Copernicus and the University of Cracow

Appendix D Copernicus and the University of Cracow

No one who was associated with the university in the fifteenth century is more widely known today than Copernicus. As “Nicholas, the son of Nicholas of Toruń” he matricu- lated there in the winter (i.e., the fall) semester of 1491 during the ninth rectorship of Master Matthew of Kobylin, Professor of Theology.1 His later fame as canon of Warmia, economist, physician, humanist and—above all—astronomer and creator of what has traditionally been called “the Copernican Revolution,” has understandably raised many questions about what was responsible for his accomplishments.2 It has been

1 Metryka, 1, 498. The editors note that the manuscript page on which his registration is found has been badly damaged and is difficult to read. Due to Copernicus’ later fame, it has been opened, examined, and displayed many times. 2 There is an enormous bibliography on Copernicus. The most reliable English treatment of his biography is still, I believe, that by Edward Rosen in his Three Copernican Treatises, 3rd ed., (New York: Octogan Books, 1973), 313–408 (see also 197–312 for an excellent bibliography covering material to the early 1970s). More recent bibliography is cited in subsequent notes. In Polish, a short, authoritative biography is provided by Jerzy Dobrzycki and Leszek Hajdukiewicz in PSB, 14, 3–16. For additional materials, published during or in associa- tion with the “Rok Kopernika” of 1973 (i.e., the 500th anniversary of his birth), see Nicholas Steneck, ed., Science and Society, Past, Present, and Future (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973); Robert S. Westman, ed., The Copernican Achievement (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1975); and my review comments upon several Polish publications in Slavic Review 33 (1974): 791–792. The Polish series, Studia Copernicana, has published several very important contributions, including volumes 7 and 8 (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1973), the Polish and English versions respectively of Marian Biskup, ed., Regesta Copernicana, a complete calendar of Copernicus’ papers. References to the most recent liter- ature may be found in the following (with an emphasis, for the most part, on non-Polish lan- guage materials): Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (New York: Walker and Co., 2004); André Goddu, Copernicus and the Aristotelian Tradition: Education, Reading, and Philosophy in Copernicus’ Path to Heliocentrism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010); Westman, The Copernican Question. Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2011); Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Copernicus in the Cultural Debates of the Renaissance—Reception, Legacy, Transformation (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014); and Wolfgang Neuber, Thomas Rahn, and Claus Zittel, eds., The Making of Copernicus. Early Modern Transformations of a Scientist and His Science (Leiden and Boston: Brill: 2015). The last three of these are concerned primarily with issues related to the acceptance of what might be termed “Copernicanism” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They devote little or no attention to the Cracovian scene when Copernicus was there and the nature of its impact upon Copernicus. The best Polish

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi ��.��63/9789004326019_018 Copernicus And The University Of Cracow 675 traditional in Polish historiography to attribute as much as possible to his training and education at Cracow.3 Apart from the understandable motivation of national pride, there appears to be some basis for this interpretation in an observation attributed by a later sixteenth century source to Copernicus himself. In a letter of 27 September 1542 (i.e., before the publication in Nuremberg of the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium), Albert Caprinus of Bukowo wrote to the Bishop of Płock, who was also Vice-Chancellor of the crown, and commented:

The wonderful things he has written in the field of mathematics, as well as the additional things he had undertaken to publish, he first acquired at our university [Cracow] as his source. Not only does he not deny this (in agreement with Pliny’s judgment that to name those from whom we have benefited is an act of courtesy and thoroughly honest modesty), but whatever the benefit, he says that he received it all from our university.4

Since one of the chapters above deals explicitly with astronomy at the university in the period Copernicus was there and elements of other chapters impinge upon the broader intellectual environment he would have experienced, it is appropriate here to evaluate what it is that Copernicus did owe to the University of Cracow. Copernicus did not graduate from the university. He probably stayed only three years, though there are some scholars suggest that he may have been there until 1495.5

work and other scholarship is summarized and critiqued in Michał Kokowski, Copernicus’ Originality. Towards Integration of Contemporary Copernican Studies (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa IHN PAN, 2004). His interest is chiefly in philosophical matters and the philosophy of science, though he deals in some ways with issues in geo- and astro-physics but without system- atically developing and analyzing them in the way that, for example, Goddu does. Perhaps the clearest brief treatment of the Polish scene during Copernicus’ time at Cracow is that by Krzysztof Oźóg, The Role of Poland in the Intellectual Development of Europe in the Middle Ages (Cracow: Societas Vistulana, 2009), 145–147. It is interesting that neither Westman nor Oźóg cite Kokowski; Goddu does so, but primarily in disagreement on some central issues. 3 See, for example, the comments by Jerzy Dobrzycki, “Mikołaj Kopernik,” in Dobrzycki, Mieczysław Markowski, and Tadeusz Przypkowski, Historia Astronomii w Polsce, vol. 1, Eugeniusz Rybka, ed. (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1975), 127–156, especially 130, where Dobrzycki quotes the letter cited in the following note. 4 Quoted from the translation by Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises, 316. For details and bibliography, see Biskup, Regesta Copernicana, 214, no. 488 (Studia Copernicana 7) and 207, no. 488 (Studia Copernicana 8). 5 See Ludwik A. Birkenmajer, Stromata Copernicana. Studia, poszukiwania i materiały bio- graficzne (Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1924), 54–55; and, after him, many others; see, for example, Oźóg, The Role of Poland in the Intellectual Development of Europe, 145; and, by implication, Westman, The Copernican Question, 55.