Epistolary Culture,Editorial Practices,and the Propriety of Tycho's Astronomical Letters

References to Dreyer J. L. E. , (eds), Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia (15 vols, Copenhagen, 1913–29), are abbreviated as TBOO, with line numbers separated from page numbers by a stop.

For different conceptions of the editor's role in the early-modern period, see Grafton A. , Forgers & critics: Creativity and duplicity in Western scholarship (London, 1990); D'Amico J. , Theory and practice in Renaissance textual criticism: Beatus Rhenanus between conjecture and history (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988); and Iliffe R. , “Author-mongering: The ‘editor’ between producer and consumer”, in Bermingham A. and Brewer J. , The consumption of culture 1600–1800: Image, object, text (London and New York, 1995), 161–91.

See, for example, Desiderius Erasmus in his De conscribendis epistolis of 1522 and Compendiaria conficiendarum epistolarum formula of 1521, as translated by Fantazzi C. in Sowards J. (ed.), Collected works of Erasmus 25 (Toronto, 1985), 20 and 258; and Henderson Rice J. , “Humanist letter writing: Private conversation or public forum?”, in Papy J. van Houdt T. Tournoy G. , and Matheeussen C. (eds). Self-presentation and social identification: The rhetoric and pragmatics of letter writing in early-modern times (Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia, xviii; Leuven, 2002), 17–38.

See Braunmuller A. , “Editing Elizabethan letters”, Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, i (1981), 185–99; idem, A seventeenth-century letter-book: A facsimile edition of Folger MS. V.a.321 (Newark, 1983); Clough C. , “The cult of Antiquity: Letters and letter collections”, in Clough C. (ed.), Cultural aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Manchester, 1976), 33–67; and Constable G. , Letters and letter collections (Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, xvii; Turnhout, 1976).

Boureau A. , “The letter-writing norm, a mediaeval invention”, in Chartier R. Boureau A. and Dauphin C. , Correspondence: Models of letter-writing from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century , transl. by Woodall C. (Princeton, 1997), 24–58; Camargo M. , Ars dictaminis, ars dictandi (Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, lx; Turnhout, 1991); and Witt R. , “Medieval ‘Ars dictaminis’ and the beginnings of humanism: A new construction of the problem”, Renaissance quarterly, xxxv (1982), 98–152.

Braunmuller , “Editing Elizabethan letters” (ref. 3), 190, and Clough , “The cult of Antiquity” (ref. 3), 37–38.

Clough , “The cult of Antiquity” (ref. 3), passim; Isewijn J. with Sacré D. , Companion to neo-Latin studies, Part II: Literary, linguistic, philological and editorial questions , 2nd edn (Supplementa Humanistic Lovaniensia, xiv; Louvain, 1998), 218–28; Jardine L. , “Concentric circles: Confected correspondence and the Opus epistolarum Erasmi”, in her Erasmus, man of letters: The construction of charisma in print (Princeton, 1993), 147–74; and Henderson Rice J. , “On reading the rhetoric of the Renaissance letter”, in Plett H. F. , (ed.), Renaissance Rhetorik (Berlin, 1993), 143–62.

Benedetti represented his Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum, & physicarum liber (Turin, 1585) as, in part, the accumulated responses to inquiries directed to him by letter over the course of several years, strongly implying that these letters had actually been sent to their addressees; see his dedicatory letter to Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, A2r-v. Libavius, however, stated that the publication of a book of letters seemed better to him than sending individual letters to individual scholars; see the dedication of his Rerum chymicarum epistolica (Frankfurt, 1595), *5v−*6r.

It is not clear that these presuppositions would stand up to comparison with our own epistolary experience. E-mail routinely enables letters to be treated in ways as sophisticated and as liable to undermine our faith in the privacy and integrity of documents as any found in the past; and yet the software developers, with their vocabulary of carbon-copying and forwarding, have clearly signalled their debt to the more laborious but essentially similar epistolary practices of very recent history.

Henderson , “On reading the rhetoric of the Renaissance letter” (ref. 6), 146.

Melanchthon P. , Epistolarum farrago … a Ioanne Manlio passim collecta (Basle, 1565). See Wengert T. , “The scope and contents of Philip Melanchthon's Opera omnia, Wittenberg, 1562–1564”, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, lxxxviii (1997), 57–76, especially p. 59.

