Régi könyvek, új csillagok:
Engl. Zsfassung u.d.T.: Old books, new stars
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| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | Hungarian |
| Published: |
Budapest
Balassi K. [u.a.]
2011
|
| Series: | Humanizmus és reformáció
32 |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Rezension Inhaltsverzeichnis Abstract |
| Summary: | Engl. Zsfassung u.d.T.: Old books, new stars |
| Physical Description: | 282 S. Ill. |
| ISBN: | 9789635068548 |
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Record in the Search Index
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| adam_text |
TARTALOM
Bevezetés
. 7
Új csillag az égen
Az 1572-es szupernóva tudomány-és művelődéstörténeti helye
. 11
Csillag vagy üstökös?
A tekintély és a tapasztalat vitája
.33
Cassiopeia ragyogó csillaga
Az új csillagról szóló magyar források
.55
Égi csoda
Caesar és a mágusok csillaga
.77
Égre írt történelem
Létező és képzeletbeli égi jelenségek
a
16.
századi Magyarországon
.102
Csodajel és propaganda
Báthory Zsigmond és az 1595-ös csillag
.121
A feltételezett, a látható és a valóságos univerzum
Kopernikusz, Tycho és Kepler recepciója
Magyarországon a kora újkorban
.166
Összefoglalás
.205
Függelék
Forrás és fordítása
.211
Táblázatok a forrásokhoz
.215
Csillagászati fogalmak
.223
Bibliográfia
.227
Képek jegyzéke
.259
Névmutató
.261
Old books, new stars. Summary
.271
OLD BOOKS, NEW STARS
Summary
Beginning in the cold November of
1572
for years on end a favourite illustration
for scholarly books in Europe was that of a queen (Cassiopeia) seated on the
throne. Why did this constellation, visible beside the Milky Way and resembling
a letter W, so occupy the attention of the theologians, astrologers, philosophers
and astronomers of the last third of the sixteenth century? If we were to under¬
take the impossible task of summarising the history of sixteenth-century science
in a few words, we might choose the two years
1543
and
1572.
The two years
refer to two appearances, which differ markedly in their form and content, yet
completely revolutionised the traditional (classical-medieval) notions of the
cosmos. The first date is the year of the first publication of
Nicolaus
Coper¬
nicus
's
epoch-making work on the revolutions of the celestial spheres, which
Johann
Petreius published in several hundred copies in his printing press in
Nuremberg. The book overturned the way scholars of the time thought of the
motion of the heavens. Well nigh all the important mathematicians and astron¬
omers took part in the debate on the work, and in spite of the considerable back¬
ground knowledge necessary to understand it, its influence reached far beyond
its readers, supporters and contesters alike. The second appearance was that of a
new star in the heavens, which could not be interpreted as a mathematical
hypothesis, since it was visible to all in the night sky, and as such not only
astronomers but theologians, politicians and simple laymen wanted an answer:
why did this celestial miracle appear, what was God's purpose with it, and why
did it disappear after hardly a year and a half?
The
ELTE
University Library has a stock of
70,000
old volumes, including a
collection of
9600
antique volumes, making it the second largest in Hungary.
Besides its scale, the special nature of the collection lies in the bibliohistorical
fact that this institution, founded in
1561
(and which from
1635
became the
library of the University of
Nagyszombat
founded by
Péter Pázmány,
Archbishop of
Esztergom)
has for centuries continuously preserved the majori-
271
ty
of the volumes. The provenance of the vast majority of books is the Car¬
pathian Basin, thus they are primary sources for early modern history of books
and reading. The owner of one book that came to light during reorganisation of
stock may have been Matthias Flacius Illiricus, a philologist and Protestant theo¬
logian, on whom a humorous verse can be found on the title page of the last part
of the 'colligatum' containing sixteenth-century printed materials bound into a
codex fragment. To the end of this six-part colligatum is bound a hitherto
unknown astronomical-theological manuscript in Latin. The new star mentioned
in this manuscript is none other than the supernova observed all the world over
in
1572.
