I decided to use the discovery as the centerpiece of my Invited Discourse at the opening of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Warsaw that August of 1973. For that I would borrow a technique from Charles Eames. He had pioneered the use of multiscreen shows, such as the one in the IBM pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1964. Afterward he had made a series of in-house three-screen slide shows, which I had seen several times at his offices in California, and I had helped him make one on Copernicus for an international symposium cosponsored in Washington by the Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences earlier in 1973. So I captured some slides from Eames and added many of my own, including a few new pictures of the Tycho annotations.
The Smithsonian photographer nearly balked when I told him I needed a hundred glass slide mounts for my forthcoming lecture—the actual number turned out to be 135. And my Polish hosts gulped when I told them I needed three screens and three projectionists. In the end, though, after a rehearsal, we managed to synchronize my lecture and the triple projection, which offered evocative views of Copernican Poland, of Copernicus' library, of the manuscript of his book, together with images of annotated copies of De revolutionibus.
I N POLAND I was shown the text of a speech to be given by the chairman of the Ministry of Health's advisory council, and was able to spare him some embarrassment. Copernicus was understandably popular in Poland that year, and it seemed every politician wanted to connect the astronomer with his own specialty. This appeared particularly promising for the Ministry of Health, because, after studying medicine in Padua, Copernicus had practiced as a doctor in his homeland. In reality, details of his medical career are difficult to come by, but the staff of the ministry's advisory council had found an article on Copernicus and the buttering of bread in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The article described how, during the wars against the Teutonic knights, Copernicus realized that the Polish soldiers were getting ill from contaminated bread. By placing a spread on the bread, one could tell immediately when a loaf had fallen into the dirt. So Copernicus allegedly not only carried out some hygienic research but put his findings into practice to avert an epidemic. The story involved a plausible but entirely unknown official named Adolph Buttenadt,* who popularized Copernicus' finding so effectively that the process was called Buttenadting, which was eventually shortened to buttering.
When I showed the article to Jerzy Dobrzycki, he roared with laughter, having spotted the fable immediately. A physician and a historian from the University of Vermont, Arthur Kunin and Samuel Hand, wishing to raise some issues about the roles of research and practice in medicine, had invented the Copernican story and the fictitious Buttenadt as their vehicle. However, the chairman of the Ministry of Health's advisory council didn't understand idiomatic English that well and thus hadn't detected the obvious spoof.
Later I mentioned the article to Professor Edward Rosen, who had made a career out of setting everyone straight on Copernicana. Rosen exploded. "That's not a hoax," he exclaimed, "that's fraud!" It turned out that the story had a deliriously ironic twist. By chance I met Arthur Kunin at a dinner in Vermont. Kunin told me that he had been a young student in a class taught by Rosen at City College of New York and had been so impressed by Rosen's enthusiasm for Copernicus and his attention to historical details that this probably set the stage subconsciously for their selection of Copernicus for their parable!
BEFORE THE quinquecentennial year was over, I had several more occasions to spotlight my Vatican Library discovery. One was a Scientific American article on Copernicus, and another was a lecture in Boulder to the largest audience I had ever addressed, approximately 1,200 persons, more people than I would have imagined to be interested in Copernicus in the entire state of Colorado. And, at the close of 1973,1 repeated my three-screen show before the American Astronomical Society in Tucson.
Notwithstanding my excitement over the discovery of the annotations in Ottoboniana 1902, there remained at least two nagging questions. In Reinhold's copy in Edinburgh, he had carefully numbered and labeled the three alternative arrangements Copernicus proposed for eliminating the equant, but the technical diagrams in the Vatican copy had started in midstream "according to the second hypothesis of Copernicus." What had happened to the first? Also, there was a geographic table of longitudes and latitudes of many European cities written on a flyleaf at the beginning of the Vatican volume. Why was Wratislavia in Silesia near the top of the list, but Copenhagen and Uraniborg—two places of fundamental interest to Tycho—omitted?