“sit consarcinata stolidissime”, “cum a veteribus, tum recentibus historiis discrepans”, “sine iudicio and sine delectu contractae congestaeque sunt”, “lacerum, imperfectum, dissonum, a latinitate alienum omnem est, in iis praecipue, quae continent res maximi momenti, ut impoßibile sit cuiquam mentem autoris assequi”. See Melanchthon P. , Epistolae selectiores aliquot … Editae a Casparo Peucero (Wittenberg, 1565), A4r–A4v.

D'Amico , Theory and practice (ref. 1), especially pp. 110–205; Grafton A. , Joseph Scaliger: A study in the history of classical scholarship (2 vols, Oxford, 1983–93); and Pfeiffer R. , History of classical scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1974), 69–142.

Grafton , Forgers and critics (ref. 1), 43–45.

Neuschel K. , Word of honor: Interpreting noble culture in sixteenth-century France (Ithaca and London, 1989), 69–78, makes this point with respect to letters exchanged between members of the French nobility; cf., on the obligations of commerce de lettres, Goldgar A. , Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the republic of letters 1680–1750 (New Haven and London, 1995), 12–53.

The value attributed to an autograph letter or signature probably derived from the combination of its greater claim to authenticity and what it implied about the degree of the sender's personal engagement; current epistolary etiquette is not so very different. That letters and signatures written manu propria were so valued can be inferred from the frequency with which the existence of a letter document “in his own hand” is reported. See for example, Treutler's Hieronymus Oratio historica de vita et morte Illustrissimi et Potentissimi Cattorum Principis, ac D. D. Wilhelmi Hassiae Landtgravii (Marburg, 1592), 85, where Treutler considers it relevant to note that Landgrave Wilhelm both sent a letter written in his own hand to Emperor Rudolf II, and received one written by the Emperor in return.

Goldgar , Impolite learning (ref. 14), 23–30.

Henderson , “Humanist letter writing” (ref. 2), 25. See also Ultee M. , “The republic of letters: Learned correspondence, 1680–1720”, The seventeenth century, ii (1987), 95–112.

On the use of letters in dispute, see Clough , “The cult of Antiquity” (ref. 3), 46. Lisa Jardine has detected careful management of a supposed epistolary quarrel in the case of Erasmus and Martin Dorp; see her Erasmus, man of letters (ref. 6), 111–22 and 180–7.

For some examples, see the instances mentioned by D. Aveling and W. Pantin in their edition of The letter book of Robert Joseph, monk-scholar of Evesham and Gloucester College, Oxford, 1530–3 (Oxford, 1957), pp. xxxviii–xxxix.

Bietenholtz P. , “Erasmus and the German public 1518–1520: The question of the authorized and unauthorized circulation of his correspondence”, Sixteenth century journal, viii/2 (1977), 61–78; and cf. Jardine L. , “Before Clarissa: Erasmus, ‘Letters of obscure men’, and epistolary fictions”, in Papy (eds), Self-presentation and social identification (ref. 2), 385–403, especially pp. 388–91 and 400–2.

See Rosen E. , Three Imperial mathematicians: Kepler trapped between Tycho and Ursus (New York, 1985), 14; Gingerich O. and Westman R. , “The Wittich connection: Conflict and priority in late sixteenth-century cosmology”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, lxxviii (1988), Part 7, p. 20; Thoren V. , The Lord of Uraniborg: A biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge, 1990), 314 and 390–1; and Gingerich O. and Voelkel J. , “Tycho Brahe's Copernican campaign”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxix (1998), 1–34, p. 28. Goldstein B. and Barker P. , however, have offered the suggestion that “one reason Brahe published his correspondence was to support his claim that Rothmann, once an opponent of Brahe's geo-heliocentric hypothesis, later succumbed to his arguments in its favour”; see their “The role of Rothmann in the dissolution of the celestial spheres”, The British journal of the history of science, xxviii (1995), 385–403, p. 386. But although, as indicated later in the text, we agree with this view, it also privileges an aspect of the exchanges between Tycho and Rothmann that postdates the first circulation of the letters in manuscript.

See Raeder H. , “Om Tycho Brahe's astronomiske brevvexling”, Edda, xiv (1920), 103–17, especially 112–15 (the text is reproduced in English translation in the Appendix), and Dreyer , TBOO , vi, 351–2, note to 61.41. The charge of editorial impropriety was levelled in English by Rosen , Three Imperial mathematicians (ref. 21), 225–6, with his debt to Raeder recorded on p. 360, note 16; Thoren , The Lord of Uraniborg (ref. 21), 393–4, repeats the charge as fact with references to Rosen and Dreyer.

