for nineteen years until his death in 1483.[1] Thereupon his mother's brother, Lucas Watzelrode, later bishop of Ermeland, became his guardian, benefactor and close friend.[2]
After the elementary training in the Thorn school,[3] the lad entered the university at Cracow, his father's former home, where he studied under the faculty of arts from 1491-1494.[4] Nowhere else north of the Alps at this time were mathematics and astronomy in better standing than at this university.[5] Sixteen teachers taught these subjects there during the years of Copernicus's stay, but no record exists of his work under any of them.[6] That he must have studied these two sciences there, however, is proved by Rheticus's remark in the Narratio Prima[7] that Copernicus, after leaving Cracow, went to Bologna to work with Dominicus Maria di Novara "non tam discipulus quam adjutor." He left Cracow without receiving a degree,[8] returned to Thorn in 1494 when he and his family decided he should enter the Church after first studying in Italy.[9] Consequently he crossed the Alps in 1496 and was that winter matriculated at Bologna in the "German nation."[10] The following summer he received word of his appointment to fill a vacancy among the canons of the cathedral chapter at Ermeland where his uncle had been bishop since 1489.[11] He remained in Italy, however, about ten years altogether, studying civil law at Bologna, and canon law and medicine at Padua,[12] yet receiving his degree as doctor of canon law from the university of Ferrara in 1503.[13] He was also in Rome for several months during the Jubilee year, 1500.
- ↑ These facts would seem to justify the Poles today in claiming Copernicus as their fellow-countryman by right of his father's nationality and that of his native city. Dr. Prowe, however, claims him as a "Prussian" both because of his long residence in the Prussian-Polish bishopric of Ermeland, and because of Copernicus's own reference to Prussia as "unser lieber Vaterland." (Prowe: II, 197.)
- ↑ Prowe: I, 73-82.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 111.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 124-129.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 137.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 141-143.
- ↑ Rheticus: Narratio Prima, 448 (Thorn edit.).
- ↑ Prowe: 1, 154.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 169.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 174.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 175. This insured him an annual income which amounted to a sum equalling about $2250 today. Later he received a sinecure appointment besides at Breslau. (Holden in Pop. Sci., 111.)
- ↑ Prowe: I, 224.
- ↑ Ibid: I, 308.