The answer to one of these questions was about to come as an unexpected bombshell. The final reprise for the Copernican anniversary took place in the fall of 1974, at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society. The historians of science decided that one of the sessions would highlight the Copernican discoveries that had been made during the quinquecentennial year, and I was asked to describe the new Tycho manuscript. I drove from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Norwalk, Connecticut, where the meeting would be hosted by the Burndy Library, an independent institution with an impressive history of science collection.* I had already inspected the Burndy's first- and second-edition De revolutionibus several times, most recently when I had helped dedicate a new bust of Copernicus for the library garden. Thus, instead of heading straight to Norwalk, I asked my passengers if it would be okay with them if we stopped for an hour and a half in New Haven so I could reexamine the first edition in Yale's rare book collection.
The Beinecke Library in New Haven is certainly one of the world's most beautiful. Thin polished slabs of marble let light into exhibition areas that girdle a central core of glass-encased book stacks. The entire architecture exudes an aura of quiet opulence (plate 8b). I already knew that the Beinecke's De revolutionibus was thoroughly annotated and clearly one of the most interesting copies in America. Thus, I had brought along my camera and photoflood lamps—the latter transported in a special suitcase that the Eames office had made for me—and I was installed in a small workroom. Soon the book was brought in, with its vellum binding and fragments of green silk ties that had once been able to hold the book tightly shut. As I restudied and photographed the book, I realized anew that the annotations echoed many of those in Erasmus Reinhold's copy. It had clearly been annotated in the Wittenberg circle, in two successive hands, but thus far the identity of its annotators had eluded me.
As I worked with the Beinecke copy, I slowly became more aware of its distinctive binding. Suddenly, something clicked. At the start of my survey of Copernicus' book, a particularly useful reference was a list of seventy first editions compiled in 1943 by Ernst Zinner, an eminent German historian of astronomy. Besides this compilation of locations of De revolutionibus, Zinner's German book on the reception of Copernicus' teachings included several other appendixes. One of them listed the sixteenth-century library of Johannes Praetorius—a student and then a teacher at Leipzig and later a professor at Erlangen—which contained two first editions of De revolutionibus. Zinner was a redoubtable bibliographer and loved estate lists like that, especially when most of the books had come to rest in the same place, in this case in Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria. But one of Praetorius' two copies of De revolutionibus was, I knew, not present in Schweinfurt. The list from 1625 (or soon thereafter) was quite explicit; it described the copy as "inn hollend. Perment unnd griin seiten Bender, cum animadversionibus Joh. Homelij et annotationibus Praetorij."* I looked carefully at the binding: Besides the Dutch vellum, here were the traces of the green silk ties, and inside there was evidence of two distinct hands. Annotations in several places cited Homelius, Rheticus' successor as astronomy professor at Leipzig, and these annotations were sometimes accompanied by further notes in a different handwriting, later identified as belonging to Johannes Praetorius.* I had just stumbled upon the missing book, an important link in the early dissemination of the Copernican doctrine because the annotations revealed yet another copy influenced by Erasmus R
einhold's notes.
The most amusing part in the New Haven book came at the end of a long Latin critique of a place where Copernicus was examining the length of the seasons. Unfortunately, there was a typographic error at precisely this point. Even though it didn't actually affect any of the subsequent calculations, Homelius (whose original annotations had been copied by an unknown student into the book) expressed his exasperation and finally broke into German:
Der Himmel ist aber zum Narren worden er musz gehen wie Copernicus will. (The heavens have become a fool if they must go as Copernicus wants.)
In a state of euphoria I rounded up my passengers and headed on to the meeting at Norwalk. "I knew something had happened in there," one of them, Father Joseph Clark, later told me. "Your eyes were just dancing!"