This phenomenon appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and is
one of the seven supernovas to have exploded in our galaxy, observed from
Earth and reliably documented, over the last two thousand years. In the
400
years since, nobody has observed a new star in the Milky Way, and this unusual
fact secures special interest for the historical supernovas (primarily the last two,
well documented, though observed with the naked eye) amongst both
astronomers and historians. For both these sciences, every source that assists us
in following the changes in light of these objects, in defining their exact posi¬
tion, is of great importance, and we gain a detailed picture of the decisive phases
in the formation of the early modern cosmos, of the world-view of the modern
natural sciences. While modern astronomy uses historical reconstructions to
reach back to observations of earlier times for data to research the current uni¬
verse, grappling with the physical properties, changes and life-cycle of the stars
observed, the historical scholar uses the same sources to try and interpret the for¬
mation, phases and reception of modern cosmology as conceived in the fifteenth
to seventeenth centuries. The purpose is thus dual in nature, yet the means avail¬
able (manuscript and printed sources) are in common, and in recent years both
astronomers and historians have turned their attention to a reassessment of the
events in early modern astronomy.
Contrary to popular belief, the appearance of the
1572
supernova and more
particularly its disappearance a year and a half later caused a far greater shock
in both European scientific circles and theological thinking, than had
Copernicus's work published nearly three decades previously. His contempo¬
raries and the following generation had considered the Canon of Frombork's
work on the revolution of celestial bodies (partly owing to the foreword by the
German theologian Andreas Osiander) rather as a mathematical hypothesis, or a
version of the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of
Samos.
The traditional clas¬
sical-medieval worldview was attacked from two sides between
1543
and
1611.
One line of fire was the Copernican theory, which refuted geocentrism and the
immobility of the Earth, and the other was from the observations that confound¬
ed the traditional Aristotelian notion that the heavens are immutable and
272
unchangeable. The arguments for this latter attack were based primarily on the
measurements made with the naked eye by Danish astronomer Tycho
Brahe
of
the supernova in
1572
and the comet in
1577,
and the observations made by te¬
lescope from
1609
by Galileo Galilei. The refutation of the solid sphere and of
the perfection of the heavens did not represent a serious attack on Catholic
dogma and tradition, so the main line of assault in defence of the Bible, more
precisely in a supposedly accurate interpretation thereof, was the Copernican
theory, because the second, the Peripatetic-Scholastic theory on the immutabili¬
ty and perfection of the heavens, was considered suitable for debate. Common
sense dictated that the supernova of
1572
(and that of
1604)
could not be gain¬
said, and at all costs a scientific (and theological) explanation was required for
the origin and disappearance of the new stars. But the scientists of the time
lacked the astronomical-physical evidence necessary to justify the heliocentric
model: the phenomenon of the aberration of light, which was not discovered
until much later, in
1728,
by the English astronomer James Bradley.
Because Tycho
Brahe
collected and analysed in detail the European observa¬
tions available, the literature refers to the objects in question as Tycho's super¬
nova. The astronomers of the time were astonished by the fact that the new star
of
1572
could not be identified with any other earlier object, and most tracts
about it included the new star of Hipparchus, cited by Pliny the Elder, which was
visible even during the day. According to most observers the position of this new
star did not change relative to the fixed stars, and astronomers of the time could
now measure the (diurnal) parallax of the celestial phenomenon. Tycho carried
out measurements of the position for months, and came to the conclusion that
the celestial body was well beyond the moon, in the sphere of the stars. The posi¬
tion of the new star relative to the stars around it seemed a decisive issue for
three reasons. Firstly,
ifit
could be proved by measurement that it was positioned
above the Moon, or rather beyond the planets in the sphere of the fixed stars, this
assailed one of the basic tenets of traditional Peripatetic-Scholastic cosmology.
Furthermore, if the new object appeared to move, then it did after all belong to
the sublunar region, and could not be a star, because the parallax of stars could
not be measured given the accuracy of the instruments of the time. Finally, if the
heavenly body had no parallax, then it did not support the theory of the helio¬
centric universe, because then it too ought to revolve around the Sun.
The Aristotelian and Ptolemaic body of astronomical knowledge was thor¬
oughly contradicted by the
1572
supernova, for the birth of a new star contra¬
dicted the Aristotelian-Scholastic worldview according to which the sphere of
the fixed stars was immutable. Some fifty authors are known to have left a writ¬
ten work on the new star of
1572.
