The Disputational Culture of Renaissance Astronomy: Johannes Regiomontanus’s “An Terra Moveatur An Quiescat”

Abstract

In 1533, an excerpt from a disputation on the motion of the Earth, entitled An Terra moveatur an quiescat… disputatio [Disputation on whether the Earth Moves or Rests], was printed in Nuremberg and attributed to none other than the highly respected 15 th -century astronomer Johannes Regiomontanus. It tackled a crucial issue of the event known as the "Astronomical Revolution" or "Copernican Revolution," which was ignited by the publication of the first modern mathematical proposal of a heliocentric astronomy (that is, Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium). 3 However, the connection of the printing of the disputation with Copernicus's planetary theory is not an obvious one. First, the disputation refuted terrestrial motion. Second, Nicolaus Copernicus's geokinetic and heliocentric reform of astronomy had not been completed by 1533. His major work, the aforementioned De revolutionibus orbium coelestium [On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres], would only be printed ten years later (also in Nuremberg, in 1543). Third, this scholastic disputatio does not seem to be the best candidate for a ballon d'essai aimed at preparing the learned community for one of the most controversial issues of Renaissance astronomy and natural philosophy. Its modest profile does not bear comparison to epoch-making disputations that sparked famous philosophical, theological and political polemics such as Pico della Mirandola's 900 theses or Martin Luther's Wittenberg theses. As a matter of fact, the developments in mathematical astronomy ranging from Copernicus to Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler have often been considered external to-if not openly in conflict with-the scholastic philosophy of the universities, of which the disputation was a typical genre. However, if we consider the cultural contexts of Renaissance science, especially the relevance of humanistic networks and university 1 This paper is the outcome of a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA n. 725883 EarlyModernCosmology)

Copernicus, his Latin style and comments to Commentariolus

“…Note that the distribution of words is a more complicated issue -cf. e.g Parker-Rhodes, Joyce 1956;Good 1957;Baayen, R. Harald 2001..…”