s death in 1512, he devoted more time to the sun stands still. Using his observations and

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 55 MAPPING THE STARS

the first telescopes were developed Triquetrum in the early 1600s. Copernicus was lim- With its slanted arms, this ited to three instruments that the math- instrument could measure how ematician Ptolemy had described in the high an astronomical object was second century a.d. Two of these, the tri- in the sky. The image shows a quetrum (upper right) and the quadrant replica of the instrument used (lower right), were used to measure the by Copernicus. height and position of the sun and other ALAMY/ACI heavenly bodies. The third, the armillary Quadrant Armillary sphere sphere (left), shows the apparent move- This instrument was used to A classic, Earth-centered, brass model ment of the heavens around the Earth. measure the position of heavenly made in 1549. The rings show the sun’s After the Copernican theory gained bodies according to the degrees annual path, equinoxes, solstices, and the ground, armillary spheres were made marked in a semicircle. 1784. Brera zodiac. Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan to reflect the sun-centered model. Astronomical Observatory, Milan BRIDGEMAN/ACI BRIDGEMAN/ACI

A DIAGRAM (DETAIL) FROM COPERNICUS’S WORK DE REVOLUTIONIBUS FORUM/ALBUM “THE MONEYCHANGER AND HIS WIFE.” 1539 OIL PAINTING BY MARINUS VAN REYMERSWAELE. PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID ECONOMIST ALBUM AND ASTRONOMER

s Copernicus wrestled with his scientific ideas, his duties as a church administrator led him Ato develop an important theory of economics. In the 1520s, war between the Teutonic knightly order and Poland affected Frombork and Warmia. Political instability had led to gold and silver being reduced in the coinage, which in turn led to dramatic inflation. In 1528 Copernicus published an influential treatise warning on how debasing coins would lead to the disappearance of high-value, “good” coins from circulation, with baleful economic ef- fects. The phenomenon was also described by the English banker Thomas Gresham, and the Gresham-Copernicus law (as it is now known) is often summarized as “Bad money drives out good.”

other research, Copernicus calculated the time Many years later, the Commentariolus came to CHARTING each planet took to go around the sun: Mercu- the attention of German humanist Johann Al- THE HEAVENS ry (88 days), Venus (225 days), Earth (one year), brecht Widmannstetter. In 1533 he gave a lecture Book II (below) of Copernicus’s work Mars (1.9 years), Jupiter (12 years), and Saturn (30 in the Vatican gardens before Pope Clement VII Six Books Concerning years). This pamphlet was the first milestone in and explained Copernicus’s still unpublished the Revolutions of Copernicus’s journey to redefine the universe. theory. The church’s interest in his work was the Heavenly Orbs genuine, and at this time did not see a sun- (De revolutionibus) Gaining Ground centered universe as threatening to orthodoxy. features astronomical The Commentariolus’s early findings raised A young Austrian mathematics professor, data tables he questions and exposed problems with the data. Georg Joachim Rheticus, was instrumental in constructed over To avoid errors in his calculations and assump- helping Copernicus push heliocentrism out his lifetime. tions, Copernicus spent decades of his life find- to the wider world. In 1539 Rheticus moved to SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES ing the strongest evidence to support his epoch- Frombork to work shaking idea. The Commentariolus was only cir- alongside the as- culated among a few scholars and caused very tronomer for two little commotion. years and became In the meantime, Copernicus was busy with Copernicus’s de- his duties with the church, whose very founda- voted disciple. tions were shaken by Martin Luther’s dramatic After much per- challenge to papal authority in 1517. Throughout suasion, Rheticus the 1520s he helped steer his diocese through finally managed to the ensuing conflict, taking part in diplomatic convince Coperni- missions and even proposing reforms to the cus to let him pub- monetary system. lish an account of WAITING IN his theory in 1540. The treatise, called The First Moving Heaven and Earth THE WINGS Account of the Book on the Revolutions by Nicolaus De revolutionibus expands the fundamental ideas Johannes Kepler Copernicus, piqued the interest of astronomers put forth in Commentariolus. It declares that the (below) built on all over Europe. They would not have to wait Earth orbits the sun in the course of a year, turns Copernicus’s work to prove that bodies long for a full accounting of Copernicus’s as- around its own axis in the course of a day, and move in elliptical tronomical work. annually tilts on its axis. His sequencing of the orbits. 1627 painting. Two years later, the manuscript of De revo- planets from the sun—placing the Earth third Musée de l’Oeuvre lutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (Six Books in line—was to become the accepted order. In Notre-Dame, his introduction, addressed to Pope Paul III, he Strasbourg Concerning the Revolutionst of the Heavenly Orbs), E. LESSING/ALBUM was taken to Nurembeerg to be printed by a lead- explains why he took so long to publish his work: ing scientific publisher.The lavishly illustrated work included 142 woodcuts. There is evi- [T]he scorn which I had reason to fear on ac- dence that Copeernicus made numerous count of the novelty and unconventionality of corrections anda edits to the first part my opinion almost induced me to abandon com- ofthe work. pletely the work which I had undertaken. Apopularsstory (perhaps apocryphal) isthat a first edition of the book was His friends were able to convince him otherwise: broughttohis deathbed as he lay dy- ing from a stroke in 1543. Coperni- As crazy as my doctrine of the earth’s motion cus drew his last breath on May 24, now appeared to most people, the argument having ccompleted his work. Now ran, so much the more admiration and thanks the rests of the world would see would it gain after they saw the publication of how thist humble cleric would my writings dispel the fog of absurdity by most reorganize the heavens. luminous proofs. ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY/SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCK SOCIETY/SPL/AGE ASTRONOMICAL ROYAL WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

