The Sleepwalkers (86 page)

15.
The Death of Copernicus

The
last
months
of
his
life
must
have
been
very
lonely
indeed.
He
had
forsaken
Rheticus,
and
Rheticus
had
forsaken
him.
Giese
now
lived
away
from
Frauenburg;
Sculteti
was
exiled.
One
by
one
the
Canons
of
his
generation
had
died.
He
had
not
been
much
loved
among
his
contemporaries;
to
the
generation
which
now
stepped
into
their
place,
he
had
even
less
appeal.
They
could
not
even
regard
the
old
man
in
his
tower
with
the
respectful
boredom
that
decrepitude
compels,
for
the
scandal
about
Anna
added
to
his
reputation
as
a
miser
that
of
a
lecher;
and
his
past
association
with
the
Lutheran
madman
from
Wittenberg
did
not
help
either.
He
was
virtually
ostracized.

The
measure
of
his
loneliness
can
be
gleaned
from
a
letter
which,
at
the
onset
of
Copernicus'
last
illness,
Giese
wrote
from
Loebau
Castle
to
one
of
the
Frauenburg
Canons,
George
Donner:
⁹¹

"...
Since
he
[
Copernicus]
loved
solitude
even
in
his
healthy
days,
so,
I
think,
he
has
few
friends
to
help
him
with
his
troubles
now
that
he
is
ill
–
although
we
are
all
in
his
debt
for
his
personal
integrity
and
excellent
teachings.
I
know
that
he
has
always
had
you
among
the
most
faithful.
I
beg
you,
therefore,
since
his
nature
is
so
formed,
would
you
be
in
the
place
of
a
guardian
to
him
and
undertake
the
protection
of
the
man
whom
we
have
both
always
loved,
that
he
may
not
lack
brotherly
help
in
this
necessity,
and
that
we
may
not
appear
ungrateful
to
him,
deserving
as
he
is.
Farewell.

Loebau, December 8, 1542."

Toward
the
end
of
1542,
Canon
Koppernigk
suffered
a
cerebral
haemorrhage,
followed
by
partial
paralysis,
and
took
permanently
to
his
bed.
At
the
beginning
of
1543,
Dantiscus
wrote
to
the
astronomer,
Gemma
Frisius
in
Louvain,
that
Copernicus
was
dying.
But
the
end
came
only
after
several
months,
on
24
May.
In
a
letter
to
Rheticus,
written
a
few
weeks
later,
Giese
recorded
the
event
in
a
single,
tragic
sentence:

"For
many
days
he
had
been
deprived
of
his
memory
and
mental
vigour;
he
only
saw
his
completed
book
at
the
last
moment,
on
the
day
he
died."
⁹²

We
know
that
mind
has
the
power
to
hang
on
to
life
and,
within
limits,
to
postpone
the
body's
death.
Copernicus'
mind
had
been
wandering,
yet
there
was
perhaps
just
enough
determination
left
to
hold
out
until
that
moment
when
his
hand
could
caress
the
cover
of
his
book.

His
state
of
mind
in
the
last
period
is
expressed
in
a
reflection
on
a
text
by
Thomas
Aquinas,
which
he
jotted
down
in
a
small,
shaky
writing
on
a
bookmark:
⁹³

Vita
brevis,
sensus
ebes,
negligentiae
torpor
et
inutiles
occupationes
nos
paucula
scire
permittent.
Et
aliquotients
scita
excutit
ab
animo
per
temporum
lapsum
fraudatrix
scientiae
et
inimica
memoriae
praeceps
oblivio.

"The shortness of life,
the dullness of the senses, the numbness of indifference and
unprofitable occupations allow us to know but very little. And again
and again swift oblivion, the embezzler of knowledge and the enemy of
memory, shakes out of the mind, in the course of time, even what we
knew."

The
earliest
monument
to
Copernicus,
in
St.
John's
Church
in
his
native
Torun,
has
a
curious
inscription
which
is
assumed
to
have
been
copied
from
a
note
found
in
his
possession.
⁹⁴
It
is
a
poem
by
Aeneas
Silvius:

Non
parem
Pauli
gratiam
requiro,
Venian
Petri
neque
Posco,
sed
quam
In
crucis
ligno
dederas
latroni,
Sedulus
oro
.

I
crave not the Grace bestowed on Paul
Nor the remission granted to
Peter
Only forgive me, I fervently pray
As thou forgavest the
crucified thieves.

A
more
earthy
epitaph
appeared
on
a
copper
medallion
coined
in
the
seventeenth
century
by
one
Christian
Wermuth
in
Gotha.
Its
face
shows
a
bust
with
the
inscription:
Nicolaus
Copernicus
mathematicus
natus
1473
,
D
.
1543."
On
the
reverse
is
a
quatrain
in
German:
⁹⁵

Der
Himmel
nicht
die
Erd
umgeht
Vie
die
Gelebrten
meynen
Ein
jeder
ist
seines
Wurms
gewiss
Copernicus
der
seinen
.