Epistolary Culture, Editorial Practices, and the Propriety of Tycho'sAstronomical Letters

Abstract

IntroductionTycho Brahe's Epistolae astronomicae of 1596 has often been treated as a contribution to the Danish astronomer's dispute with Nicolai Reymers Baer, called Ursus. One purpose of this paper is to reconsider the question of whether this dispute was a major consideration in Tycho's decision to publish the work. The matter hinges, we feel, on issues of editorial practice: the standard interpretation of the work depends upon a charge of editorial impropriety levelled at Tycho, as the publisher of his own correspondence, by the twentieth-century editors of his Opera omnia, and accepted by later historians. It also turns on commonly held notions of the role and character of epistolary communication that are not wholly appropriate to the explication of scholarly letters written in the early-modem period. Consideration of early-modem epistolary culture allows us to establish a clearer picture of the possible range of functions of the Epistolae astronomicae, and this in tum enables a reappraisal ofthe charges levelled at Tycho. The standards required of letter-editors in the sixteenth century were not the same as those sought of early twentieth-century scholars, and it is, we suggest, the disjunction between these two, rather than a serious failure of either Tycho or his modem editors to live up the expectations of their contemporaries, that accounts for the current understanding of the Epistolae astronomicae. For reasons that are explicable, but regrettable, Tycho's behaviour as an editor of his own correspondence has long been, we believe, misrepresented.One moral to be drawn from this is that it is important for historians of science, even those who are not themselves engaged in the editing of historical documents, to be sensitive to the vagaries of editorial procedure and practice. There are many different interests at work amongst editors -whereas some focus mainly on producing readable texts, others prioritize the role of those texts as historical documents. In the case of the Epistolae astronomicae, scholars are typically working with a modem edition (prepared by John Dreyer and Hans Raeder) of an early-modem edition (compiled by Tycho Brahe and his assistants) of early-modem manuscripts (authored by Tycho and others). Our investigations suggest that, for the most part, they may rely upon the probity of all the editors involved in producing this composite document, and hence on the value of the modem edition of Epistolae astronomicae as a record of an actual letter-exchange. In general, however, historians would be unwise to take too much on trust. The purposes for which editions are produced, and the editorial principles behind them, may differ greatly from those we tend to take for granted.' A broader purpose of this paper, therefore, is to alert historians of

Sidereal Messages: Print Letters in Restoration Astronomical Writing

“…The printed letter book was less immediate still, but it could harness the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions to demonstrate the importance of an individual node in a network spanning space, time, and social strata. 45 For Tycho Brahe's Epistolae astronomicae (1596), the print publication of manuscript letters has been shown to constitute a means of self-fashioning, 46 and a similar case can be observed in the remarkable collection of letters of 'illustrious and famous men', gathered over the course of many years, to the 'most noble, respected and learned' Johann Hevelius, containing praise for his astronomical works. 47 Publications like these illustrate how the manuscript letter is printed for the purpose of vindicating its recipient and subject.…”

Explanatory Genealogies and Historical Testimony

“…One of the modern editors of this edition opined that Tycho had committed serious frauds, planting in the letters of others passages favourable to his priority claims and unfavourable to his rivals (Raeder 1920(Raeder /2003. But close investigation has refuted this claim, showing that although Tycho selected the material to be published in ways favourable to his cause and made some minor adjustments so as to omit confidential materials and to amplify the respect with which others had addressed him, he did not commit the supposed major frauds (Mosley, Jardine, & Tybjerg 2003). Though improper by modern editorial standards, his editing was well within the bounds of the honourable editorial practices which he claimed, in the introduction to the work, to have followed.…”