The Other Renaissance, page 14
* The gold florin, fiorino d’oro, was first minted in Florence in 1252 and quickly gained Europe-wide recognition as a standard currency owing to its undeviating gold content. Each coin was guaranteed to contain 54 grains of ‘fine’ gold. (At present, a grain of 100 per cent gold is worth just under $4.) The word ‘grain’ as a measure of fine metal derives from the Bronze Age, where it was assessed as the mass of a single ideal grain of wheat or barley. Unlike the florin, locally minted currencies in other cities were liable to have their precious metal content surreptitiously downgraded during times of economic difficulty. As for assessing the modern equivalent-worth of a florin, this is all but impossible as prices for houses, livestock, food, cloth, a labourer’s wage and so forth have fluctuated wildly in uncoordinated fashion over the centuries. Suffice to say that in Augsburg during this period a middling merchant’s family townhouse with servants could probably have been maintained for around 200 florins a year. And an artisanal worker would have been lucky to earn a tenth of this sum.
* In later years the silver for these coins would come from the mines at Joachimsthaler in Bohemia, which provided silver for coins all over Germany and Austria. Such currency became known as Joachimsthalers, which became shortened to thalers – the origin of the word ‘dollar’.
* Earlier forms of banking had of course evolved elsewhere, especially in China, India and Judea (where the Bible records Christ driving the ‘usurers’ from the Temple in Jerusalem).
* When Augsburg officially became a Protestant city in 1555, the rights of the Catholic minority would still be represented on the city’s ruling council. The rich and powerful Fuggers would remain Catholic, retaining their close links with the Holy Roman Emperor and the Habsburgs. However, Augsburg’s transformation was not without its disturbances. At one stage an angry mob of around 1,300 poor working men (just over 10 per cent of the population at the time) marched on the city hall to vent their anger at Jakob Fugger, claiming that ‘they lived on oats and he ate pheasant, that he wore furs and they wore rags’.
* Following the Black Death of the 1320s, labour had been in short supply. Employers who wished to retain their peasants, miners, serfs and servants had been forced to grant more favourable conditions, or their employees were liable to seek higher recompense elsewhere. Therefore, for a few decades many of the lower orders had been able to rise above mere subsistence living. Over the generations, the situation reverted to the previous harsh conditions. But there remained, in the folk imagination, the memory of an almost legendary golden era when times had not been so hard and they had enjoyed respect from their employers.
* By comparison, John D. Rockefeller, the richest American of all time, owned 1.5 per cent of US GDP in 1937.
* Support for this claim can be seen in the fact that, during the Cold War, a West German stamp featured Jakob Fugger. By contrast, in communist East Germany, Thomas Müntzer appeared on a five-mark note.
CHAPTER 9
COPERNICUS
PERHAPS THE GREATEST RENAISSANCE, in its literal form of the rebirth of ancient learning, took place in the field of astronomy. During the third century bc, the Ancient Greek Aristarchus of Samos was a mathematician in the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world – namely Alexandria, in northern Egypt. His only surviving work is On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, which assumes a heliocentric world view. And his contemporary, the supreme mathematician Archimedes, elaborated on Aristarchus’s ideas as they appeared in his lost works: ‘His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit.’ Aristarchus proposed that the stars were merely other suns, which despite their fixed motions did in fact move relative to each other and the earth. Unfortunately, the telescope had yet to be invented, which meant that he was unable to prove or demonstrate in any way his seemingly non-intuitive hypotheses.
Nearly four centuries later, the Ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who also worked in Alexandria, wrote The Almagest, which proposed an alternative astronomical picture that appeared to accord more closely with human observation. This was a geocentric model, placing the earth at the centre of the universe. Using observations and mathematical expertise, Ptolemy proposed a system which followed the movements of the moon, the sun and the planets through the heavens. Although these motions consisted of complex epicycles, with variations in speed, direction and apparent distance from the earth, they largely matched observational reality. According to Ptolemy, the stars beyond the planets themselves were part of an outer sphere, which revolved outside the epicycles of the moon, the sun and the planets.
Ptolemy was also able to write tables which predicted, with considerable accuracy, the future movements of the planets and the stars. In accord with his system, Ptolemy wrote a comprehensive four-part work on astrology, which ‘enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more’.
Ptolemy’s geocentric system was in time accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, and thus became part of theological doctrine. This meant that throughout the Middle Ages the Ptolemaic system could not be contradicted. Anyone who did so was committing heresy. This fact is central to the life and conduct of Nicolaus Copernicus, the man who is credited with resurrecting the ideas of Aristarchus. The importance of Copernicus’s feat is all but impossible to exaggerate. Nearly three centuries later, the German poet and polymath Goethe would write in an oft-quoted passage:
Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the centre of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind – for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of poetic-religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamt of.