I still have the manuscript of my talk in Norwalk, but I can't remember how much I added about my latest finding in the Beinecke Library. Mostly, I discussed my identification of Reinhold's book in Edinburgh, how it led to the Copernican census, and how I had identified Tycho Brahe's working notes in the copy in the Vatican. As was the custom at these meetings, my paper was followed by a commentator, in this case Robert Westman of the University of California in Los Angeles, a younger scholar who had come into prominence in the Copernican year. After my initial discovery of Reinhold's copy in Edinburgh, he too began scouting for other annotations in De revolutionibus. I knew I was in for some competition after Westman had sought out the annotated copy from Michael Maestlin, Kepler's teacher—a copy which I hadn't yet inspected— and had presented a widely admired paper that included a discussion of Maestlin's annotations. So there was some obvious rivalry between us, and though by the fall of 1974 I had located more than two hundred copies of the first edition, I had by no means seen them all. So I didn't know quite what to expect that Sunday morning in Norwalk.
Westman started out innocuously enough, commending my discovery and raising a few polite criticisms of my borrowed use of the twentieth-century sociological term invisible college to describe the network of sixteenth-century copying of annotations from one book to another. Using two projectors to produce side-by-side images, he compared the Vatican handwriting with a known Tychonic document and pointed out that they were not perfectly identical. Perhaps, he suggested, one of Tycho's assistants might have made the annotations. It was a puzzle, he said, and here was another: He quoted me as saying that the comparative pattern of annotations in the Prague and Vatican copies was made "apparently with little rhyme or reason." It seemed he was leading up to something, but what? I hadn't a clue. And then he sprang his surprise.
Westman had obtained a microfilm of a well-annotated De revolutionibus at the University of Liege in Belgium, and lo and behold, he had found yet another copy with handwriting matching the copies in Prague and the Vatican. This was almost unbelievable. Tycho was a wealthy nobleman, so he could have afforded three copies of Copernicus' book. But why would he have wanted three copies?
I was stunned. I knew at once that I couldn't discuss Ottoboniana 1902 definitively without taking into account the newfound Liege copy. I had been aware of a first edition there, but it had not been my procedure to ask for a microfilm before I had actually looked at a book. Westman had stolen the march on me by writing letters to many institutions and requesting microfilms when the descriptions sounded promising. The trauma of his coup has completely blotted out my memory of who else was on the program that Sunday morning.
Half a dozen of us went out to lunch together that noon, across the highway from the Burndy Library at Old McDonald's Farm, a rather funky theme restaurant saturated with rural atmosphere, and a favorite watering hole on trips from Boston to Manhattan. Against a background of old farm implements and circus posters, Westman and I approached the situation as warily as scorpions in a bottle. Gradually, the tensions ebbed as we realized that the only rational resolution would be to join forces in describing the Tycho Brahe material. Although there would be tempestuous days in the future, it was in retrospect one of the happiest decisions I've ever made. If nothing else, I had much more fun working with a colleague than in isolation. Our research strengths were remarkably complementary, and what we eventually produced was far more interesting than either of us could have managed alone.
The Liege copy resolved a principal mystery surrounding Ottoboniana 1902. It contained notes in two different hands. The earlier layer was a remarkably exact copy of Reinhold's notes. This, then, was the source for the title page motto and all the other Reinhold material in the Vatican copy. That early layer of annotations also included a page of notes, apparently from Reinhold, but now missing from the Edinburgh copy—an analysis of the planetary circles "according to the first hypothesis of Copernicus." With that analysis already in place, it was no longer puzzling that the Vatican annotations began with the "second hypothesis."
But there was still no clue why the table of geographic coordinates in Ottoboniana 1902 listed Wratislavia so conspicuously and omitted the key Tychonic locations, Copenhagen and Uraniborg. That would come back to haunt us.
* When in 1551 Erasmus Reinhold had issued the Copernican-based Prutenic Tables to surpass the Alfonsine Tables, he had "paved a sure path to the stars," showing how great Copernicus was as a celestial artist. Reinhold explicitly stated that the Prutenic (or Prussian) Tables were named in honor of both Copernicus and Duke Albrecht of Prussia (a potential patron).
