300 Prowe's Life of Copernicus. Oct.
The question as to whether Copernicus was a German or a Pole is still far from being decided; it may be doubted whether it is capable of decision. The truth is, that argument on the subject is idle, because turning on the meaning of a word incapable of exact definition. In the eyes of the law, a man's nationality depends, at least primâ facie, on the place of his birth ; but in common parlance the idea signified by that much-abused term is a highly complex one, into which birth, parentage, and education enter in proportions varying with varying circumstances. It may indeed be stated without fear of contradiction that the earliest of modern astronomers was a Prussian ; but that statement is only the beginning of perplexities. For the term ' Prussia ' bore a widely different signification, both geographical and political, four centuries ago, from that which it conveys to our minds.
Then, as now, on the great Sarmatian plain stretching down to the Baltic, a Slav and a German power stood confronting each other. The kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order were, it is true, but puny representatives of the two great Northern empires of modern times ; but Europe still bears profound traces of their compacts and conflicts, their short friendship and long enmity, of the jostlings and swayings of the rival populations subject to them. Into this seething cauldron of incipient nationalities the lot of Copernicus was cast. Let us try to realise its conditions a little more distinctly.
The ' Teutonic Knights of St. Mary of Jerusalem ' made their first appearance on the banks of the Vistula in the year 1228. They had a great work before them, and they prospered in doing it. Hermann of Salza, their fourth Grand Master, had once declared that he would give an eye to be able to lead ten knights into the field. He lived to see two thousand ready to spring into the saddle at his word. It took them, however, rather more than half a century fully to subdue the heathen Prussian tribes who had long harried the Masovian fields with impunity, and to compact their land of moor and fen and forest into an independent state, subject to the exclusive sovereignty of the Order. The province of ' Prussia ' thus energetically won for the Gospel was not less energetically secured for civilisation. German immigrants thronged in, towns and villages were founded, and German burgher-life took root in the soil. Nobles who had come to aid in a sacred warfare remained to build castles and cultivate estates. Agriculture was promoted with a persistent zeal which still excites astonishment and admiration. A judicious system of drainage turned unprofitable marshes into waving meadows
