SOURCE: "In Defense of Tycho Brahe," in Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 24, 1981, pp. 257-65.

Nicholas Copernicus ' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in Six Books (Basel Edition) with Annotations Written by the Hand of Tycho Brahe¹ was published in facsimile (Prague, 1971), as volume XVI, Editio cimelia Bohemica (cited hereafter as "Cimelia"). On Cimelia's title page an unidentified hand wrote: "Property of the Imperial College of the Society of Jesus in Prague, in the year 1642."² The same hand added, just below: "From the Library and Scrutiny of Tycho."³ On the flyleaf preceding the title page a dif ferent hand pointed out: "Observe: There are present marginal notes written by Tycho Brahe's own hand."⁴ At the top of this flyleaf a third hand wrote some entries, which were ignored by Cimelia, although they throw valuable light on the history of this copy and will be considered later on.

In a brochure accompanying the facsimile, Cimelia conceded that the Jesuit attribution of its marginal notes to Brahe was "not entirely free of possible doubt."⁵ Nevertheless, it came down on the affirmative side, maintaining that

Tycho Brahe is really the author of these notes … [W]e have the possibility of judging the handwriting … [Essentially it is like the writing in well-known and undoubted relics of Tycho's manuscripts.⁶

But Cimelia did not document this asserted essential similarity by presenting samples of the handwriting of Tycho and the annotator side by side. Yet this very presentation had already been made (inadvertently) by Astronomy in Czechoslovakia from its Early Beginning to Present Times,⁷ pages 90 and 91. Page 90 shows Cimelia, folio 75r, with notes in all four margins. Page 91 shows page 268 of the copy of an edition of Ptolemy (Basel, 1551), which was bought by Brahe in Copenhagen for two dollars on 30 November 1560,⁸ with his notes in the left margin. One need not be an expert paleographer to see at a glance that Tycho's handwriting is "essentially" different from the handwriting in Cimelia. Yet this difference was not recognized by Astronomy in Czechoslovakia, which attributed to Tycho the annotations in Cimelia.

Cimelia also claimed that the

extensive commentary by Tycho Brahe makes it possible to judge in detail how Brahe's relation toward Copernicus' views was formed.⁹

To test Cimelia's claim, let us look at the obliquity of the ecliptic. Copernicus says that "in our time it is found not greater than 23° 28½′".¹⁰ In Cimelia, folio 65v, this value is repeated in the left margin by the annotator, who accepts a steady decrease in the obliquity of the ecliptic from 23° 52′ in the time of Aristarchus to 23° 28′ in his own time: "At this time [it is] 23° 28′ 0″." Brahe, however, states that "Now, after the passage of several years with the aid of many instruments and by the use of great care, I have found this to be 23° 31½′."¹¹ Evidently, Brahe is not the annotator.

Looking back at previous students of this subject, Cimelia declared:

Absolutely no one of the relatively numerous experts in historical science and bibliography who have written about this book has raised the slightest objection to the authenticity of Brahe's commentary.¹²

Thus, the Jesuit ascription in 1642 of the annotations in Cimelia to Brahe was accepted by the historian of the Prague University library, Joseph Adolph Hanslik.¹³ In commemorating the tercentenary of Brahe's death, Studnièka exclaimed: "A Copernicus annotated by a Brahe will not be found again."¹⁴ This prediction was quoted with approval by Boøivoj Prusík, who remarked that from the annotations

one sees what position Brahe took with regard to particular views of Copernicus … How closely Brahe studied Copernicus' work and wanted to study it further is shown by the large amount of blank paper which is bound into the volume.¹⁵

Agreement with the previous writers was expressed by Richard Kukula, director of the Prague University library from 1897 to 1918,¹⁶ Wilhelm Prandtl,¹⁷ Flora Kleinschnitzová,¹⁸ and Emma Urbánková.¹⁹ This long string of those who accepted the Jesuit ascription ignored the well-informed judgment of the distinguished biographer of Brahe and editor of his correspondence and cometary observations, Frederik Reinholdt Friis, who said about Cimelia:

This copy is completely provided on nearly every page with added notes and corrections, but these could not be additions by the astronomer [Brahe], as has been assumed heretofore.²⁰

Cimelia's claim that its annotations are Brahe's collapses because their handwriting and contents are not his, as was recognized by an outstanding authority on Tycho.