† Heidelberg is still exercised by this perceived theft; Tilly himself was eventually defeated and fatally wounded by the Swedes under the command of Gustavus Adolphus, who had already captured Copernicus' library for Sweden.
* "On very recent phenomena in the aethereal realm," that is, about the Great Comet of 1577.
* The meridian line was calibrated, and each noon when the solar image crossed it—far toward the south in summer, when the sun was high in the sky, and toward the north in winter—observers could determine the date. However, according to the Julian calendar, the Sun was reaching the equinox point ten days too early.
* Adolf Friedrichjohann Butenandt (1903—55) won the 1939 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on sex hormones; can the similarity of the name in the fable be accidental?
* The Burndy Library was the creation of Bern Dibner (1897-1988), a retired industrialist who had personally selected the books for his outstanding collection. In 1976 he gave the main part of the rare books to the Smithsonian Institution as a bicentennial birthday gift to his adopted nation. These books are now housed in the Dibner Library in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The remainder of the collection is found in the Burndy Library of the Dibner Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
* "ln Dutch vellum and green silk ties, with the remarks of Johannes Homelius and annotations by Praetorius."
* The identification was made by comparison with Praetorius' astronomical notes preserved at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria.
Chapter 6
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
JERZY DOBRZYCKI'S dry sense of humor always enlivened my visits to Warsaw. He had a stoic attitude of realism about coping with conditions there, which meant long hours of standing in lines. Even that sometimes had its ironically funny moments. The Staszy Palace, home of the History of Science Institute, was a hotbed for the Solidarity movement, and there came a time when the entire building was placed under siege by the military and its occupants were arrested. Jerzy and his colleague Paul Czarto-ryski, who edited the series of Copernican studies and the Complete Works, were so busy at work that they didn't want to leave immediately. "You must come," said the departmental secretary, Olga. "This is what Solidarity means; we're all in this together." So at last Dobrzycki and Czartoryski went down to the front portico of the palace, only to be faced with a long line of workers waiting to be arrested and a large crowd of curious onlookers. As they paused, wondering what to do, a policeman came by and suggested they get lost. And so they did, melting seamlessly into the crowd.
But
in August of 1973 those events were still some years in the future, and Poland bubbled over with a well-developed Copernican euphoria. The quinquecentennial celebrations were in full swing, colorful Copernican posters were everywhere, wooden plates with the astronomer's portrait were found in every kiosk, and international visitors were coming to trace the footsteps of Copernicus. Included were scientists from around the globe, assembling in Warsaw to pay homage to their illustrious forebear.
Of course I had told Dobrzycki what I had found at the Vatican Library before giving my IAU invited discourse, but he was still chagrined that he had passed over the volume when he had first seen it in Rome. Nevertheless, he continued to back my census with full enthusiasm. We went together to his hometown of Poznan to see the six De revolutionibus copies in the libraries there, and then to Wroclaw, where there were two important collections, one at the university and the other at the Ossolin-ski, an independent institution that had transferred from the vicinity of Kiev just after World War II. Dobrzycki showed me the printed catalog of the Ossolinski books, and I noticed that for every entry there was an ordered list of all the provenances, that is, all previous ownerships and locations. This arrangement seemed like an ideal approach for the type of extensive survey that I had undertaken, although it also meant that much of the information I had collected wasn't fully adequate.
Dobrzycki agreed on both counts. Clearly, the census was undergoing a significant metamorphosis. It would not simply be a matter of checking whether the copies were annotated. Not only would I redouble my efforts to inspect nearly all of the first and second editions, but I would need to be more systematic in collecting background information on each copy so that where possible I could track who had owned it over the centuries. So, a few years into the survey, I realized that I would have to go back to many of the libraries to make sure that my notes were complete enough. This meant returning to Cambridge, Oxford, and London to ensure that I had the provenances of several dozen books.
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