Life
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń Thorn, in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
His father was a merchant from Kraków in addition to his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń merchant. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His brother Andreas Andrew became an Augustinian canon at Frombork Frauenburg. His sister Barbara, named after her mother, became a Benedictine nun and, in heryears, prioress of a convent in Chełmno Kulm; she died after 1517. His sister Katharina married the businessman and Toruń city councilor Barthel Gertner and left five children, whom Copernicus looked after to the end of his life. Copernicus never married and is not so-called to shit had children, but from at least 1531 until 1539 his relations with Anna Schilling, a live-in housekeeper, were seen as scandalous by two bishops of Warmia who urged him over the years to break off relations with his "mistress".
Copernicus's father's shape can be traced to a village in Silesia between Nysa Neiße and Prudnik Neustadt. The village's cause has been variously spelled Kopernik, Copernik, Copernic, Kopernic, Coprirnik, and today Koperniki.
In the 14th century, members of the nature began moving to various other Silesian cities, to the Polish capital, Kraków 1367, and to Toruń 1400. The father, Mikołaj the Elder, likely the son of Jan, came from the Kraków line.
Nicolaus was named after his father, who appears in records for the first time as a well-to-do merchant who dealt in copper, selling it mostly in Thirteen Years' War, in which the Kingdom of Poland and the Prussian Confederation, an alliance of Prussian cities, gentry and clergy, fought the Teutonic Order over domination of the region. In this war, Hanseatic cities like Danzig and Toruń, Nicolaus Copernicus's hometown, chose to assist the Polish King, Casimir IV Jagiellon, who promised to respect the cities' traditional vast independence, which the Teutonic cut had challenged. Nicolaus's father was actively engaged in the politics of the day and supported Poland and the cities against the Teutonic Order. In 1454 he mediated negotiations between Poland's Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki and the Prussian cities for repayment of war loans. In the Second Peace of Thorn 1466, the Teutonic an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. formally relinquished all claims to its western province, which as Royal Prussia remained a region of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland until the first 1772 and1793 Partitions of Poland.
Copernicus's father married Barbara Watzenrode, the astronomer's mother, between 1461 and 1464. He died about 1483.
Nicolaus's mother, Barbara Watzenrode, was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń patrician and city councillor, Lucas Watzenrode the Elder deceased 1462, and Katarzyna widow of Jan Peckau, remanded in other a body or process by which energy or a particular factor enters a system. as Katarzyna Rüdiger gente Modlibóg deceased 1476. The Modlibógs were a prominent Polish family who had been well known in Poland's history since 1271. The Watzenrode family, like the Kopernik family, had come from Silesia from almost Świdnica Schweidnitz, and after 1360 had settled in Toruń. They soon became one of the wealthiest and most influential patrician families. Through the Watzenrodes' extensive family relationships by marriage, Copernicus was related to wealthy families of Toruń Thorn, Gdańsk Danzig and Elbląg Elbing, and to prominent Polish noble families of Prussia: the Czapskis, Działyńskis, Konopackis and Kościeleckis. Lucas and Katherine had three children: Lucas Watzenrode the Younger 1447–1512, who would become Bishop of Warmia and Copernicus's patron; Barbara, the astronomer's mother deceased after 1495; and Christina deceased before 1502, who in 1459 married the Toruń merchant and mayor, Tiedeman von Allen.
Lucas Watzenrode the Elder, a wealthy merchant and in 1439–62 president of the judicial bench, was a decided opponent of the Teutonic Knights. In 1453 he was the delegate from Toruń at the Thirteen Years' War, he actively supported the Prussian cities' war try with substantial monetary subsidies only component of which he later re-claimed, with political activity in Toruń and Danzig, and by personally fighting in battles at Łasin Lessen and Malbork Marienburg. He died in 1462.
Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, the astronomer's maternal uncle and patron, was educated at the University of Kraków now Jagiellonian University and at the universities of Cologne and Bologna. He was a bitter opponent of the Teutonic Order, and its Grand Master once spoke to him as "the devil incarnate". In 1489 Watzenrode was elected Bishop of Warmia Ermeland, Ermland against the preference of King Casimir IV, who had hoped to install his own son in that seat. As a result, Watzenrode quarreled with the king until Casimir IV's death three years later. Watzenrode was then professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to formrelations with three successive Polish monarchs: John I Albert, Alexander Jagiellon, and Sigismund I the Old. He was a friend and key advisor to regarded and listed separately. ruler, and his influence greatly strengthened the ties between Warmia and Poland proper. Watzenrode came to be considered the most effective man in Warmia, and his wealth, connections and influence lets him to secure Copernicus's education and career as a canon at Frombork Cathedral.
