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 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS 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, Poland. 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 Warmia, a region near the Baltic Sea. 1512 His uncle dies. Soon after, handwritten copies of Copernicus’s Commentariolus, 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 Catholic Church. 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 university of Ferrara 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.