Biographia Copernicana: Die Copernicus-Biographien des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts: Texte und Übersetzungen (review)

The volume under review is part of the German-language version of the complete works of the great Renaissance astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus. In this instance, the volume does not deal with the words of Copernicus but with the narratives of Copernicus's life and the various images of his person created by others from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. This valuable work gives us thirty-seven works, or portions of works, attempting to treat of aspects of Copernicus's life and thought, as well as thirty versions of his likeness or of those of members of his family, such as his father. All of the texts are given in the original languages (Latin, French, German, Polish, and Italian) with following German translations. These texts are also accompanied with brief, useful introductions concerning their authors and their composition, and brief bibliographical and explanatory notes.

As this work demonstrates, Copernicus became the stuff of fact and fiction during the Renaissance itself. Short biographical statements appear in works by Copernicus's fellow canon from Varmia, Poland, Alexander Scultetus, and in a work by the Italian author Paolo Giovio (1546). Indeed, the Italian Renaissance mathematician and historian of mathematics Bernaldino Baldi completed the "earliest surviving substantial biography of Copernicus" (E. Rosen, Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution [1984]) as early as 1588, only forty-five years after the death of Copernicus. Baldi appears to be the source for one famous error concerning the work of Copernicus, the story that Pope Paul III personally approved the De revolutionibus.

These accounts continued apace during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the seventeenth-century "Age of Reason" we have notable biographical accounts by the Polish "polyhistor" (56) Starowolski in 1625 and 1627 and, in 1654, the account by the great French philosopher and scientific thinker Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's extensive life of Copernicus was itself part of a study of the lives of famous astronomers, including Tycho Brahe, Peurbach, and Regiomontanus. During this century we also can find certain unfortunate errors appearing in the letter to Piero Dini of 16 February 1615 and in the immortal Letter to the Grand Duchess Cristina (1615) by the great Galileo. Galileo's errors, such as the statement that Copernicus was a priest and that Copernicus prepared his great astronomical work on the orders of Pope Paul III, have infected the literature ever since. From the eighteenth-century "Age of Enlightenment" we find various accounts, including those by the French mathematician, engineer, and philosophe Alexandre Savérien, found in his Histoire des Philosophes Modernes of 1765, and by the great German philosopher Johann Herder, which first appeared in the journal Der Teutsche Merkur in 1776.

These literary portraits are accompanied by an excellent catalog compiled by Gudula Metze of sixty-eight portraits of Copernicus. Many of these have been culled from numerous early modern scientific and literary works. Among them one can find images of Copernicus from such important astronomical works as Brahe's Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica (1598) and Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627). As an example of the varied types of images studied, one can also find the case of a fresco in Museo La Specola in Padua (1772-73). Metze's catalog contains important information about the composition and histories of these portraits and bibliographical notes. We are also treated to a wonderful appendix of thirty plates, some black-and-white and some color, which are copies of some of these portraits, along with the seventeenth-century "angelic portrait" of Copernicus's father located in the Jagellonian University Museum in Cracow.

The volume also contains a useful index and a good bibliography of works dealing with the life of Copernicus and with the texts included in the volume. Of course, one can find omissions, such as Edward Rosen's classic...