Shortly after the publication of Cimelia, annotations written by the same hand and conveying similar content were discovered by Owen Gingerich in the Vatican Library's Ottoboniano Latino #1902, a copy of the first edition (Nuremberg, 1543) of Copernicus' Revolutions.²¹ Although this is a printed book, it was grouped by the Vatican Library with the manuscripts on account of its numerous marginal notes and supplementary handwritten sheets. Accepting Cimelia's claims at face value, Gingerich hailed Ottoboniano Latino #1902 as "probably the most important Tycho manuscript in existence."²²

Like Cimelia, Ottoboniano Latino #1902 has extra sheets bound in with its printed pages. But unlike Cimelia's extra sheets, which remained blank, Ottoboniano Latino #1902's thirty supplementary sheets were written on.²³ The first two, dated 27 January 1578, contain diagrams of the cosmos according to Copernicus,²⁴ with the earth treated as a planet revolving around the sun, which is stationary at the center of the universe. Later on, however, the annotator devised a "Theory of the Three Outer Planets Adjusted to a Stationary Earth," and proclaimed that "This new system of hypotheses was discovered by me on 13 February 1578."²⁵ In those two and a half weeks the annotator shifted from a Copernican to a non-Copernican stance, from the earth as a planet in motion to a motionless earth.

Believing that Ottoboniano Latino #1902 is "Tycho's personal copy" of Copernicus' Revolutions, Gingerich maintained that "Tycho's notes show how he evolved his non-Copernican model."²⁶ Acknowledging that there is a chronological difficulty here, since Brahe "did not establish the Tychonic system until around 1583, five years after he drew these diagrams," Gingerich added: "I can only suppose that these five years were an important time of maturing"²⁷ from 1578 to 1583.

In the Tychonic system, Brahe had the three outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars) orbit the sun,²⁸ whereas they orbit the earth in Ottoboniano Latino #1902's diagram, drawn on 17 February 1578.²⁹ Ten years later, in 1588, Brahe first published the Tychonic system,³⁰ which provoked a spate of correspondence, including a letter in which he looked back over his intellectual development from his acquiescing youth until he rejected the contemporary competing cosmologies. At that time he asked himself what

if the sun were established as the center of the five planets, and nevertheless revolved once a year around the earth, at rest in the center of the universe.³¹

Thus, from the very beginning of his independent swing away from the prevailing conventional wisdom, Brahe centered all five planets on the sun. From this Copernican conception Brahe never deviated throughout the rest of his life. He first adopted this view some five years after Ottoboniano Latino #1902's annotator had centered the three outer planets on the earth. Those five years were not "an important time of maturing" for Brahe, as Gingerich supposed. Instead, those five years measured the lag between the modification of Copernicus' cosmology in one direction by Ottoboniano Latino #1902's annotator and Brahe's somewhat later divergence in another direction.

As late as January 1578 Ottoboniano Latino #1902's annotator still adhered to Copernicus' stationary sun and moving earth. But early in September 1574, in a lecture delivered to the University of Copenhagen, Brahe upbraided Copernicus for upholding certain doctrines

contrary to physical principles, for example, that the sun is at rest in the center of the universe, and that the earth, the elements associated with it, and the moon, move around the sun.³²

Speaking again on the following day, Tycho explained that he would expound planetary theory succinctly

in accordance with Copernicus' thinking and tables, but referring everything to the stationary earth, which Copernicus had imagined to be moving.³³

Resting on faith in the Bible and physical (better called "metaphysical") principles, Brahe's earth remained stationary throughout his life. His allegiance never swerved, as did the annotator's in 1578, between 27 January and 13 February, in Ottoboniano Latino #1902. Before abandoning Copernicanism, the annotator had written at the top of the right margin of folio l0r in Cimelia:

The evidence of the planets in particular conforms exactly to the earth's mobility, and in this way it is confirmed that Copernicus' hypotheses were assumed correctly (vere).³⁴

The annotator's astronomical views, like his handwriting, differed from Brahe's. Yet with regard to the contention by Horsky´, the editor of Cimelia, that its annotator was Brahe, Robert S. Westman, limiting the possible alternative annotators to four astronomers, stated:

On the basis of a handwriting comparison, which I have undertaken, between works and letters of the above mentioned writers and DR Prague [= Cimelia], there can be no doubt that Horsky´'s identification is correct.³⁵

There can, however, be the gravest doubt. For, to establish that the Cimelia annotator was Brahe, what is gained by showing that the annotator was not one of four other men? Perhaps he was a fifth.

