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The place of Edward Gresham's Astrostereon (1603) in the discussion on cosmology and the Bible in the early modern period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
Abstract
This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the ‘First Account’ of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University – such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages – either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility – the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 417 - 442
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
The research was conducted as part of the Tradition and Novelty: Copernicanism, the Idea of a Plurality of Worlds, and Astrology in Edward Gresham's (1565–1613) Astrostereon grant project, financed by the National Science Centre, Poland (OPUS 8, DEC-2014/15/B/HS3/02490). The project's ultimate aim is to publish the first critical edition of Gresham's Astrostereon. I am indebted to Dr Amanda Rees for her editorial comments and to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. I am grateful to Prof. Jarosław Włodarczyk and Dr Maciej Jasiński (Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences) for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this text. I would also like to thank Dr Sara Miglietti (Warburg Institute) for her help in obtaining a copy of the book essential for completing this article, and Ms Agnieszka Bogdalska for her assistance with Hebrew.
References
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77 Hooykaas, op. cit. (76), p. 97. The passages are discussed on pp. 95–6.
78 Hooykaas, op. cit. (76), p. 68. Compare Westman, op. cit. (20), pp. 130–1. See also Snobelen, op. cit. (34), p. 702.
79 Hooykaas, op. cit. (76), p. 71.
80 Nienke Roelants, ‘Lutheran astronomers after the Fall: a reappraisal of the Renaissance dynamic between astronomy and religion (1540–1590)’, PhD dissertation, Universiteit Gent, 2013, p. 244.
81 Compare Howell, op. cit. (36), pp. 60–1.
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85 Hooykaas, op. cit. (76), p. 94.
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93 Westman, op. cit. (20), p. 160. See also Peter Barker, ‘Kepler and Melanchthon on the biblical arguments against Copernicanism’, in Van der Meer and Mandelbrote, op. cit. (34), vol. 2, pp. 585–604, 589; and Katherine Tredwell, ‘The exact science in Lutheran Germany and Tudor England’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 2005, p. 135.
94 Barnes, op. cit. (92), p. 147.
95 Barker, Peter, ‘The role of religion in the Lutheran response to Copernicus’, in Osler, Margaret J. (ed.), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 59–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 60–1. See also Kirschner, Stefan and Kühne, Andreas, ‘The decline of the medieval disputation culture and “The Wittenberg interpretation of the Copernican theory”’, in Neuber, Wolfgang, Rahn, Thomas and Zittel, Claus (eds.), The Making of Copernicus: Early Modern Transformations of the Scientist and His Science, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 13–37, 37Google Scholar.
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98 Compare Melanchthon, op. cit. (90), pp. 63–4.
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100 Compare Tredwell, op. cit. (93), p. 135; and Barker, op. cit. (93), p. 589.
101 Compare Westman, op. cit. (20), p. 163.
102 Granada, op. cit. (97), p. 567.
103 See Randles, W.G.L., The Unmaking of the Medieval Christian Cosmos, 1500–1760: From Solid Heavens to Boundless Aether, New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 58–63Google Scholar; see also Granada, Miguel A., ‘Astronomy and cosmology in Kassel: the contribution of Christoph Rothmann and his relationship to Tycho Brahe and Jean Pena’, Acta historiae rerum naturalium necnon technicarum, new series (2004) 8, pp. 244–5Google Scholar.
104 The text was first printed in 1619. Nonetheless, Rothmann had sent an incomplete version of the text to Brahe. The discussion of its contents was published in their correspondence (e.g. in the letters of 20 January 1587 (Brahe to Rothmann) and 21 September 1587 (Rothmann in reply to Brahe)). See Goldstein, Bernard R. and Barker, Peter, ‘The role of Rothmann in the dissolution of the celestial spheres’, BJHS (1995) 28, pp. 385–403, esp. 385–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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106 Compare Håkansson, Håkan, ‘Tycho the Prophet …’, in Killeen, Kevin and Forshaw, Peter J. (eds.), The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 137–56, 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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108 Compare Howell, op. cit. (36), p. 100; and Granada, op. cit. (97), pp. 579, 581.
109 See Moran, Bruce T., ‘Christoph Rothmann, the Copernican theory, and institutional and technical influences on the criticism of Aristotelian cosmology’, Sixteenth Century Journal (1982) 13(3), pp. 85–108, esp. 100–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Granada, Miguel A., ‘Christoph Rothmann und der Copernicanismus: Die Evidenz im “Scriptum de cometa”’, Acta Historica Astronomiae (2010) 40, pp. 35–46Google Scholar.
110 The Latin versions of the letters come from Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia (ed. J.L.E. Dreyer), 15 vols., Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1913–29 (hereafter TBOO), vol. 6, p. 159, ll. 19–26 (tr. Miguel A. Granada), quoted in Granada, op. cit. (97), p. 571.
111 John Calvin, Calvin's Complete Bible Commentaries, The first Book of Moses called Genesis [1554] (tr. John King [1848]), s.l., 2011, p. 72.
112 Calvin, op. cit. (111), p. 72. On Calvin's anti-Copernicanism see Rosen, Edward, ‘Calvin's attitude toward Copernicus’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1960) 21(3), pp. 431–41, esp. 440CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stauffer, Richard, ‘Calvin et Copernic’, Revue de l'histoire des religions (1971) 179(1), pp. 31–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hooykaas, Reijer, ‘Calvin and Copernicus’, Organon (1974) 10, pp. 139–48, 140Google Scholar.