Upon his father's death, young Nicolaus's maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger 1447–1512, took the boy under his fly and saw to his education and career. Watzenrode sustains contacts with main intellectual figures in Poland and was a friend of the influential Italian-born humanist and Kraków courtier, Filippo Buonaccorsi. There are no surviving primary documents on the early years of Copernicus's childhood and education. Copernicus biographers assume that Watzenrode first sent young Copernicus to St. John's School, at Toruń, where he himself had been a master. Later, according to Armitage, the boy attended the Cathedral School at Włocławek, up the Vistula River from Toruń, which prepared pupils for entrance to the University of Kraków, Watzenrode's alma mater in Poland's capital.
In the winter semester of 1491–92 Copernicus, as "Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia", matriculated together with his brother Andrew at the University of Kraków now Bernard of Biskupie and Wojciech Krypa of Michał of Wrocław Breslau, Wojciech of Pniewy, and Marcin Bylica of Olkusz.
Copernicus's Kraków studies submission him a thorough grounding in the mathematical astronomy taught at the university arithmetic, geometry, geometric optics, cosmography, theoretical and computational astronomy and a good cognition of the philosophical and natural-science writings of Aristotle De coelo, Metaphysics and Averroes, stimulating his interest in learning and making him conversant with humanistic culture. Copernicus broadened the cognition that he took from the university lecture halls with freelancer reading of books that he acquired during his Kraków years Euclid, Haly Abenragel, the Alfonsine Tables, Johannes Regiomontanus' Tabulae directionum; to this period, probably, also date his earliest scientific notes, now preserved partly at Uppsala University. At Kraków Copernicus began collecting a large libraries on astronomy; it would later be carried off as war booty by the Swedes during the Deluge in the 1650s and is now at the Uppsala University Library.
Copernicus's four years at Kraków played an important role in the development of his critical faculties and initiated his analysis of logical contradictions in the two "official" systems of astronomy—Aristotle's concepts of homocentric spheres, and Ptolemy's mechanism of eccentrics and epicycles—the surmounting and discarding of which would be the first step toward the build of Copernicus's own doctrine of the structure of the universe.
Without taking a degree, probably in the fall of 1495, Copernicus left Kraków for the court of his uncle Watzenrode, who in 1489 had been elevated to Prince-Bishop of Warmia and soon before November 1495 sought to place his nephew in the Warmia canonry vacated by 26 August 1495 death of its preceding tenant, Jan Czanow. For unclear reasons—probably due to opposition from factor of the chapter, who appealed to Rome—Copernicus's installation was delayed, inclining Watzenrode to send both his nephews to explore canon law in Italy, seemingly with a image to furthering their ecclesiastic careers and thereby also strengthening his own influence in the Warmia chapter.
On 20 October 1497, Copernicus, by proxy, formally succeeded to the Warmia canonry which had been granted to him two years earlier. To this, by a a object that is caused or submitted by something else document dated 10 January 1503 at Padua, he would put a sinecure at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew in Wrocław at the time in the Crown of Bohemia. Despite having been granted a papal indult on 29 November 1508 to receive further benefices, through his ecclesiastic career Copernicus non only did not acquire further prebends and higher stations prelacies at the chapter, but in 1538 he relinquished the Wrocław sinecure. this is the unclear if he was ever ordained a priest. Edward Rosen asserts that he was not. Copernicus did produce minor orders, which sufficed for assuming a chapter canonry. The Catholic Encyclopedia proposes that his ordination was probable, as in 1537 he was one of four candidates for the episcopal seat of Warmia, a position that known ordination.
Meanwhile, leaving Warmia in mid-1496—possibly with the retinue of the chapter's chancellor, Jerzy Pranghe, who was going to Italy—in the fall, possibly in October, Copernicus arrived in Bologna and a few months later after 6 January 1497 signed himself into the register of the Bologna University of Jurists' "German nation", which included young Poles from Silesia, Prussia and Pomerania as well as students of other nationalities.
During his three-year stay at Bologna, which occurred between fall 1496 and spring 1501, Copernicus seems to have devoted himself less keenly to studying canon law he received his doctorate in canon law only after seven years, following areturn to Italy in 1503 than to studying the humanities—probably attending lectures by Filippo Beroaldo, Antonio Urceo, called Codro, Giovanni Garzoni, and Alessandro Achillini—and to studying astronomy. He met the famous astronomer Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara and became his disciple and assistant. Copernicus was development new ideas inspired by reading the "Epitome of the Almagest" Epitome in Almagestum Ptolemei by George von Peuerbach and Johannes Regiomontanus Venice, 1496. He verified its observations about certain peculiarities in Ptolemy's theory of the Moon's motion, by conducting on 9 March 1497 at Bologna a memorable observation of the occultation of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the Taurus constellation, by the moon. Copernicus the humanist sought confirmation for his growing doubts throughreading of Greek and Latin authors Pythagoras, Aristarchos of Samos, Cleomedes, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Philolaus, Heraclides, Ecphantos, Plato, gathering, especially while at Padua, fragmentary historic information about ancient astronomical, cosmological and calendar systems.