Many observation reports have come down to
us in correspondence, which in addition to data on the history of science provide
273
an insight into the complex, intricate relationships between scholars in the last
third of the sixteenth century. The letter-writers include not only famous and
lesser-known mathematicians and astronomers, but also astrologers, theolo¬
gians, and other laymen, and even public dignitaries attracted to astronomy. It is
generally difficult in these texts to draw a clear line between astronomy and
astrology, and a theological interpretation is mixed with a physical-astronomi¬
cal interpretation. Although several printed or manuscript treatises and letters
contain some kind of scientific value, few were written expressly and exclu¬
sively as professional astronomical works. The predictions and poems to be
found in these documents later became excellent material in the hands of
astrologers. This explains why the star was interpreted as a miracle, for not only
did God's omnipotence overwrite the laws of Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmolo¬
gy, but this view suited Protestant eschatology, which because of the bloody
Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre in
1572
gained momentum in the following
years. Many believed that the Last Judgement and the second coming of Christ
were to be expected in the near future. So it is no coincidence that this new star
triggered intense interest and debate, a flood of letters was unleashed, and it held
the scholarly world in fervid excitement for weeks. More than once, religious
conviction, which held that the new star was a message sent from God, assisted
astronomers in accurately determining the position of the supernova, though
they believed its creation to be supernatural.
The text of the newly discovered manuscript was probably written after
7
De¬
cember
1572,
because the writer mentions in detail a sermon given on the sec¬
ond Sunday of advent by Evangelical pastor
Friedrich Widebram
in the Schlos-
sekirche at Wittenberg. The university student writes in the present tense of the
supernova, whose brightness is comparable to that of Venus, the new star grad¬
ually faded from mid-December, and by
15
March
1574
was no longer visible to
observers, so the text must have been completed by the third Sunday in advent,
15
December
1572.
The contents of the text on the new star can be divided into
three parts. The first part is presumably a summary of the lectures by mathe¬
matician and doctor Caspar Peucer and philologist and theologian Esrom
Rüdinger,
enthusiastic yet sceptical professors at Wittenberg who must have spo¬
ken to their students at the university in November and early December. Un¬
fortunately it has not been possible to ascertain whether the observations by
Esrom
Rüdinger in
this manuscript may have appeared in print, though he may
also have dealt with the subject in a later work. The manuscript describes in
detail the unusual light phenomenon accompanying the supernova, and classifies
the object as a comet. In line with classical tradition, the new star was believed
to have been ignited by Jupiter. From this point on the writer of the text moves
from the field of science to that of astrology. The second part may derive from
274
Peucer,
one of the shapers of the Wittenberg Protestant approach to history, who
mentions political events which, in his view, were caused by the appearance of
the comet of
1472
observed extensively by Johannes Regiomontanus. The third
part is from the sermon given on the second Sunday of advent by the pastor of
the Wittenberg
Schlosskirche.
After the historical discussion Widebram begins to
speak, and calls on the faithful to repent. It is conceivable that the transcriber
moulded the text into its current form precisely to convey the differing attitudes,
for the dispute between Peucer and Widebram is quite apparent from the manu¬
script. While the former is clearly dubious as to whether the new star can be
compared with the star of Bethlehem, this comparison and the resulting conse¬
quences are the main message of the latter's advent sermon. Nor can it be ruled
out that Peucer and
Rüdinger
gave lectures in November and December in
Wittenberg on the celestial phenomenon, and the writer of the manuscript, based
on some unknown editorial principle, juxtaposed a summary of these university
lectures with the Sunday sermon mentioned above. It is evident from the manu¬
script that the student cannot have understood all of Peucer's and
Rüdinger
's
explanations clearly. As a result, without knowing the original texts, it is impos¬
sible to deduce from his confused statements what is a misspelling or perhaps an
error, when he writes of astronomical distances or historical events. An inter¬
pretation of the text was made more difficult by the fact that important details
are quite clearly missing between individual sections.
