The Post-Copernican Reception of Ptolemy: Erasmus Reinhold's Commented Edition of the Almagest, Book One (Wittenberg, 1549)

Abstract

In years immediately following publication of Copernicus's De revolutioni- bus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543), illustrious Renaissance astronomer Erasmus Reinhold of Saalfeld (or Rheinholt Salveldensis, 1511-53) issued a com- mented Greek-and-Latin edition of first book of Ptolemy's Almagest under title Ptolemaei Mathematicae constructionis liber primus. It first appeared in Wit- tenberg, in 1549, from academic printer Johannes Lufft, and was reprinted in 1569 under variant title Regulae artis mathematicae. The 'cosmological' book of Almagest, presenting famous arguments in favour of terrestrial centrality and immobility, appeared thus in a university centre that played a deciding role in early dissemination of Copernicus. Reinhold himself was one of astronomers who most significantly contributed to Copernicus's reputation.1 The printer Guilliaume Cavellat reissued Reinhold's translation of Ptolemy (without original text) in Paris several times (1556,1557 and 1560), probably for students of College de Cambrai.2Erasmus Reinhold has been regarded as the leading mathematical astronomer of sixteenth century, second only to Copernicus.3 He was appointed as a profes- sor of mathematics at in years in which Melanchthon attracted and forged there an entire generation of Lutheran humanists. As a colleague of Nicholas Copernicus's only pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-74), Reinhold was one of first readers of De revolutionibus and also contributed to its success thanks to his Prutenicae tabulae (Tiibingen, 1551), based on it. These constituted an alternative to tradition of ephemerides computed from Alfonsine Tables.4 Most of sixteenth-century compilers of new tables and many ephemerists relied on Reinhold's tables - among them John Field (1520-87) in England, Johannes Stadius (c. 1527-79) in Flanders, Michael Mastlin (1550-1631) and David Origanus (1558-1628) in German Empire, and Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555-1617) south of Alps. Thus, Reinhold's tables facilitated a wide dissemination of Copernicus's numerical parameters and, indirectly, of his geometrical models and theories.5Still, unlike his colleague, Reinhold kept silent about heliocentric theory and limited his reception of De revolutionibus to celestial parameters and geometrical modelling. His approach became quite common for mathematicians belonging to network of Lutheran universities gravitating about and it is currently known as Wittenberg interpretation.6 In Prutenicae tabulae, Reinhold did not make his 'cosmological' presuppositions explicit, i.e., he did not express his opinion about terrestrial motion and solar immobility and centrality. As a matter of fact, these tables could be employed for sake of prediction independ- ently of any commitment concerning reality of terrestrial motion and of solar centrality and immobility. A computational approach had already been advocated by theologian Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), in his anonymous introduction to Copernicus's major work. However, his outlook was not embraced by most scholars belonging to Melanchthon's environment.Reinhold's silence about heliocentric hypotheses should not be confused with agnosticism or modern conventionalism. As Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein argued, school was not composed by Duhemian conventionalists trying to save phenomena independently of real structure of world. By contrast, they accepted those aspects of Copernicus's theory that suited their special understanding of natural order. In particular, they appreciated fact that Coperni- cus's geometrical models respected so-called astronomical axiom, according to which planetary motions are to be circular and uniform around their centres.7German and northern European scholars, such as Reinhold's pupil Kaspar Peucer (1525-1602), Konrad Dasypodius (1531-1601) and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), were even convinced that Copernicus's models could be translated into a 'physi- cally acceptable' geocentric framework. …