The man we know as Nicolaus Copernicus was born Mikołaj Kopernik in February 1473.* His birthplace was the provincial city of Thorn on the River Vistula in Poland, some 100 miles south of the Baltic Sea. Thorn (now Toruń) had been founded as a city in the 1200s by the Teutonic Knights. Its strategic position on the Vistula had prompted the Knights to build high defensive walls around the city, with guard towers and a central castle. Later it had become a member of the Hanseatic League, before reverting to Polish rule in 1411, by which time it had a thriving population of 10,000.
Nicolaus’s father was a merchant from Kraków, and his mother came from a prosperous local family. His father and mother, along with their servants, occupied an elaborate three-storey house, which had been inherited by Nicolaus’s mother. This contained large, high-ceilinged main rooms warmed by extensive fireplaces, their walls decorated with murals. Nicolaus was the youngest of four siblings, and grew up amidst an ambiance of considerable but unostentatious luxury.
When Nicolaus was just ten years old, his father died. All the children were then taken into the care of their maternal uncle Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, an intellectual who moved in humanist circles. Besides being a wealthy man, Watzenrode was also a canon – a member of the clergy who took ‘first orders’, including the vow of chastity. This post was often, but not always, held prior to taking full ‘higher orders’ and becoming an ordained priest. Watzenrode had ambitions: he was a canon of Frombork Cathedral, and within six years he would become Prince-Bishop of Warmia, a district of north-eastern Poland abutting the Baltic Sea.
In 1491, at the age of eighteen, Nicolaus and his older brother Andreas were despatched by their uncle Lucas to study at the University of Kraków, the main university in Poland. Founded in 1364, this was the second-oldest university in eastern Europe, after the Charles University in Prague. Nicolaus and Andreas travelled the hundred miles up the River Vistula by barge, the main means of public transport in this region during the period. In Kraków they entered an entirely new world. The city was over twice the size of Thorn, and was located at the crossroads between two of eastern Europe’s major trade routes. It was here that the route between the important Hanseatic port of Gdańsk and southern Europe met the route between Prague and Crimea, the major terminus of the Silk Routes on the Black Sea. Such extensive commercial connections gave the city a cosmopolitan air. Besides the native Germans and Poles, the population also included Italians, Lithuanians and Hungarians, and the city had one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. Until recently, the Florentine Medici Bank had retained an agency here, and by now the Fuggers had a well-established branch dealing with trans-shipments from their Hungarian and Transylvanian mines. The university was attended by students from as far afield as Scandinavia and Italy.
At the time, most students enrolled in university at around thirteen, so the eighteen-year-old Nicolaus and Andreas, in his early twenties, would have stood out amongst their contemporaries. Throughout their time in Kraków, they almost certainly lived in the same dwellings, remaining close. However, their temperaments were utterly disparate. The first indication of this comes from studying the university records, where Nicolaus is registered as paying his university fees in full. However, Andreas’s name is noticeable by its absence. He appears to have kept the money loaned to him by his uncle Lucas and used it for the traditional student pastimes of wine, women and song.
Nicolaus was enrolled to study canon law,* with the aim of following his uncle’s path to an important clerical post. Quite apart from the ever-evolving Renaissance, this was a time of world-changing discovery. In 1493, Columbus returned from his first transatlantic voyage to what he thought was Cathay (China). Ironically, it was this mistake which meant most to the natural philosophers (scientists) of the time. To them it proved, once and for all, that the world was round. Nicolas Copernicus became swept up in the excitement of this discovery, and other advances taking place in the northern Renaissance. He attended lectures by Albert Brudzewski, who taught Aristotelian philosophy; however, aside from these Brudzewski also gave private lectures on astronomy, which soon became of consuming interest to Copernicus.
There was a thriving school of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Kraków, and Copernicus became a part of this, proving himself adept in both mathematics and astronomical calculation. Brudzewski was a charismatic figure and highly attuned to the new learning that was spreading through Europe as part of the renaissance of classical thought. Brudzewski had read Regiomontanus and shared his belief that the geocentric Ptolemaic model had its flaws. He had also read the work of the Austrian Georg von Peuerbach, who had lived during the earlier years of the century (1423–61). Peuerbach had been taught by Regiomontanus and had collaborated with him, using instruments which he invented to measure the passage of the stars in the heavens. In 1454 Peuerbach completed his Theoricae Novae Planetarium (New Theories of the Planets), which presented a more simplified form of Ptolemy’s system. Three years later, using his new instruments and his new ideas, Peuerbach discovered that an eclipse of the sun occurred eight minutes earlier than predicted by previous Ptolemaic tables. This led him to produce a new Tabulae Eclipsium, with revised predictions.
Back in Kraków, Bradzewski made a point of keeping abreast of the latest developments, and was especially interested in Peuerbach’s ideas, which inspired him to undertake further research of his own. In the course of this he made a number of discoveries. Noticing that the dark marks on the face of the moon (the ‘Man in the Moon’ of popular mythology) always remained the same, he concluded that the moon did not spin on its orbit, but maintained the same face towards the earth. His observations of the moon’s changing size also convinced him that its passage around the earth was not circular, but elliptic. Copernicus was enthralled, and dreamed of making discoveries of his own.