The most extensive account in Hungarian sources was only a few lines long
until the manuscript was discovered. In a Hungarian-language publication of
1577 Wilhelm Misocacus
(an astrologer from
Gdańsk)
told not only of the great
alarm caused by the Tycho comet, but also made brief mention of earlier celes¬
tial phenomena, such as the supernova that appeared in Cassiopeia. Also extant
is a late seventeenth-century account by Transylvanian Saxon historian Matthias
Miles, of how some astronomers observed a new star in the constellation of
Cassiopeia. The new star had hitherto been seen by nobody, and shone for nine
months in the sky, with a bright light. Apart from Miles, there are four contem¬
porary Transylvanian communications of one sentence apiece on the new star,
but which give no new information on the astronomical event. Some of our
sources link the heavenly phenomenon to the coronation of Rudolf I of Hungary,
which should sound a note of caution. An old
topos
of the interpretation of his¬
tory deriving from medieval thought is that a frightening, shocking event, or joy¬
ful and inexplicable one, is often preceded, or subsequently reinforced, by a
divine sign in the heavens. Suffice to think of the so-called sidus Iulium that
appeared at the death of Julius Caesar, which was incorporated into the imperi¬
al propaganda of Augustus, and for Hungarian humanist
András
Dudith a splen¬
did example was provided fifteen hundred years later when he wrote a treatise
275
on the link between celestial phenomena and superstition in relation to the
1577
comet. Because these are secondary sources, or do not originate with experts, it
is more likely that what people saw in October was an atmospheric phenomenon
(a halo or parhelia) or unusual diffusion of light, which they later incorrectly
identified with the genuinely observed new star, thinking it was this heavenly
body they had seen earlier too. Another telling fact is that after
11
November
(Tycho's observation) suddenly laymen and expert stargazers rushed to outdo
one another, reporting on the new star with measurements and data, whereas
prior to that date there is no news of it, though later some report they had already
seen the supernova in October. In seventeenth-century Hungarian sources the
chronology somehow became muddled, including that of miraculous signs and
political events, or perhaps they simply paid no heed to the date.
Besides the significance of the manuscript for the history of astronomy,
another important aspect is the predictions related to the new star. The majority
of these interpreted the appearance of the supernova as a heavenly phenomenon
similar to the star of Bethlehem
(stella
magorum),
signalling the second coming
of Jesus. Astronomers, theologians and astrologers, seeking an analogy at all
costs, pointed out the most obvious true or doubtful instances from classical lit¬
erature in order to find an explanation for the origin of the new
1572
star. Since
these literary examples were mostly linked to historical cataclysms, tragedies, or
the death of rulers, a parallel was readily found with the bloodiest events of the
day, and Protestant writers in particular, especially Theodore
de Bčze
gave spe¬
cial importance to the Saint Bartholomew's night massacre. In most works about
the new star, regardless of genre some kind of apocalyptic vision of awaiting the
end of the world gave the impression of logical argument, and it was impossible
to avoid raising the awkward question of whether the new star was a divine sign
foretelling the second coming of Christ, which had similarly appeared in the sky
when the Saviour was born in Bethlehem. In most of the authors examined as
well as the astronomical problem (the position of the new star, the reason for its
origin and disappearance) the astrological issue (of what God meant by this
heavenly sign) defined the course of the letters, tracts and literary works.
Mention should be made of a tradition that runs through English literature relat¬
ed to a reference to the
1572
supernova and its astrological significance in Sha¬
kespeare's Hamlet. It would seem that in forming the characters of this English
play and in choosing the setting a role may have been played by Danish as¬
tronomer Tycho
Brahe,
more precisely by a portrait of him well known in Euro¬
pean scholarly circles. In addition the English historian Raphael Holinshed's
detailed description may have captured the imagination of the English dramatist,
who could have seen the supernova for himself at the age of eight and may have
remembered this unusual celestial phenomenon while writing the play.
276
Descriptions
and depictions of early modern celestial phenomena were sub¬
ject to two influences of roughly equal importance. Paradoxically not only
descriptions of thorough observation with the naked eye (or by telescope from
1609),
but also the typology, at times quite fantastic, of Pliny the Elder. The
comet types of the Roman naturalist appeared in woodcuts in various treatises.
Works by two authors, French writer Pierre Boaistuau and Alsation humanist
Konrad
Lycosthenes became particularly popular during the century. Thus the
various early modern descriptions and depictions comprised not only the actual
observed forms and properties of the celestial phenomena, but they were also
distorted by the classical texts familiar to writers and engravers, and the illus¬
trations based on these. So in every case where we read of an unconfirmed (but
possible) celestial body, we must question whether what is described and depict¬
ed can truly have been seen, or whether the observer's erudition, and the typol-
ogised pictures held up almost as models, duped his senses. If the author was not
contemporary, then we would do well to ponder the influence of political pro¬
paganda (a heavenly miracle preceding a victory) and the classical toposes (the
king cannot die without a sign from heaven). A survery of Hungarian sources of
the sixteenth century leads us to two important conclusions. None of the diaries,
chronicles or records lists all, or even almost all, the comets, even if the writer
was obviously interested in celestial phenomena and their effect on life on Earth.