COPERNICUS could not let go of an idea enshrined in 350 b.c. by VISIONARY SITE Aristotle in On the Heavens: “The circle is a perfect thing.” Only by The Cathedral of Frombork, Poland, where Copernicus worked as a canon mounting certain planets on turning wheels known as epicycles and astronomer. Behind lies the Vistula could 15th-century astronomers make circular orbits fit with actual Laguna, whose Baltic “vapors” and planetary behavior. Drawn in 1756 by Scottish astronomer James mists often frustrated his observations. Ferguson, a diagram (above) of the patterns produced by epicycles MACIEKL/GETTY IMAGES reveals how complex their motions would be.

In other ways, however, Copernicus did not invented telescope to scan the skies. Even as break new ground.Solar centrality was not a new he was becoming increasingly convinced that idea, as he acknowledged:“I first found in Ci- Copernicus was correct,Galileo was warned by cero that Hicetas [a Greek philosopher from the the church in 1616 not to“hold or defend”the fourth century B.C.] supposed the earth to move.” Copernican theory.The same year,Copernicus’s Copernicus also got some things wrong. He De revolutionibus was placed on the church’s held on to the idea that orbits were perfectly Index of Forbidden Books. circular,which was later disproved by Johannes Science continued moving forward even as Kepler,who demonstrated that orbits are ellip- Galileo was being silenced.Kepler was working tical. In order to reconcile circular orbits with on his laws of planetary motion,and in time,the actualplanetarybehavior,Copernicuscontinued Copernican model would become universally the tradition, developed by Ptolemy,of arguing accepted.Some historians even date the begin- that planets spin on wheels,known as epicycles. nings of the scientific revolution to 1543 and the Upon its publication, the Catholic Church publication of De revolutionibus. As the 21st- was not hostile to De revolutionibus. Coperni- century American science writer Dava Sobel cus had made no attempt to challenge papal au- put it:“Thanks to Copernicus, the Sun doesn’t thority in his writings, and his dedication goes set. The Earth turns.” to great lengths to establish his respect for the ERNEST KOWALCZYK IS A SENIOR MEMBER OF pope.Bythe1560sseveraluniversities,including THE POLISH CULTURALINSTITUTE IN MADRID. the University of Salamanca in Spain, a deeply orthodox Catholic institution, had De revolu- Learn more on the curriculum. tionibus BOOK This tolerant attitude would shift by the early A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos 1600s, when Galileo Galilei was using the newly Dava Sobel, Bloomsbury USA, 2011.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 59 CENTERED ON THE SUN

ublished in 1543, Copernicus’s life’s work preserves a key tenet of medieval cosmol- ogy: The universe is formed of spheres, each one nested within another. Starting with this underly- ing assumption, Copernicus constructed his theories based not only on mathematics but also on philosophy. Even heliocentricity was influenced by the belief that a central fire animated the whole universe, which was formulated by a follower of the sixth-century b.c. phi- losopher Pythagoras. The primacy of the sun and its centrality to classical thought is eloquently invoked by Copernicus. In Book I of his great work, he wrote: “Then in the middle of all stands the Sun. For who, in our most beautiful temple, could set this light in a better place than that from which it can illuminate the whole? Not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul. Tremigistus calls it the visible God; Sophocles’ Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun, seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle round him.”

SITTING AT THE CENTER, THE SUN ILLUMINATES EIGHT CELESTIAL SPHERES IN COPERNICUS’S MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE. THE COPERNICAN MODEL DEPICTED IN HARMONIA MACROCOSMICA, A STAR ATLAS BY ANDREAS CELLARIUS, 1660

LEFT TO RIGHT: G. DUPRAT/CIEL ET ESPACE PHOTOS/CONTACTO PHOTO; VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM/RMN-GRAND PALAIS