126 A Short History of Astronomy [Cn. v. 



astronomer of note who at once accepted the new views 

 was his friend and colleague Erasmus Reinhold (born 

 at Saalfeld in 1511), who occupied the chief chair of 

 mathematics and astronomy at Wittenberg from 1536 to 

 1553, and it thus happened, curiously enough, that the 

 doctrines so emphatically condemned by two of the great 

 Protestant leaders were championed principally in what 

 was generally regarded as the very centre of Protestant 

 thought. 



94. Rheticus, after the publication of the Narratio 

 Prima and of an Ephemeris or Almanack based on 

 Coppernican principles (1550), occupied himself principally 

 with the calculation of a very extensive set of mathematical 

 tables, which he only succeeded in finishing just before his 

 death in 1576. 



Reinhold rendered to astronomy the extremely important 

 service of calculating, on the basis of the De Revolutionibus, 

 tables of the motions of the celestial bodies, which were 

 published in 1551 at the expense of Duke Albert of Prussia 

 and hence called Tabulcz Prutenicce^ or Prussian Tables. 

 Reinhold revised most of the calculations made by Copper- 

 nicus, whose arithmetical work was occasionally at fault; 

 but the chief object of the tables was the development in 

 great detail of the work in the De Revolutionibus, in such 

 a form that the places of the chief celestial bodies at any 

 required time could be ascertained with ease. The author 

 claimed for his tables that from them the places of all the 

 heavenly bodies could be computed for the past 3,000 years, 

 and would agree with all observations recorded during that 

 period. The tables were indeed found to be on the whole 

 decidedly superior to their predecessors the Alfonsine 

 Tables (chapter in., 66), and gradually came more and 

 more into favour, until superseded three-quarters of a cen- 

 tury later by the Rudolphine Tables of Kepler (chapter vii., 

 148). This superiority of the new tables was only 

 indirectly connected with the difference in the principles 

 on which the two sets of tables were based, and was largely 

 due to the facts that Reinhold was a much better computer 

 than the assistants of Alfonso, and that Coppernicus, if 

 not a better mathematician than Ptolemy, at any rate had 

 better mathematical tools at command. Nevertheless the 