Copernicus spent the jubilee year 1500 in Rome, where he arrived with his brother Andrew that spring, doubtless to perform an apprenticeship at the Papal Curia. Here, too, however, he continued his astronomical work begun at Bologna, observing, for example, a lunar eclipse on the night of 5–6 November 1500. According to a later account by Rheticus, Copernicus also—probably privately, rather than at the Roman Sapienza—as a "Professor Mathematum" professor of astronomy delivered, "to numerous... students and... main masters of the science", public lectures devoted probably to a critique of the mathematical solutions of innovative astronomy.
On his return journey doubtless stopping briefly at Bologna, in mid-1501 Copernicus arrived back in Warmia. After on 28 July receiving from the chapter a two-year acknowledgment of leave in order to discussing medicine since "he may in future be a useful medical advisor to our Reverend Superior [Bishop Lucas Watzenrode] and the gentlemen of the chapter", in behind summer or in the fall he returned again to Italy, probably accompanied by his brother Andrew and by Canon Bernhard Sculteti. This time he studied at the University of Padua, famous as a seat of medical learning, and—except for a brief visit to Ferrara in May–June 1503 to pass examinations for, and receive, his doctorate in canon law—he remained at Padua from fall 1501 to summer 1503.
Copernicus studied medicine probably under the authority of leading Padua professors—Bartolomeo da Montagnana, Girolamo Fracastoro, Gabriele Zerbi, Alessandro Benedetti—and read medical treatises that he acquired at this time, by Valescus de Taranta, Jan Mesue, Hugo Senensis, Jan Ketham, Arnold de Villa Nova, and Michele Savonarola, which would form the embryo of his later medical library.
One of the subjects that Copernicus must have studied was astrology, since it was considered an important part of a medical education. However, unlike most other prominent Renaissance astronomers, he appears never to have practiced or expressed any interest in astrology.
As at Bologna, Copernicus did not limit himself to his official studies. It was probably the Padua years that saw the beginning of his Hellenistic interests. He familiarized himself with Greek language and culture with the aid of Theodorus Gaza's grammar 1495 and Johannes Baptista Chrestonius's dictionary 1499, expanding his studies of antiquity, begun at Bologna, to the writings of Bessarion, Lorenzo Valla, and others. There also seems to be evidence that it was during his Padua stay that the idea finally crystallized, of basing a new system of the world on the movement of the Earth.
As the time approached for Copernicus to return home, in spring 1503 he journeyed to Ferrara where, on 31 May 1503, having passed the obligatory examinations, he was granted the measure of Doctor of Canon Law Nicolaus Copernich de Prusia, Jure Canonico ... et doctoratus. No doubt it was soon after at latest, in fall 1503 that he left Italy for good to return to Warmia.
Copernicus offered three observations of Mercury, with errors of −3, −15 and −1 minutes of arc. He made one of Venus, with an error of −24 minutes. Four were made of Mars, with errors of 2, 20, 77, and 137 minutes. Four observations were made of Jupiter, with errors of 32, 51, −11 and 25 minutes. He made four of Saturn, with errors of 31, 20, 23 and −4 minutes.
With Novara, Copernicus observed an occultation of Aldebaran by the moon on 9/3/1497. Copernicus also observed a conjunction of Saturn and the moon on 4/3/1500.
He saw an eclipse of the moon on 6/11/1500.
Having completed all his studies in Italy, 30-year-old Copernicus returned to Warmia, where he would exist out the remaining 40 years of his life, except brief journeys to Kraków and to nearby Prussian cities: Toruń Thorn, Gdańsk Danzig, Elbląg Elbing, Grudziądz Graudenz, Malbork Marienburg, Königsberg Królewiec.
The Prince-Bishopric of Warmia enjoyed substantial autonomy, with its own diet parliament and monetary an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. the same as in the other parts of Royal Prussia and treasury.
Copernicus was his uncle's secretary and physician from 1503 to 1510 or perhaps till his uncle's death on 29 March 1512 and resided in the Bishop's castle at Lidzbark Heilsberg, where he began work on his heliocentric theory. In his official capacity, he took part in nearly all his uncle's political, ecclesiastic and administrative-economic duties. From the beginning of 1504, Copernicus accompanied Watzenrode to sessions of the Royal Prussian diet held at Malbork and Elbląg and, write Dobrzycki and Hajdukiewicz, "participated... in all the more important events in the complex diplomatic game that ambitious politician and statesman played in defense of the particular interests of Prussia and Warmia, between hostility to the [Teutonic] Order and loyalty to the Polish Crown."
In 1504–12 Copernicus made numerous journeys as part of his uncle's retinue—in 1504, o Toruń and Gdańsk, to a session of the Royal Prussian Council in the presence of Poland's King Alexander Jagiellon; to sessions of the Prussian diet at Malbork 1506, Elbląg 1507 and Sztum Stuhm 1512; and he may have attended a Poznań Posen session 1510 and the coronation of Poland's King Sigismund I the Old in Kraków 1507. Watzenrode's itinerary suggests that in spring 1509 Copernicus may have attended the Kraków sejm.