A version of this argument has previously been made in Mosley A. , “Tycho Brahe's Epistolae astronomicae: A reappraisal”, in Papy (eds), Self-presentation and social identification (ref. 2), 449–68.

TBOO, vi, 31–32 and 33–48.

TBOO, vii, 216.39–217.10, 225.41–226.4, and 238.28–31.

TBOO, vii, 226.4–7.

Rosen , Three Imperial mathematicians (ref. 21), 21–28.

TBOO, vi, 30.14–21.

Thoren , The Lord of Uraniborg (ref. 21), 64–65.

TBOO, vii, 149.21–26.

TBOO, vii, 108.15–23, 115.4–8 and 126.10–19.

TBOO , vii, 126.5–9 and 148.20–30; on Maestlin's acquaintance with the letter, see Gingerich and Voelkel , “Tycho Brahe's Copernican campaign”, op. cit. (ref. 21), 28–29.

TBOO , vii, 127–141. On this letter see, in addition to the remarks in Gingerich and Voelkel , “Tycho Brahe's Copernican campaign” (ref. 21), 4–5, and the comments in Schofield C. , Tychonic and semi-Tychonic world systems (New York, 1981), 55–69.

TBOO, vii, 226.26–30.

TBOO, vi, 317.13–336.13; this description occurs at 317.39–42.

On Tycho's quarrel with Craig, see Mosley A. , “Tycho Brahe and John Craig: The dynamic of a dispute”, in Christianson J. Hadravova A. Hadrava P. and Solc M. (eds), Tycho Brahe and Prague: Crossroads of European science (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 70–83.

See the literature cited in ref. 22 above.

See Jardine N. , The birth of history and philosophy of science: Kepler's A defence of Tycho against Ursus with essays on its provenance and significance (Cambridge, 1984; rev. edn, 1988), 11 and 29–56.

Tycho to Kepler, 29 November/9 December 1599, TBOO , viii, 204.17–38. Cf. the remark of Cardano Girolamo , The book of my life, transl. by Stoner J. (New York, 2002), 55: “Vesalius, a man of decent restraint, gave proof of his attitude toward malignant controversy, for when he was stirred by Corti to engage in some insignificant dispute, he was not willing to mention his opponent's name.”

In the version of Kurz's letter to Tycho of 28 June 1590 that was published in the Mechanica, Ursus's name was replaced by “N.N.”, that is, “Nomen Nescio”; see TBOO, v, 121.34–41.

TBOO, vi, 61.41–62.4.

For this and other points of fact regarding the differences between the printed text and the manuscripts, see the Appendix, Dreyer's notes to the Epistolae astronomicae in TBOO, vi, 345–75, and Raeder's register of variant readings in TBOO, ix, 281–95.

TBOO, vi, 179.20–25.

Baer N. , De hypothesibus astronomicis (Prague, 1597), E3,r.

Thersites , “in mythology, an ugly, foul-tongued fellow, who rails at Agamemnon (Iliad 2.212ff), until beaten into silence by Odysseus”; see Hammond N. G. L. and Scullard H. H. , The Oxford classical dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1970), 1061.

TBOO, vi, 361–2, note to 183.13.

The phrase “the snake's reward” [merces anguina], is to found as the title of an emblematic representation of one of Aesop's fables, “The farmer and the frozen viper”, in Reusner N. , Emblemata (Frankfurt am Main, 1581), Bk II, no. 22; see Henkel A. and Schöne A. , Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1978), col. 639. In the fable, the kindly farmer warms the frozen snake against his body, only to be fatally bitten; see Gibbs L. , transl., Aesop's fables (Oxford, 2002), no. 440, 203–4.

Euclid's Elements, Bk I, Prop. 47, is Pythagoras's theorem; Rothmann is suggesting that Bürgi is indebted to him for all his knowledge of geometry.

TBOO, vi, 362, note to 183.13.

TBOO, vi, 183.13–15.

TBOO , vi, 14.26–29. This statement has usually been invoked by those critical of Tycho's supposed editorial misdemeanour as evidence of editorial standards to which he failed to live up; see Dreyer , TBOO, vi, 351–2, note to 61.41, Rosen , Three Imperial mathematicians (ref. 21), 224–46, and Thoren , The Lord of Uraniborg (ref. 21), 394.