At times the interpretation of the body as a heavenly miracle assisted in its iden¬
tification. This was true also in the cases when it can be proved that the object
in the sky was not a comet, or when we have no sure evidence of the heavenly
body or atmospheric phenomenon described. In the examination of phenomena
heavenly or otherwise the historian's axiom holds ever true: history is what has
been written, and what is remembered. There are cases of no mention being
made of what we would today consider the most important heavenly bodies of
the sixteenth century (the
1531
Halley,
the
1572
supernova, the
1577
comet), yet
an atmospheric or other unidentifiable phenomenon is designated a comet or a
new star. The (supposedly) heavenly bodies most clearly remembered are those
that can be linked to some striking political event or natural catastrophe (earth¬
quake, flood), extreme weather, or even the plague. This statement holds even
when the chronicler is reporting events not of the distant past, but contemporary
happenings.
One of the most characteristic sixteenth-century examples of the confusion
between astronomical phenomena and historical events is the diary of Palatine
István Illésházy,
that of Baron
Tamás Vizkelety
based on it, and the alleged new
star featured therein. Both of them mention in their records a new heavenly body,
which they linked to the military campaign of
Sigismund
Báthory,
Prince of
Transylvania against Grand Vizier Sinan in autumn
1595:
'yet where human aid
277
is lacking, there commences the divine. A new star was seen in the sky.
'
An
example from two decades earlier already shows how for the man of the six¬
teenth-century the appearance of a new star was intertwined with current politi¬
cal events, in the case of the supernova seen in November
1572
it may have been
that the actual timing of the observation was brought forward or back to coin¬
cide with incidents in domestic politics. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
sources reflecting this political manipulation show the most varied picture to the
modern reader. Births, deaths, coronations and murder can all be found. The
writers of history, sometimes decades later, assigned to real events supposed or
actually observed astronomical or atmospheric phenomena. Through the sleight
of hand of chroniclers, this happened with the birth of
Sigismund
Báthory,
the
deaths of
Sigismund
II Augustus of Poland and Charles IX of France, the Saint
Bartholomew's day massacre, and the coronations of Rudolf I of Hungary, and
Henry III
(Valois)
of Poland. Since a considerable portion of these misidentifi-
cations or obscure astrological interpretations drew on the classical-Christian
literary-visual tradition, great care must be taken in every case in identifying
each astronomical event or atmospheric phenomenon of the time, be it from a
written source or an engraving. The ticklish question is whether lay observers
actually saw what they described, in many cases long after the events, or whether
it was merely their rich imagination, or perhaps their palpable political motives
that led them to write of new stars and depict long-tailed comets. No special
astronomical event is known of from
1595
in any other European (or even
Asian) records. No comet, no new star, nor any other strange or unusual heav¬
enly body appears in contemporary sources apart from the partial solar and lunar
eclipse, but this would have been difficult to interpret as a new star to the prince
and his milieu, and these occurred earlier than the events in question. Most like¬
ly is that some atmospheric phenomenon, according to Miles a halo visible for
one hour, or according to Mayer for four hours, described by
János Decsi
of
Baranya
(a late humanist historian) as parhelia, occurred over the Wallachian
camp on the October day, and to this was linked the legendary story of the old
eagle recorded by Hungarian historians, Jesuit sources and several engravers.
Although it would be difficult to find a source for this, it is worth mentioning
that
Sigismund
might have played out this marvellous scene with a trained fal¬
con. Mayer's woodcut shows the prince adopting a pose in which falconers are
often depicted. In the rich historical halo collection of German meteorologists
there is no engraving from
1595
that could be said to show this atmospheric phe¬
nomenon. In the vast collections published on the Internet can be found photo¬
graphs of beautiful atmospheric phenomena (sun dog) which might easily lead
the lay observer to believe it a new star or a long-tailed comet. The humanist
poet
Ferenc Hunyadi
saw a similar marvellous diffusion of light on
15
October
278
1595,
presumably in the cold hours of dawn, in the foothills of the Carpathian
Mountains.