In fact, in a personal letter dated 31 July 1980, Gingerich identified the annotator of Ottoboniano and Cimelia as Paul Wittich without furnishing any evidence. In 1582-1584 Wittich gave private instruction to Duncan Liddel (1561-1613), who later became the "first in Germany to teach the theories of the heavenly motions according to the hypothesis of Ptolemy and Copernicus at the same time."³⁶ In the winter semester of 1579 Liddel, a Scot from Aberdeen, had enrolled in the University of Frankfurt on the Oder,³⁷ where his fellow-countryman John Craig was then teaching. The "first principles" of Copernicanism were imparted by Craig to Liddel, who "learned more completely from Wittich … about Copernicus' innovative hypotheses."³⁸

Liddel interleaved his copy of the second edition of Copernicus' Revolutions, which is preserved in the Aberdeen University Library.³⁹ A facsimile of the interleaf facing folio 9v in Liddel's copy may be conveniently compared with a facsimile of folio 9v in Wittich's Ottoboniano copy.⁴⁰ In the left margin Wittich had tabulated the planets' periodic motions, and his table was repeated by Liddel, with only two variants. First, as regards the earth, in the column for the years, Wittich had miswritten 365, which he struck out and transferred to the column for the days, while leaving only a smudge in the column for the years. Wittich had evidently made this scribal correction before the arrival of Liddel, who has 0 in the years column for the earth. A second telltale sign of Liddel's dependence on Wittich concerns the moon, where Wittich had 0 27 19 18, and Liddel interchanged the last two columns: 0 27 18 19.

The rectification of a bad blunder committed by Copernicus concerning Venus' sidereal period throws further light on the time when Wittich wrote his annotations. Liddel left undisturbed not only Venus nonimestris in Copernicus' famous diagram of the cosmos, but also Copernicus' Venus nono mense reducitur (Venus returns in nine months)⁴¹ three lines above the diagram. After Liddel's departure, however, Wittich changed nono to octavo, and nonimestris to octimestris, since his marginal table gave only 224 (plus a fraction) days for Venus' sidereal period. By the same token, since his table showed 87 (plus more than ½) days for Mercury, he altered Copernicus' text by adding et octo (and eight) to octuaginta (eighty). These alterations were made by Wittich after the departure of Liddel, whose copy does not show them. Evidently Wittich continued to annotate his copy of Copernicus after Liddel had left.

No clue to Wittich's identity has been found either in his copy of the first edition of Copernicus' Revolutions (Ottoboniano Latino #1902) or in his copy of the second edition (Cimelia). Nevertheless, the handwriting in these two copies can be compared with an authenticated sample of Wittich's handwriting.

Wittich was one of Brahe's assistants while the comet of 1580 was visible. During Brahe's absence from his observatory, the observations of 21, 22, and 26 October 1580 were recorded by Wittich, who remained at the observatory. This handwriting was certified as his by a fellow-townsman.

These pages marked with the letters ABCDE, I recognize to have been written by the hand of Paul Wittich, of blessed memory, which is very well known to me, and I so testify with this handwritten note which I left at Prague with the magnificent and most noble lord Tycho Brahe on 23 October 1600.

Jacob Monaw
with my own hand⁴²

A small specimen of these cometary observations in Wittich's handwriting was reproduced in Brahe's complete works.⁴³ The words Occasus, aquila, and Informis as written by Wittich, when compared with the same words written by Brahe, show marked differences.⁴⁴ On the other hand, Wittich's occasus in the cometary observations matches occasus in Cimelia, folio l0r, right margin, 2↑. This comparison of handwritings eliminates Brahe, and establishes Wittich, as the annotator of Cimelia, and therefore also of Ottoboniano Latino #1902. Hence we may discard Westman's conclusion:

We now have dramatic evidence from the manuscript notes bound into the back of DR Vatican [= Ottoboniano Latino #1902], that the first step toward his [Brahe's] final system was initially formulated, on paper at least, on 17 February 1578.⁴⁵

Brahe himself, however, related that

finally almost against hope⁴⁶ I realized by what arrangement the order of the heavenly revolutions comes to be disposed most appropriately.⁴⁷

Brahe dated this realization in 1583, without any first step or initial formulation in 1578.

Although Brahe was not the annotator of Cimelia, he was its owner. But he was not its "original owner", an erroneous inference drawn from Ex Bibliotheca … Tichoniana, the inscription on its title page, by Cimelia⁴⁸ and Westman.⁴⁹ Its original owner was Wittich, who died on 5 January 1586.⁵⁰ More than a decade later, on 24 March 1598, Brahe sent an inquiry to a favorite pupil:

A few days ago my very dear friend Jacob Monaw of Wrocław wrote to me that at the end of last year [1597] you came to Wrocław…. In the same letter Monaw reported that he arranged to have you introduced to the sister of Wittich, of blessed memory, where you examined all his books. I therefore ask you to inform me about them, what they were and of what sort, especially the manuscripts, and whether she wants to sell them and at what price.⁵¹