TBOO, vii, 58.30–59.1 and 406, note to 58.30.

On this subject, see Thoren V. , “Prosthaphaeresis revisited”, Historia mathematica, xv (1988), 32–39, and the literature there cited.

TBOO, viii, 294.38–41.

Rollenhagen had thus described Ursus to Rantzau (as reported by Rantzau to Tycho, then by Tycho to Peucer), though at the time he wrote Tycho knew of Rollenhagen only as “a certain other astronomer”; see TBOO, vii, 135.38–42.

Roeslin to Maestlin, 9 April 1588, in Granada M. A. , Sfere solide e cielo fluido: Momenti del dibattito cosmologico nella seconda metà del Cinquecento (Naples, 2002), 279. At the time of writing Roeslin did not know Ursus's name, referring to him as “diser Holsteiner”. Roeslin repeated his account in a letter to Maestlin of 28 October 1588 in which, following his reading of the Fundamentum astronomicum, he identified Ursus; see ibid., 282.

TBOO, vii, 323.35–36.

TBOO, vi, 182.24–30; Granada M. , Sfere solide e cielo fluido (ref. 56), 113.

TBOO, vi, 28.6–9.

See, for example, Rothmann to Tycho, 22 August 1589, TBOO , vi, 181.24–39. On Rothmann's accommodationist approach to Scripture, see Granada , Sfere solide e cielo fluido (ref. 56), 87–113. Rothmann's touchiness on this score may well have increased as he ventured into theology with his Restitutio sacramentorum, written in 1597 but unpublished. See Rosen , Three Imperial mathematicians (ref. 21), 307, and Strieder F. W. , Grundlage zu einer hessischen Gelehrten- und Schriftsteller-Geschichte (21 vols, Kassel, 1781–1868), xii, 121–2. On Tycho's and Rothmann's opposed views on the interpretation of the Scriptures see Howell K. J. , God's two books: Copernican cosmology and Biblical interpretation in early-modern science (Notre Dame, 2002), 73–108.

TBOO, vi, 14.26–29; viii, 294.38–41.

Raeder , “Om Tycho Brahe's Astronomiske Brevvexling” (ref. 22), 105–6.

Ibid., 106–7.

Ibid., 111.

Ibid. , 107–14. In at least one of the cases mentioned by Raeder, Rothmann's report that the Landgrave would write to Niels Kaas, Chancellor of Denmark, about a matter raised with him by Tycho's courier, Gellius Sascerides, the omission may have been on account of the delicacy of divulging such an intervention rather than its “purely private nature”. See TBOO, vi, 360, note to 161.38.

TBOO, vi, 366, note to 231.22.

Raeder , “Om Tycho Brahe's Astronomiske Brevvexling” (ref. 22), 108; TBOO , vi, 365–366, note to 225.2. The reason for excising the brief report on the solar eclipse of 21 July 1590 is, as Raeder points out, unclear. One possibility is that this material, which appears close to the end of the manuscript letter, was added at a late stage and hence was not present in the copy of the letter retained at Uraniborg. Another is that Tycho did not wish to publish information regarding his observation of this eclipse prior to his treatment of the motions of the Sun and Moon in his Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata (Prague, 1602).

TBOO, vi, 22.23–30.

TBOO, vi, 23.6–34 and 28.6–9.

TBOO, vii, 218.37–40.

Hagecius to Tycho, 1/11 June 1590, TBOO, vii, 255.16–23.

On Tycho's backdating see Goldstein and Barker , “The role of Rothmann in the dissolution of the celestial spheres” (ref. 21); Gingerich and Voelkel , “Tycho Brahe's Copernican campaign” (ref. 21).

TBOO, viii, 125.3–13; 251.2–20; 394.31–395.3. Antonio Favaro exclaimed sadly concerning this “secret business”, “Debolezze, alle quali non possono sottrarsi nemmeno i grandi uomini!”: Carteggio inedito di Ticone Brahe, Giovanni Keplero e di altri celebri astronomi e matematici dei secoli XVI e XVII con Giovanni Antonio Magini (Bologna, 1886), 223.

TBOO, vii, 326.13–21.

TBOO, vii. 23.41–24.7.

TBOO, iv, 502–503, note to 156.1.

See Schofield , Tychonic and semi-Tychonic world systems (ref. 33), 34–35.

Dreyer J. L. E. , Tycho Brahe: A picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century (Edinburgh, 1890), 198–238.

