The illustrious discoverer of the true planetary motions, whose features
are represented on the accompanying plate, lived during the latter part
of the fifteenth century, and the first half of the following one.
Notwithstanding the success and celebrity of the theory which still
bears his name, the materials are very scanty for personal details
regarding his life and character. This ignorance is not the result of
recent neglect. A century had scarcely elapsed from the time of his
death, when Gassendi, who, at the request of the poet Chapelain,
undertook to compile an account of him, was forced to preface it by a
similar declaration.
Whilst Europe rang from one end to the other with the fierce dispute to
which the new views of the relation and motions of the heavenly bodies
gave rise, the character, the situation and manner of life, almost the
country, of the great author of the controversy, remained unknown to the
greater number of his admirers and opponents. Even the name of the
discoverer of the Copernican system now appears strange, except in the
Latinised form of Copernicus, in which alone it occurs in his own
writings and in those of his commentators.
Nicolas Cöpernik[1], to use his genuine appellation, was a native of
Thorn, a city of Polish Prussia, situated on the river Weichsel or
Vistula. He was born in the year 1473. Little is known of his parents,
except that his father, whose name also was Nicolas, was a surgeon, and,
as it is believed, of German extraction. The elder Cöpernik was
undoubtedly a stranger at Thorn, where he was naturalized in 1462: he
married Barbara, of the noble Polish family of Watzelrode. Luke, one of
her brothers, attained the high dignity of Bishop of Ermeland in the
year 1489, and the prospects of advancement which this connection held
out to young Cöpernik, probably induced his father to destine him to the
ecclesiastical profession. He acquired at home the first elements of a
liberal education, and afterwards graduated at Cracow, where he remained
till he received the diploma of Doctor in Arts and Medicine from that
university. He is said to have made considerable proficiency in the
latter branch of study; and possessed, even in more advanced life, so
high a reputation for skill and knowledge, as to produce an erroneous
belief that he had once followed medicine.
Footnote 1:
The authority for this manner of spelling the name is Hartknoch, Alt
und Neues Preussen. The inscription, Nicolao Copernico, which appears
on the plate, is a literal copy of the inscription on the original
picture.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._