Character Catalog

A short manuscript quietly circulated among scholars, in which Copernicus presents for the first time his seven heliocentric postulates. This founding text would not be printed until the 19th century.

Copernicus is consulted by the Lateran Council on the reform of the Julian calendar. He replies that the movements of the Sun and the Moon must first be measured more accurately, revealing his distrust of existing data.

The first printed summary of the Copernican system, written by his disciple Rheticus. This text allowed European scholars to become acquainted with Copernicus's ideas before the publication of his main work.

Copernicus's masterpiece in six books, in which he mathematically demonstrates that the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun. This work is considered the founding act of the modern scientific revolution.

"At the center of everything resides the Sun. Who could, in this most beautiful temple, place this torch in any other or better place than that from which it can illuminate everything at the same time?"

"All the spheres revolve around the Sun as their midpoint, and therefore the Sun is at the center of the universe."

"I hesitated for a long time to publish these meditations, so much did I fear the contempt deserved by those who put forward new proposals contrary to accepted opinions."

"The length of the year and the motions of the Sun have not yet been determined with enough precision to allow a calendar to be established without error."

Copernicus's birthplace, a prosperous merchant city of Royal Prussia on the Vistula River. He was born there on February 19, 1473, into a wealthy merchant family.

Small port town on the Baltic Sea coast where Copernicus lived and worked as a canon for most of his adult life. It was from the cathedral tower that he conducted the bulk of his astronomical observations.

Copernicus studied here from 1491 to 1495, discovering mathematics and the first foundations of astronomy. It is one of the oldest centers of learning in Central Europe.

Copernicus stayed at this great Italian university from 1496 to 1500, where he worked alongside the astronomer Domenico Maria Novara and made his first serious observations of the sky.

Copernicus stayed there around 1500 and gave public lectures on mathematics and astronomy, during which he notably observed a lunar eclipse.

An instrument for measuring the position of celestial bodies, used by Copernicus for his nightly observations from the turret at Frombork. It allowed him to determine the altitude of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets above the horizon.

A three-branched articulated instrument that Copernicus built himself to measure angles between celestial bodies. He mentions it in De revolutionibus as his primary observational tool.

The great treatise by the Greek scholar Ptolemy (2nd century), which was the indispensable reference of medieval astronomy. Copernicus studied it deeply before challenging its geocentric model.

Copernicus wrote his calculations and observations by hand over decades, accumulating thousands of pages of mathematical notes before composing his definitive work.

As a canon of the Chapter of Warmia, Copernicus wore ecclesiastical dress. His double life as a clergyman and scholar symbolizes the tension between religion and science during the Renaissance.

Essential mathematical tools for tracing the circular orbits of the planets in his models. Copernicus was above all a geometer who sought the mathematical harmony of the cosmos.