The appearance of Copernicus's work and the contemporary debate on it led
to a fundamental transformation of the ideas of late sixteenth-century mathe¬
maticians and astronomers about the cosmos. With its mathematical elegance
Copernicus's postulated heliocentric world charmed even those who considered
the positioning of the Sun at the centre an absurd theory. Besides the mathemat-
ic hypothesis a major driving force to astronomers was the Platonic task of who
could best describe these visible movements in the heavens. Finally, moving
beyond mathematical theory and the universe visible to the naked eye, using the
oeuvres
of Copernicus and Tycho, Kepler was the first to describe perfectly the
real universe, or at least the Solar System as he knew it. Although research has
been (and is being) carried out into the reception of Copernicus in Hungary,
these have remained at the level of analyses of Copernican influences, actual or
debated, found in the works of authors in Hungary, and in terms of the history
of reading to this day there is no summary of the issue. Copernicus's reception
in Hungary was influenced not only by the geographical-educational-historical
determination listed above, but by two basic astronomical-physical facts (which
were generally decisive for the reception on Copernicus's work everywhere):
firstly, the physical proof of the movement of the Earth came much later, with
the phenomenon of the aberration of light discovered as mentioned earlier by
English astronomer James Bradley in
1728,
and secondly the heliocentric theo¬
ry was neither simpler nor more accurate that the rival one by Ptolemy. For
Tycho
Brahe
the question arose as to which system should be improved: the
Ptolemaic or the Copernican? Strangely, the first true blow to Aristotle's natu¬
ralist cosmology was dealt by the fall of Constantinople and the flood of Greek
culture into Italy and western culture. Alongside the Stagirite's natural philoso¬
phy, there appeared a Platonic approach, which interpreted the cosmos on a
mathematical basis. Thus Plato's dialogues, rediscovered in the fifteenth centu¬
ry, steered the mathematicians and astronomers of the time receptive to new
ideas towards commensurateness and harmony. Many theories exist about the
history of the influence of Copernicus's work, considered a milestone in western
culture. But a tangible, comprehensive, and well-founded study is that of the
American astronomer and scientific historian
Owen Gingerich.
The basic idea
was self-explanatory: to gather together all the extant copies of
De revolutìoni-
bus, and to examine them for how the fundamental heliocentric work influenced
the readers of the early modern period in its various editions. A summary of this
large-scale research, covering five continents, is inescapable for the reception
history of Copernicus.
Gingerich 's
starting point was the claim in an overall pic¬
ture of scientific history by Arthur Koestler, a writer of Hungarian origin, that
279
the work of the Canon of
Frombork
which recast and revived the heliocentric
theory was read by hardly anyone outside a small circle, and that this specialist
book requiring extensive knowledge of mathematical was accessible only to a
few. A small group of specialists, of whom the most characteristic representa¬
tives were Tycho
Brahe,
Caspar Peucer and Erasmus
Reinhold
(a mathematician
in Wittenberg), though they recognised Copernicus's mathematical genius, treat¬
ed it as an absurd theory, impossible to use in university teaching, which how¬
ever in its modelling of the motion of the planets might be of assistance to
astronomers.
In early modern sources all three sixteenth-century editions of Copernicus,
the Wittenberg one of
1542,
the Nuremberg one of
1543,
and the Basel one of
1566
appeared in the Carpathian Basin. Nineteen copies are known of so far, of
which ten have come down to the present day. Two missing copies can be doc¬
umented: that of Michael Weiss, judge of
Brassó;
and that of the Jesuit college
in
Nagyszombat,
because these were destroyed in the seventeenth century.
Another long-since missing copy
isthat
of the library of the church of Saint
Egyed
in
Bártfa,
because by the first half of the nineteenth century it was already
absent from sources. A volume belonging to the German-Moravian humanist
scholar Hans Dernschwam's volume must also have disappeared from the
library of the Vienna court during the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries. A truly
sad loss are the two copies from
Eperjes,
that of
Esztergom,
and the
Eckhardt
copy from
Brassó.
One of these may turn up at international auctions in the com¬
ing years. Currently
63
copies of the
1542
edition are known of worldwide,
279
copies of the
1543
edition (including the
Kolozsvár
and the
Brassó),
and
326
copies of the
1566
edition (including that in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
and the one in
Kalocsa).