Nearly two years later Monaw (1546-1603) wrote to Brahe on 14 March 1600:

As far as Wittich's books are concerned, I want you to know that at the time when your letter was delivered here, Paul Wittich's sister, already advanced in age, celebrated her second marriage, of which the result was that the newlywed died after sixty days. She left one son as her heir, for whom legitimate guardians have not yet been appointed. When this is taken care of, I shall see whether anything can be done with them.⁵²

A little more than seven months later, on 23 October 1600 Monaw deposited with Brahe in Prague his attestation that the cometary observations made two decades earlier were in Wittich's handwriting.⁵³ It was on this occasion in 1600 that Monaw delivered to Brahe Wittich's copy of the second edition of Copernicus' Revolutions, our Cimelia. How Wittich's copy of the first edition of Copernicus' Revolutions was seized by the invading Swedes and subsequently became Ottoboniano Latino #1902 has not yet been completely unraveled.

The top of the flyleaf preceding Cimelia's title page carries an inscription arranged in two columns. The left-hand column concerns a male's professional career, and the right-hand column his marital career:

At the beginning of the month of March in both	[15]66 in October I married my first wife
1568 to the senate, Rahvitz	[15]90 in the month of October she died
1588 to the magistracy54	[15]93 in the month of October I married my second wife

This unknown individual may be a guardian of Wittich's nephew. If so, he wrote these entries shortly after his second marriage in October 1593, while Wittich's library was under the control of the nephew's guardians.

In any case, Wittich's copy of the second edition of Copernicus' Revolutions was taken to Brahe in Prague by Monaw in 1600. It had already been heavily annotated by Wittich, its original owner, before it reached Brahe, its second owner, who was not its annotator, and who had acquired it only a year before he died on 24 October 1601.

Notes

¹Nicolai Copernici De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex (editio Basileensis) cum commentariis manu scriptis Tychonis Brahe, ed. Zdenìk Horsky´.

²Collegii Caesarei Societatis Jesu Pragae Anno 1642.

³Ex Bibliotheca et Recognitione Tichoniana.

⁴NB Insunt notae marginales manu Tychonis Brahe propria inscriptae.

⁵ Cimelia, 12/22-23.

⁶Ibid., 12/11↑-6↑.

⁷Astronomie v Československu od dob nejstarších do dneška (Prague, 1952).

⁸ Zincograph in František Josef Studnička, Prager Tychoniana (Prague, 1901), 38.

⁹ Cimelia, 11/last 3 lines.

¹⁰Nicolas Copernicus On the Revolutions, translation and commentary by Edward Rosen (Baltimore, 1978), 122/30.

¹¹Tychonis Brahe Dani opera omnia (Copenhagen, 1913-1929; cited hereafter as "TB"), II, 18/8-9.

¹² Cimelia, 12/14↑-12↑.

¹³ J. A. Hanslik, Geschichte und Beschreibung der Prager Universitätsbibliothek (Prague, 1851), 274; Zusätze, ed. I. J. Hanuš (Prague, 1863), 9.

¹⁴ Studnička, Prager Tychoniana, 43.

¹⁵ B. Prusík, "Tychoniana der Prager k. k. Universitäts-Bibliothek," Mittheilungen des österreichischen Vereines für Bibliothekswesen, 5 (1901), 199/#VI. Cimelia (15/10↑-9↑) counts "21 blank folios in front of the actual work and another 71 folios after it."

¹⁶ R. Kukula, "Die Tychoniana der Prager K. K. Universitäts-Bibliothek," Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde, 10 (1906-1907), 24/10↑-7↑.

¹⁷ W. Prandtl, "Die Bibliothek des Tycho Brahe," Philobiblon, Zeitschrift für Bücherliebhaber, 5 (1932), 323/#14; reprinted, Vienna, 1933, 11/#14.

¹⁸ F. Kleinschnitzová, "Ex bibliotheca Tychoniana Collegii Soc. Jesu Pragae ad S. Clementem," Nordisk Tidskrift för Bokoch Biblioteksväsen, 20 (1933), 86/#11.

¹⁹ E. Urbánková, Rukopisy a vzacné tisky pražské Universitní knihovny (Prague, 1957), 72/8-11.

²⁰ F. R. Friis, "Tyge Brahe's Haandskrifter i Wien og Prag," Danske Samlinger, 4 (1868-1869), 267/7-10.

²¹ Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, II (London/Leiden, 1967), 419/#1902; not #1901, as in O. Gingerich, "The Astronomy and Cosmology of Copernicus," International Astronomical Union, Highlights of Astronomy, 3 (1974), 83 (cited hereafter as "Highlights").