In 1495 Copernicus left the University of Kraków without a degree, and returned to stay with his uncle Lucas Watzenrode who had now become Prince-Bishop of Warmia. Watzenrode intended to make his nephew a canon, a sinecure which would have supported him during his ensuing studies, but this appointment was held up over a dispute concerning another candidate. So Watzenrode decided to send Copernicus to study in Italy, with the aim of furthering his career in the Church. Two years later, while he was away in Italy, Copernicus would be appointed a canon by proxy, thus guaranteeing him an income.
Copernicus studied at three universities during his stay in Italy, which lasted from 1496 to 1503 and included a number of journeys back across the Alps to see his uncle. Although Copernicus was still supposed to be studying canon law, at the University of Bologna he so impressed the authorities with his astronomical knowledge that he was able to become an assistant to the renowned astronomer Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara. Together, Copernicus and Novara observed a lunar occultation of Aldebaran. Put simply, this is when the moon eclipses the light of Aldebaran, a bright star in the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, the bull. This prompted Copernicus to start revising his ideas concerning the measurement of distance between the bodies he was observing in the night sky.
The year 1500 saw huge celebrations in Rome, marking one and a half millennia since the birth of Christ. Copernicus was present in the Holy City, as his uncle had arranged for him to undertake an apprenticeship at the Curia. He took this opportunity to deliver a number of lectures in Rome, casting doubt on the mathematical calculations of Ptolemaic astronomy.
Later, Copernicus would study at the universities of Padua and Ferrara, between times making further visits back to his uncle in Warmia. During one of these visits, Uncle Lucas instructed Copernicus to broaden his studies by learning medicine at Padua, which was a renowned centre of medical studies at the time.* In 1503, Copernicus also completed a doctorate in canon law. All this gives an indication of the depth and breadth of Copernicus’s learning. It was also during this time that Leonardo da Vinci’s wide variety of pursuits made him the epitome of what came to be known as a Renaissance man. One of the great distinctions of this period was the ever-expanding breadth of knowledge of those who contributed to its discoveries. Ideas from one field were likely to inspire breakthroughs in other fields. The greatest advances in Renaissance thought, literature, ideas, science and the arts all took place in the field they referred to as the humanities. Nowadays the humanities are contrasted with the sciences, but in the Renaissance the humanities included the sciences. In accord with its name, this was the study of humanity in all its manifestations, and anything to do with it – in contrast to religious studies.
By the time Copernicus returned home to Warnia he was thirty years old. Apart from brief visits to Kraków, Thorn and Gdańsk he would remain in Warmia for the rest of his life, living as a canon of Frombork Cathedral. He would characterize this spot as ‘the remotest corner of the world’. Despite Copernicus’s great learning, he was not an ambitious man in any way. According to his biographer Jack Repcheck, ‘He was a retiring hermitlike scholar who wanted nothing more than to be left alone.’ His uncle’s intention that he should one day succeed him as Prince-Bishop of Warmia was politely declined, and he lived out the rest of his days as a lowly canon, fulfilling just the minimum of duties for which he was being paid, and occasionally being called into service as his uncle’s physician.
During the ensuing decades Copernicus put together his revolutionary conclusions concerning the solar system. These conclusions, and how they were reached, would be poetically described some 500 years later by the Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler, in his work The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe. Koestler gave his book this title because it was his opinion that many of the great scientific discoveries of the Renaissance were in fact achieved almost by accident. The scientists of this new age were blundering forward, towards they knew not what.
To a greater or lesser extent, this is true of all great ages of discovery.* Each new addition contributes its part in the construction of a world which was previously inconceivable. In the case of the Renaissance, this was very much so. Although the Ancient Greeks and Romans had known much of what was rediscovered during the Renaissance, the medieval world had persisted for centuries in a kind of Aristotelian dream. No matter that many of Aristotle’s findings did not in fact accord with reality: his words and his ideas, together with all the ideas which had accrued to his vision of the world (such as the Ptolemaic view of the cosmos), were simply not permitted to be questioned, any more than it was permissible to question one’s faith in God.
Koestler’s description of Copernicus’s rediscovery of the heliocentric system has a metaphoric beauty that is experienced by most scientists but seldom accessible to the non-specialist. Koestler states that Copernicus ‘was undoubtedly the first to develop the idea [of a heliocentric arrangement of the planets] into a comprehensive system. This is his lasting merit, regardless of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of his system.’ He then illustrates this with a superb image, describing Copernicus as a ‘crystallizer’, before going on to explain what he means by this:
If you put kitchen salt into a glass of water until the water is ‘saturated’ and will dissolve no more salt, and suspend a thread with a knot at its end in the solution, then after a while a crystal will form round the knot… [Copernicus] was the patient knot, suspended in the solution, who enabled it to crystallize.