113 See Westman, R., ‘The Copernicans and the churches’, in Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L. (eds.), God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 76–113, esp. 95–6Google Scholar; and Blumenberg, Hans, The Genesis of the Copernican World (tr. Wallace, Robert M.), Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2000 (first published 1975), pp. 329–30Google Scholar.
114 Charles Webster, ‘Puritanism, separatism, and science’, in Lindberg and Numbers, op. cit. (113), pp. 203–4. See also Mason, op. cit. (54), p. 28; and Hill, op. cit. (19), p. 25.
115 Hooykaas, op. cit. (112), p. 142.
116 Hooykaas, op. cit. (112), p. 143, original emphasis.
117 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20r.
118 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20v.
119 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20v.
120 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
121 Should be Psalms 19:6 (GNV).
122 Psalms 104:19: ‘He appointed the moon for certain seasons: the sun knoweth his going down’ (GNV).
123 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
124 ‘For he hath founded it upon the seas: and established it upon the floods’ (GNV).
125 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
126 ‘For the stars of heaven and the planets thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine’ (GNV).
127 ‘8 All the lights of heaven will I make dark for thee, and bring darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God. 9 I will also trouble the hearts of many people, when I shall bring thy destruction among the nations and upon the countries which thou hast not known’ (GNV).
128 ‘The earth shall tremble before him, ye heavens shall shake, the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining’ (GNV). Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
129 Compare Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20r.
130 Compare Psalms 104:5. Gresham quotes from the Geneva Bible.
131 Hebrew for ‘fall’, ‘decline’, ‘collapse’; Psalms 93:1 תֵּבֵל בַּל־תִּמֹּוט (‘so that the world does not fall’).
132 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20v.
133 ‘The world also shall be established, that it cannot be moved’ (GNV).
134 ‘Surely the world shall be stable, and not move’ (GNV, original emphasis).
135 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
136 Psalms 89:37: ‘He shall be established for evermore as the moon’ (GNV); literally this fragment reads, ‘Like the moon it shall be established’.
137 Psalms 8:4: ‘the moon and the stars, which you have set in place’ (translated from the Vulgate); in GNV: ‘the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained’. Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 21r.
138 Compare Feingold, op. cit. (48), p. 41.
139 See Grafton, Anthony, ‘Edward Lively, cosmopolitan Hebraist’, in Feingold, Mordechai (ed.), Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Erudition and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 82–104Google Scholar.
140 Feingold, op. cit. (48), p. 117.
141 Gresham uses these terms in Astrostereon (fol. 35r) in order to explain how divine emanations are conveyed.
142 Gresham, A new Almanack and Prognostication for the yeere of our Lord, 1604, London: for the assignes of J. Roberts, 1604, sig. B6v, original spelling and emphasis.
143 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 15r.
144 ‘And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven’ (GNV).
145 ‘Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light to the day, and the courses of the moon and of the stars for a light to the night’ (GNV).
146 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 15v.
147 In Chapter 3.3, Gresham illustrates the primeval state of planets quoting a passage from Job 38:9, in which he finds a Hebrew paronomasia: ‘from חֲתֻלָּתוֹ [hatulato; his garment] to הֶבֶל [hevel; vapor/steam] a confused Masse to a positiue-platt, or habitable-plaine’; Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 31r. Gresham compared the words which sounded similar in order to show their alleged connection.
148 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 18v. The sources of this mistaken etymology in the early modern period lie in the simplification and misreading of certain rabbinic commentaries. See Alison Knight, ‘Audience and error: translation, philology, and rhetoric in the preaching of Lancelot Andrewes’, in Feingold, op. cit. (139), pp. 372–95, esp. 385–8.
149 Peucer to Brahe, 10 May 1589, TBOO, vol. 7, p. 185, quoted in Howell, op. cit. (36), p. 105.
150 Brahe to Rothmann, 17 August 1588, TBOO, vol. 6, p. 134, ll. 34–8, my translation.
151 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 19r.
152 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 19r.
153 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 19v.
154 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 19v.
155 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 20r.
156 Compare Randles, op. cit. (103), p. 59.
157 See Rosen, Edward, ‘The dissolution of the solid celestial spheres’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1985) 46(1), pp. 13–31, 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Randles, op. cit. (103), p. 70. See also Donahue's, William H. The Dissolution of the Celestial Spheres, New York: Arno Press, 1981Google Scholar.
158 See Randles, op. cit. (103), p. 59 n. 7.
159 ‘all creatures, ffeeles, sees & knowes it, namely that goodlie Orbe of ffyre – not the Philosophers foolishe Spheare off fyre, the ffourth Materiall Elemente, which true Philosophie never yet founde nor sacred Caball acknowledged, but the Sunne, that perpetuall ffounte of ffyre’, Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 23v.
160 In De subtilitate libri XXI, lib. II, p. 23; see Randles, op. cit. (103), p. 61 nn. 13, 15. See also Brahe's letter to Rothmann (17 August 1588), TBOO, vol. 6, p. 134, ll. 29–32.
161 Compare Cormack, Lesley B., ‘Handwork and brainwork: beyond the Zilsel thesis’, in Cormack, L.B., Walton, S.A. and Schuster, John A. (eds.) Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, Dordrecht: Springer, 2017, pp. 11–35, 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
162 Compare Barker, Peter, ‘The reality of Peuerbach's orbs: cosmological continuity in fifteenth and sixteenth century astronomy’, in Boner, Patrick J. (ed.), Change and Continuity in Early Modern Cosmology, Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, pp. 7–32, 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
163 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 32r.
164 Howell, op. cit. (36), p. 223.
165 Gresham, op. cit. (11), fol. 39v.
166 Compare Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005 (first published 1980), esp. Chapter 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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