KOTES. XCV 



If Cardinal Cusa had known anything about solar spots, he would surely not 

 have failed to introduce the " maculae Solis" in some of the numerous com- 

 parisons which he so much delighted in drawing between physical and spiri- 

 tual things. Let us only remember the vehement debates excited in the 

 beginning of the 17th century, immediately after the invention of the telescope, 

 by the discoveries of Eabricius and of Galileo. I have recalled in an earlier 

 volume (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 503, Anm. 33 ; Eug. ed. p. cix. Note 473) the 

 obscurely expressed astronomical representations of the Cardinal, who died in 

 1464, nine years, therefore, before the birth of Copernicus. The remarkable 

 passage, "jam nobis manifestum est Terram in veritate moveri," is in lib. ii. 

 cap. 12, de docta Ignorantia. According to Cusa, all things are in move- 

 ment iii every part of celestial space ; we find no star which does not describe 

 a circle. " Terra non potest esse fixa, sed movetur ut aliee stellee." He does 

 not, however, suppose the Earth to revolve round the Sun, but the Earth and 

 Sun to revolve " round the ever-changing poles of the Universe." Cusa, 

 therefore, was not a Copernican, as is shown by this fragment, written by 

 him with his own hand in 1444, and discovered by Dr. Clemens in the hos- 

 pital at Cues. 



( 46 7) p. 272. Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 360-362 and 511-512, Anm. 49-53 ; 

 Eng. ed. p. 319-321 and cxri.-cxvii. Notes 489-493. 



( 468 ) p. 272. " Borbonia Sidera, id est planetse qui Solis lumina circum- 

 volitant motu proprio et regulari, falso hactenus ab helioscopis Maculae Solis 

 nuncupati, ex noris observationibus Joannis Tarde, 1620. Austriaca Sidera 

 heliocyclica astro nomicis hypothesibus illigata opera Caroli Malapertii Belgse 

 Montensis e Societate Jesu, 1633." The last-mentioned memoir has at least 

 the merit of furnishing observations of a series of solar spots between 1618 

 and 1626. These are, however, the same years as those for which Schemer pub- 

 lished his own observations at Rome in his " Rosa Ursina." The Canon Tarde 

 believed in the transit of small planets, because he deemed it impossible to 

 ascribe such imperfections to the " eye of the World" 1'ceil du Monde ne 

 peut avoir des ophthalmies !" It is indeed surprising that, twenty years after 

 Tarde's account of his Borbonia Sidera, Gascoigne, to whom the art of obser- 

 vation is so much indebted (Kosmos, Bd. iii. S. 76 ; Eng. ed. p. 59), should 

 still have attributed the solar spots to the conjunction of numerous planetary, 

 almost transparent, bodies revolving round the sun in great proximity to it. 

 He supposed several of these, superposed upon each other, to be the cause of 

 the dark shaded places. (Phil Trans., Vol. xxvii. 1710-1712, p. 282-290, 

 letter from William Crabtrie, August 1640.) 