Of the four Wittenberg editions two copies have sur¬
vived in the Carpathian Basin: the Debrecen and the
Kolozsvár
ones. Of the pre¬
sumed eight copies of the Nuremberg edition it can be said with certainty that
six are the
1543
edition, of which the copies in the
Brassói, Kolozsvári, Deb¬
receni
and Budapest university libraries are extant, and those of
Nagyszombat
and
Besztercebánya
have been destroyed or are untraced. Five copies cannot be
identified accurately on the basis of the sources, so they may have been printed
in Nuremberg, Basel, or even (in the case of
Eckhardt,
Esztergom
and
Bártfa)
Amsterdam. Finally, there are three extant copies of the Basel edition (Budapest
University Library,
Eperjes
and
Kalocsa).
Of the three famed copies of the
1543
edition, two (University Library, Debrecen) have been the focus of attention
from not only Hungarian, but also international literature. A detailed scientif¬
ic-historical analysis of the
Kolozsvár
copy, hitherto known only from brief
news reports, (and naturally the other noted copies) is the next task for a deeper
understanding of the reception of Copernicus in Hungary.
280
Prior
to the 1570s there had never been as many letters, tracts, poems,
engravings and books about an astronomical phenomenon as there were on the
1572
supernova, which is made unusual by the fact that two problems presented
themselves simultaneously: the physical problem of the observed body's dis¬
tance, and the philosophical one of the mutability of the heavens. This was what
led to the interest and complexity of the questions thrown up by the 'birth' of the
new star, and the scientific weight or the esoteric dead end in the answers to
them. For those observing the skies, the appearance of the new star raised clear
questions as to whether one of the fundamental principles of Peripatetic-
Scholastic cosmology was still tenable. The answers depended largely on how
those giving them saw the position of the Sun and the Earth, and how, based on
their religious convictions and education, they applied or rejected the laws of
Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures in order to understand cosmic phenomena. The
resulting terminological problem showed that there were not yet accurate defi¬
nitions, a precise astronomical jargon had not yet taken shape, and words used
in many cases as synonyms (star, comet) often hamper our efforts to fully under¬
stand the contemporary texts.
The debate waged in specialist sixteenth-century literature and in manifold
genres (tracts, poems, engravings, sermons) also proved that compared to the
publication of the fundamental work of heliocentrism
(1543),
it was three de¬
cades later that the first phase of the reception of Copernicus's work actually
took place, owing to a tangible physical phenomenon: it shifted the basis of the
Aristotelian cosmos, and enabled the debate about Copernicus's theory to flour¬
ish. Here as well as the interpretation of a very modest number of followers,
which was in many cases enthusiastic though lacking in depth, or even func¬
tioning as philosophical ornamentation (Giordano Bruno), the opinion of the
debaters who recognised the inventiveness of the Polish canon but rejected his
theory as an absurd hypothesis was more significant than science historians,
using the view of the paradigm shift (Thomas S.
Kuhn),
have hitherto believed.
Another warning sign for us was that the majority of heavenly bodies described
or shown in contemporary sources are diffusions of light, a natural optical illu¬
sion, a meteorological phenomenon (or otherwise unidentifiable) which was
often exploited (sometimes remarkably efficiently) by current political propa¬
ganda. Finally a preliminary survey of the biblio-historical sources have con¬
firmed the unspoken assumption that in early modern texts fresh, specialist
astronomical expertise is rare indeed; for even a superficial understanding would
have required a high level of mathematical and philosophical knowledge, which
the owner of the volume
-
understandably
-
did not usually possess.
