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The "Commentariolus" ("Little Commentary") is Nicolaus Copernicus's forty-page outline of an early version of his revolutionary heliocentric theory of the universe.^[1] After further long development of his theory, Copernicus published the mature version in 1543 in his landmark work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).

Copernicus wrote the "Commentariolus" some time before 1514 and circulated copies to his friends and colleagues.^[2] It thus became known among Copernicus's contemporaries, though it was never printed during his lifetime. In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining Copernicus' theory. Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals heard the lectures and were interested in the theory. On 1 November 1536, Nikolaus Cardinal von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua, wrote to Copernicus from Rome and asked him for a copy of his writings "at the earliest possible moment".^[3]

Although copies of the "Commentariolus" circulated for a time after Copernicus's death,^[4] it subsequently lapsed into obscurity, and its previous existence remained known only indirectly, until a surviving manuscript copy was discovered and published in the second half of the nineteenth century.^[5]

Notes

1. ^ Koyré (1973, pp.18–28); Rosen (2004, pp.6–7, 57–90). Thoren (1990, p.99) gives the length of the manuscript as 40 pages.
2. ^ A reference to the "Commentariolus" is contained in a library catalogue, dated May 1st, 1514, of a 16th-century historian, Matthew of Miechow, so it must have begun circulating before that date (Koyré, 1973, p.85; Gingerich, 2004, p.32).
3. ^ Schönberg, Nicholas, Letter to Nicolaus Copernicus, translated by Edward Rosen.
4. ^ Tycho Brahe obtained a copy in 1575, and subsequently presented copies to students and colleagues as tokens of his esteem (Dreyer, 1890, p.83; Thoren, 1990, pp.98–99)
5. ^ According to Rosen (2004, pp. 6–7), a manuscript copy of the "Commentariolus" was discovered in Vienna and published in 1878. According to Koyré (1973, p. 76), a very poor copy was published in the 1854 Warsaw edition of De revolutionibus.

Bibliography

• Dreyer, John Louis Emil (1890). Tycho Brahe; a picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924005641380.  
• Gingerich, Owen (2004). The Book Nobody Read. London: William Heinemann. ISBN 0-434-01315-3.  
• Koyré, Alexandre (1973). The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus – Kepler – Borelli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-0504-1.  
• Rosen, Edward (translator) (2004) [1939]. Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus; The Letter against Werner; The Narratio Prima of Rheticus (Second Edition, Revised ed.). New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.  
• Thoren, Victor E. (1990). The Lord of Uraniborg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-35158-8. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=GxyA-lhWL-AC.  

External links

• http://www.fh-augsburg.de/%7Eharsch/Chronologia/Lspost16/Copernicus/kop_c00.html Complete Latin text online at Bibliotheca Augustana.
• http://dbanach.com/copernicus-commentarilous.htm — Edward Rosen's (2004, pp.57–65)) English translation of the first four sections.
• http://bertie.ccsu.edu/~dsb/naturesci/Cosmology/Cosmo2Copernicus.html
• http://www.geocities.com/soho/gallery/8084/copernicus.htm