COPERNICUS, Nicholas, (1473–1543), astronomer. He studied first at the University of Cracow and then read law and medicine in Bologna and Padua. Owing to the early death of his father, he grew up under the influence of his uncle, Lucas Walzelrode, Bp. of Warmia (in NE Poland), who secured ecclesiastical preferments for him. After serving for some time in his uncle’s immediate entourage, he spent the latter part of his life (from 1510) in Frauenburg (the cathedral city of the diocese of Warmia), in which he had been a cathedral canon since 1495 (confirmed in 1497).

[[As a canon of a cathedral church he was certainly in minor orders; whether he was ordained to the diaconate or priesthood is uncertain.  Galileo described Copernicus as a canon and cleric (i.e. an ordained member of a religious order); and the fact that he was considered as a candidate for the episcopal see of Ermland in 1537 by King Sigismund of Poland suggests that he may have been ordained a priest later in life.  However, neither Copernicus in his writings nor any of his friends described him as a priest, nor is there any known mention of his having performed any sacramental ministry.]]

By 1514 Copernicus had written a short treatise known as the Commentariolus (first published in 1878), sketching out a new system of astronomy in which the sun rather than the earth was the centre of the universe, and the earth became one of the planets revolving round it. This was given mature expression in his De revolutionibus orbium caelestium (1543). The arguments for this at the time were by no means conclusive, but after developments by J. Kepler, G. Galileo, I. Newton and others the system became astronomical orthodoxy. At first theological objections were muted, but when the issues were popularized though the work of Galileo, religious debate became intense, and in 1616 the De revolutionibus was placed on the Index pending correction. An anonymous preface to the work, written without Copernicus’ knowledge by the Lutheran pastor A. Osiander, and asserting that the system should be treated as merely hypothetical, had probably been intended to ward off theological controversy. Copernicus himself dedicated his book to the Pope and included in it both an appreciative letter from Card. Nicolaus von Schönberg and a brusque dismissal of those who might cavil with it on scriptural grounds.

Crit. edns. of De Revolutionibus [by M. Curtze] for the Societas Copernicana Thorunensis (Toruń, 1873), by F. and C. Zeller (vol. 2 of projected edn. of his works, Munich, 1949), and by R. Gansiniec and others for the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw and Cracow, 1975). Eng. tr. of his Complete Works sponsored by the Polish Academy of Science (3 vols., London, Warsaw, and Cracow, 1972–85: vol. 1 being a facsimile repr. of the MS of De Revolutionibus; vol. 2, Eng. tr. of De Revolutionibus with comm. by E. Rosen; vol. 3, Minor works by id.). Eng. tr. of De Revolutionibus also by A. M. Duncan (London, etc., 1976), and of the Commentariolus, Copernicus’ ‘Letter against Werner’ (a minor astronomical work), and a letter of George Joachim von Lauchen, known as Rheticus, giving a summary of Copernicus’ views, with introd. and notes, by E. Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, 30; New York, 1939; 3rd edn., with rev. Life of Copernicus and bibl. to 1970, 1971). The Commentariolus is also tr., with comm., by N. W. Swerdlow in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117 (1973), pp. 423–512. The standard Life is L. Prowe, Nicolaus Coppernicus (2 vols., Berlin, 1883–4). Other works incl. J. L. E. Dreyer, History of Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906; repr. as A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, New York [1953]), pp. 305–44; A. Armitage, Copernicus: The Founder of Modern Astronomy (1938); T. S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); A. Koyré, La Révolution Astronomique [1961], pp. 13–115; Eng. tr. (1973), pp. 13–116; O. Pedersen and M. Phil, Early Physics and Astronomy (1974), esp. pp. 299–319; R. S. Westman, ‘The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory’, Isis, 66 (1975), pp. 165–93; id. (ed.), The Copernican Achievement (UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Contributions, 7; 1975); N. M. Swerdlow and O. Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus (New York, etc., 1984). H. Baranowski, Bibliografia Kopernikowska 1509–1955 (Warsaw, 1958); cont. for 1956–71 (ibid., 1973); and for 1972–5 in Studia Copernica, 17 (1977), pp. 179–201.

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