The traces left by the fundamental astronomical works that contributed to the
creation of the modern cosmos (Copernicus, Tycho and Kepler) in early modern
281
Hungarian sources highlight two points: firstly, in sixteenth-seventeenth centu¬
ry Hungary there existed a very small group of intellectuals (humanist scholars,
priests, aristocrats with a broad range of interests, erudite burghers), whose
members acquired these important specialist works, thus indicating both their
pretensions and their interest. Secondly, as far as possible (given political-geo¬
graphical determination) of the specialist books printed in
300-400
copies, a
dozen or two certainly found their way to the Carpathian Basin, and more than
one of them endured the turbulence of the centuries, providing new information
on the literacy of the age. From contemporary sources the stature of Aristotle and
the inescapability of the Stagirite's natural philosophy stand out clearly. The edi¬
tions that can be reconstructed teach two lessons: that thanks to Jesuit and
Protestant instruction, students and teachers of the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries leafed through the works of the Greek philosopher not only
for philosophy and philology, but gleaned a good part of their basic knowledge
of natural sciences from them too. Another important point is that the books in
the source material that has come down to us are second-hand. The old owner of
the book either acquired cheap and old copies in some university town on a for¬
eign peregrination (that was what he could afford), or volumes of the few authors
favoured in school teaching (Pliny the Elder, Cicero, Seneca) passed from fami¬
ly to family, and after the owner's death they were catalogued in inventories. The
same can be observed in the rather scarce number of copies extant of works by
sixteenth-century astronomers (Peucer, Peter Apian, Christopher Clavius, Rein-
hold, Michael Maestlin), and it is not unusual to found a book entered as having
been acquired several decades or even a century after it was printed. With the cur¬
rent state of research we can say that apart from the bibliophile
Boldizsár Bat¬
thyány, András
Dudith, a burgher of
Kolozsvár Ferenc Krasznai
and the humanist
János Zsámboky,
we have found no trace of owners in the period who procured
contemporary astronomical works only a few years after printing.
This work is emphatically a preliminary and partial survey of the reception in
Hungary of new findings in astronomy in local sources of the literacy history,
but our intention is to examine the entire body of source material, according to
clear principles and methods, and to draw up the first comprehensive interpreta¬
tion. Thus we will have a more complete picture of the level of astronomical cul¬
ture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hungary, and we will be able to
delineate the Copernican and Tychonic cosmoses, and the reception and dis¬
semination in Hungary of the modern Keplerian-Newtonian worldview
that took shape after the appearance of the new star in
1572
and the comet
in
1577.
Translation Richard Robinson
282 |
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| indexdate | 2025-01-10T13:16:46Z |
| institution | BVB |
| isbn | 9789635068548 |
| language | Hungarian |
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| publishDate | 2011 |
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| series | Humanizmus és reformáció |
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| spelling | Farkas, Gábor 1931- Verfasser (DE-588)122875435 aut Régi könyvek, új csillagok Farkas Gábor Farkas Budapest Balassi K. [u.a.] 2011 282 S. Ill. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Humanizmus és reformáció 32 Engl. Zsfassung u.d.T.: Old books, new stars Geschichte 1543-1700 gnd rswk-swf Astronomie (DE-588)4003311-9 gnd rswk-swf Himmelserscheinung (DE-588)4137012-0 gnd rswk-swf Ungarn (DE-588)4078541-5 gnd rswk-swf (DE-588)4143413-4 Aufsatzsammlung gnd-content Ungarn (DE-588)4078541-5 g Astronomie (DE-588)4003311-9 s Himmelserscheinung (DE-588)4137012-0 s Geschichte 1543-1700 z DE-604 Humanizmus és reformáció 32 (DE-604)BV000019295 32 https://www.recensio.net/r/0775211c0efc49cb88892122eb858e22 rezensiert in: Hungarian Historical Review, 2014, 1, S. 274-277 Rezension Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 2 application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=024452466&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 2 application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=024452466&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract |
| spellingShingle | Farkas, Gábor 1931- Régi könyvek, új csillagok Humanizmus és reformáció Astronomie (DE-588)4003311-9 gnd Himmelserscheinung (DE-588)4137012-0 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)4003311-9 (DE-588)4137012-0 (DE-588)4078541-5 (DE-588)4143413-4 |
| title | Régi könyvek, új csillagok |
| title_auth | Régi könyvek, új csillagok |
| title_exact_search | Régi könyvek, új csillagok |
| title_full | Régi könyvek, új csillagok Farkas Gábor Farkas |
| title_fullStr | Régi könyvek, új csillagok Farkas Gábor Farkas |
| title_full_unstemmed | Régi könyvek, új csillagok Farkas Gábor Farkas |
| title_short | Régi könyvek, új csillagok |
| title_sort | regi konyvek uj csillagok |
| topic | Astronomie (DE-588)4003311-9 gnd Himmelserscheinung (DE-588)4137012-0 gnd |
| topic_facet | Astronomie Himmelserscheinung Ungarn Aufsatzsammlung |
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