²² Highlights, 81/18-19; Gingerich, "Copernicus and Tycho" Scientific American, 229 (December 1973), 99/14↑-13↑ (cited hereafter as "C and T").

²³ C and T, 99/34-35; Highlights, 80/4↑-3↑.

²⁴ C and T, 99/37-44; Highlights, 81-82.

²⁵ Fascimile in C and T, 90, and in Robert S. Westman, ed., The Copernican Achievement (Berkeley/London, 1975), 312, Figure 6 (cited hereafter as "Achievement").

²⁶ C and T, 87/3-4.

²⁷ C and T, 101/11-16; Highlights, 82/22-24.

²⁸ Marie Boas & A. Rupert Hall, "Tycho Brahe's System of the World," Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, 3 (1959), 259/5-10, translating a part of Chapter VIII of Brahe's De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis liber secundus, qui est de illustri Stella caudata anno 1577 … conspecta (Uraniborg, 1588).

²⁹ Four days after the annotator's shift to a non-Copernican stance on 13 February 1578; not "two days later," as in C and T, 99/7, nor "three days later," as in Highlights. 82/7; facsimiles in C and T, 100, and Highlights, 83, Fig. 6.

³⁰ TB, IV, 155-170.

³¹ TB, VII, 129/40-42.

³² TB, I, 149/30-32.

³³ TB, I, 172/37-39.

³⁴ Achievement's attempt (317/7↑-4↑) at a translation omits the crucial word vere.

³⁵Ibid., 342/6↑-4↑. Achievement was reviewed in the Polish Review, 21 (1976), 225-235.

³⁶ Duncan Liddel, Ars medica (Hamburg, 1607-1608, 1617, 1628), letter of 1 May 1607 from Johannes Caselius to John Craig (?-1620).

³⁷Aeltere Universitäts-Matrikeln, I, Universität Frankfurt a. O., ed. Ernst Friedlaender (Leipzig, 1887; reprint, Osnabrück, 1965; Publicationen aus den k. Preussischen Staatsarchiven, 32, 277/#75.

³⁸ Liddel, Ars medica, Caselius to Craig.

³⁹ William P. D. Wightman, Science and the Renaissance (Edinburgh/New York, 1962), II, 66-67/#172.

⁴⁰ Achievement, 318, Fig. 7, and 320, Fig. 8.

⁴¹ Copernicus, Revolutions, tr. Rosen, 21-22.

⁴² TB, XIII, 316, n. 1; English paraphrase by J. L. E. Dreyer, "On Tycho Brahe's Manual of Trigonometry," Observatory, 39 (1916), 129-130. On 29 October 1580, when Wittich was leaving the observatory, Brahe presented him with a copy of Peter Apian's Astronomicum caesareum (Ingolstadt, 1540), now in the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. A photocopy of the title page showing the presentation was kindly supplied by Professor Martin J. Hardeman, Roosevelt University.

⁴³ TB, XIII, 317, upper left corner.

⁴⁴ TB, XIII, 308, 319.

⁴⁵ Achievement, 345/6↑-3↑.

⁴⁶ On the basis of an incorrect reading (TB, I, xli/2: ex inspirato, as against ex insperato, TB, IV, 156/29-30), Dreyer mistranslated "by inspiration" (Tycho Brahe, Edinburgh, 1890; reprinted, New York, 1963, 168/9; History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler, Cambridge, 1906; reprinted, New York, 1953, 363/12-13).

⁴⁷ TB, IV, 156/29-30.

⁴⁸ P. 12/27.

⁴⁹ Achievement, 341/17.

⁵⁰ Rudolf Wolf, "Beiträge zur Geschichte der Astronomie. 3. Paul Wittich aus Breslau," Vierteljahrsschrift der astronomischen Gesellschaft, 17 (1882), 129/12↑, citing an unpublished manuscript Silesia togata by Nicholas Henel of Hennefeld (1584-1656). A microfilm of Henel's discussion of Wittich was kindly provided by the library of the University of Wroclav. On fol. 415v, in giving the year of Wittich's death, Henel wrote 6 over a previous 5, faintly suggesting a 7 to Wolf's informant, who also misread the day 5 as 9. Wolf's misdating (9 January 1587) was repeated in Dictionary oe Scientific Biography, XIV (New York, 1976), 470/5↑.

⁵¹ TB, VIII, 34/4-16.

⁵² TB, VIII, 266/1-6.

⁵³ See the text at n. 42, above.

⁵⁴ Reading capitaneatum, as in Ludwik Antoni Birkenmajer, Mikolaj Kopernik (Cracow, 1900), 476/4↑.