i22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sound. Copernicus also proposed to coin all the money of Prussia at 

 a single mint, forbidding the towns to use their ancient privileges, 

 which had been abused. This proposal, as well as others made in the 

 years 1521-30, failed chiefly because Dantzig and other towns were 

 not Mailing to relinquish vested rights. It is interesting to note that 

 in his memorial of 1526 he sets the ratio of gold and silver as 1 to 12. 



Bishop Fabian died in 1523. During the ensuing vacancy Coper- 

 nicus was chosen administrator of the diocese. His duties were har- 

 assing. The troops of the order encroached more and more on the 

 church holdings. The Lutheran heresy was also a source of anxiety. 

 The steps taken by the administrator were marked by great tolerance. 

 Before the preaching of the new faith was forbidden outright it was 

 enjoined that it should be refuted by argument. A new bishop, Mauri- 

 tius Ferber, was chosen in 1523, and a word must be said of the bishop's 

 nephew and coadjutor, Tiedemann Giese. Born in 1480, he became 

 canon of Frauenburg about 1504, and was the intimate and affectionate 

 friend of Copernicus during the whole of his life. It was to Mm that 

 Copernicus confided the manuscript of his great work in 1542. Bishop 

 Ferber died in 1537, and Bishop Dantiscus of Culm was chosen in his 

 place, while Giese by a compromise became bishop of Culm. 



The last observation recorded by Copernicus in the 'De Eevolu- 

 tionibus' is dated 1529. From this we may infer that his great 

 work was essentially completed at that time, though it was repeatedly 

 revised afterwards. It had been begun twenty-three years earlier. It 

 was not published until 1543, though its doctrines had been freely 

 communicated to scholars and friends. In 1531 a set of strolling 

 players, set on, it is said, by bis enemies among the Teutonic knights 

 and among the Lutherans, gave a little show at Elbing ridiculing the 

 notion that the earth moved round the sun. The play was devised by 

 a certain Dutchman who afterwards became rector of the gymnasium 

 at Elbing. That its satire was understood by the common people 

 proves the opinions of Copernicus to have been fairly well known by 

 his neighbors even at that epoch when absolutely nothing had been 

 printed concerning them. About 1530 a manuscript commentary on 

 the hypotheses of the celestial motions had been prepared by Copernicus 

 for private circulation among men of science in advance of the publi- 

 cation of 'De Bevolutionibus. ' Two copies of this manuscript still 

 exist, one at Vienna, one at Upsala. At the end of it a resume of his 

 new doctrine is given in seven axioms. (I.) There is only one center 

 to the motions of the heavenly bodies; (II.) this is not the earth about 

 which the moon moves, but (III.) it is the sun; (IV.) the sphere of 

 the fixed stars is indefinitely more distant than the planets; (V.) the 

 diurnal motion of the sun is a consequence of the earth's rotation; 