The respective roles of Dreyer and Raeder are set out in the preface to the edition; see TBOO, i, pp. i–ii.

On Raeder, see Adler A. , “Raeder, Hans”, in Dansk biografisk leksikon (27 vols, Copenhagen, 1933–44), xx, 371–3.

On classical text-criticism see, for example, Kristeller P. O. , “The Lachmann method: Merits and limitations”, Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, i (1981), 11–20.

Something of Raeder's priorities as an editor can be gleaned from his dispute with the historian Lauritz Weibull over the edition Raeder prepared with Jørgen Olrik of Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Copenhagen, 1931). Weibull criticized the editors at length for making unnecessary corrections to the oldest available text, the Paris edition of 1514, and called the edition unscholarly. See his “Saxoupplagan av 1931”, Scandia, vii (1934), 290–8. Raeder defended his corrections, arguing that once the need for even a few alterations has been acknowledged (as it was by Weibull), it is always then a matter of judgement how much and in what way the text should be emended. Raeder emphasized that the reader is best served by a “readable and comprehensible” text. His chief concern, therefore, was to produce a coherent text that mediated the meaning of Saxo's work, rather than the historical document that Weibull sought. See Raeder H. , “Om fastsættelsen af Saxo's Tekst”, Aarbøger for Nordisk oldkyndighed og historie , 1935, 89–108, and Weibull's response, “Saxo inför nutida textkritik”, Scandia, viii (1935), 251–93.

See Knobel F. , “John Louis Emil Dreyer”, Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , lxxxvii (1926–27), 251–7, especially p. 251. See also Bennett J. A. , Church, state and astronomy in Ireland: 200 years of Armagh Observatory (Armagh, 1990), 153–70, and the sources on Dreyer there cited.

TBOO, vi. 351, note to 61.41.

In a Presidential address delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society, Dreyer called for a new edition of Newton's Opera to be prepared and suggested that the best way to present Newton's correspondence would be to follow “the plan adopted by Frisch in his excellent edition of Kepler's works…. He only supplies copious extracts from the letters in the lengthy introductions which he gives to each of Kepler's writings”. See Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , lxxxiv (1924), 298–305, p. 303. Vols vii and viii of Tycho's Opera omnia — which contain the astronomical correspondence he did not publish — appeared in 1924 and 1925 respectively, so Dreyer's remark in this address that a chronological and inclusive arrangement of letters “has the drawback that many uninteresting details and repetitions are included” strongly suggests that editing Tycho did not lead him to an appreciation of early-modern epistolary culture.

For an excellent discussion of these issues see Hunter M. , “How to edit a seventeenth-century manuscript: Principles and practice”, The seventeenth century, x (1995), 277–310.

For a powerful critique along these lines see Zeller H. , “A new approach to the critical constitution of literary texts”, Studies in bibliography, xxviii (1975), 231–64; Zeller provides fascinating examples of the unhappy outcomes of uncritical application of text-criticism to the edition of Goethe's works.

Zeller F. and Zeller C. , (eds), De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex: Textkritische Ausgabe (Munich, 1949), and Nobis H. M. and Sticker B. (eds), De revolutionibus libri sex: Kritischer Text (Hildesheim, 1984). On these editions, see Grafton A. , “Editing technical neo-Latin texts: Two cases and their implications”, in Grant J. N. (ed.), Editing Greek and Latin texts (New York, 1989), 163–86.

Grafton , “Editing technical neo-Latin texts” (ref. 88).

See, for example, McGann J. J. , “The monks and the giants: Textual and bibliographical studies and the interpretation of literary works”, in McGann J. J. (ed.), Textual criticism and literary interpretation (Chicago and London, 1985), 180–99.

Hunter M. , “Whither editing?”, essay review, Studies in history and philosophy of science, in press. We thank Michael Hunter for permission to quote from this article.

Thus Raeder emphasises both their primary concern with the printed edition, and the need for caution in emending it in the light of manuscript variants; “Om Tycho Brahe's astronomiske brevvexling” (ref. 22). 104–5 and 108.

Ibid., 105.

The first number refers to the page number in the first edition; the following — after the slash — page and line in Dreyer's edition (vol. vi).

Tycho Brahe also writes in his answer to Rothmann's letter that he will not make any further mention of the man who has stolen his system, because he does not deserve it (p. 166–196. 21–22).

Rothmann himself describes his sufferings as pains caused by stone and gout.