The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order

3. Copernicus and the Crisis of the Bologna Prognosticators,1496–1500

76 edge of astronomical theory, acquired at the feet of his Krakovian masters. During his four years of study at Bologna, he made the acquaintance of the astronomer Domenico Maria Novara (1454– 1504).1 According to some historians, Copernicus studied with Novara and helped him (in some unknown way) to make celestial observations. Most significantly, Novara first acquainted the young Polish astronomer with difficulties in Ptolemy’s theories, notably an apparent shift in the direction of the terrestrial pole. This anomaly is alleged to have stimulated his own ideas about moving the Earth.2 According to others, Novara’s critique of Ptolemy arose from Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean sources to which he had been exposed through the Platonic Academy of Florence .3 Copernicus’s complaints about the old world system—both the Ptolemaic equant mechanism and the ordering of the planets—were then thought to have arisen from the same intellectual ground.4 Given how little is known about Copernicus’s short time in Bologna, it seems legitimate to ask how one can justify an entire chapter devoted to this period of his life. My first contention is that there is more to Copernicus’s relationship with Novara than hitherto has been appreciated. A great deal of very admirable work has been done by positivist historians, such as Carlo Malagola, Leopold Prowe, and Ludwik Birkenmajer. But earlier historiographical presuppositions about what was useful and “scientific” or dismissible and “superstitious” in Novara’s writings effecCopernicus was involved in a culture of astrological prognosticators during his student years in Bologna . Although not a single word about astrology has survived in his writings, a great deal can be said about the specific circumstances that framed his involvement with that subject as a local practice. Indeed , much can be learned about various elements that shaped his early problematic and that pertain to questions unresolved in chapter 1: his map of knowledge domains, the cluster of major questions that preoccupied him for the rest of his life, why the ordering of venus and Mercury became a matter demanding of solution, and his concern with the period-distance rule. The four years that Copernicus spent in Bologna were a critical phase of his formative intellectual period. During this time, the prognosticators were under serious pressure both to justify their forecasts and to defend the theoretical foundations of their practice against the massive criticisms of Pico della Mirandola. All the astronomical and physical considerations that historians have emphasized are relevant to this account; but Copernicus ’s problematic makes more sense when one incorporates astrological practice into the story. More broadly, these conclusions suggest how we might make sense of the subsequent evolution of the Copernican question into the seventeenth century. The boloGna period, 1496–1500 an undisTurbed vieW The usual story is that Copernicus went to Italy in 1496 to study law. He came with some knowl3 Copernicus and the Crisis of the Bologna Prognosticators, 1496–1500 Crisis of The boloGna proGnosTiCaTors 77 froM The KraKoW ColleGiuM Maius To The boloGna sTudiuM Generale Nicolaus Copernicus arrived in the fall of 1496 at the old Bologna studium generale—the medieval term by which the university was still known— to receive instruction in “both laws,” civil and canon. With three years of arts study at Krakow between 1491 and 1494 (but no degree), he probably arrived with some competence in Peurbach’s New Theorics. The main Krakovian teachers were tively hid a great deal of information about the Bolognese master. These assumptions also seem to have inhibited the study of Novara’s extant writings, which were all astrological in character . My second contention, which is far more ambitious, is that Domenico Maria Novara—and through him, Copernicus—were part of a flourishing community of prognosticators in Bologna.5 A better appreciation of that culture is needed to understand the circumstances that framed the motivation of Copernicus’s astronomical project. 24. Domenico Maria Novara. Unknown eighteenth-century artist and cherub. Raccolta iconografica, vol. 12, fascicle 13, no. 58. Courtesy Biblioteca Communale Ariostea, Ferrara. 78 CoperniCus’s spaCe of possibiliTies from that of many Polish students in the fifteenth century who attended the Italian universities to pursue legal or medical studies, although there was ample precedent for Krakow professors’ having studied astronomy at Bologna.11 Copernicus’s uncle, Lukas Watzenrode (1447–1512), had himself studied canon law at Bologna between 1469 and 1473, eventually receiving...