Edward Gresham (1565–1613) – a mathematician, astrologer and notorious ‘rotten engine’ in the early Jacobean English landscape – is an obscure figure of seventeenth-century London.Footnote 1 Little is known of his life. He came from Stainford, Yorkshire, and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculating as a sizar in 1584), where he probably received his MA by 1606.Footnote 2 Gresham practised astrology in London and lived in upper Thames Street, next to Dyers Hall, until his death. He is mainly recognized as the author of astrological almanacs and prognostications for the years 1603–7, and the editor of Strange feareful & true newes … (London, 1606). He also figures in two major scandals of the early reign of King James I: his prognostication for 1605 – now lost – allegedly foretells the Gunpowder Plot, and he plays a part in the so-called Overbury affair. Both earned him his later reputation of a Papist traitor and a conjuror involved in devilish practices.Footnote 3 As Mark Dawson suggests, in his lifetime Gresham was a reputed astrologer, commended for his prognostications, whose clients belonged to various social strata, and included the victims of petty criminals.Footnote 4 At the same time, in his letters, Gresham admits that ‘some friends’ encouraged him to start writing almanacs and prognostications (for which he was often scolded by others), though it drove him away from ‘greater studies’.Footnote 5 As it seems, Gresham's intellectual ambitions were much higher.
Following a now classic analysis by Francis R. Johnson, in his overview of the reception of Copernicanism in Great Britain, John L. Russell identified Gresham as an eager supporter of the heliocentric system.Footnote 6 Both historians quote Gresham's preface from his 1607 prognostication, where he defends himself against accusations of atheism and heresy:
And some (I heare) who (for that I am paradoxall in many things, but especially in the frame and systeme of the world, differing from all Phylosophers and Diuines in that poynt, as they thinke) absolutely condemne me of Atheisme and Haeresie. To these I reply, that Apostasie from Errour to Truth, is no good Argument of Atheisme … But if these inconsiderate Paralogists, had euer seen my Sabboth-dayes exercises for these many yeeres continuance, (in farre better sort bestowed then the world did imagine) or my Positions in Diuinitie, (both extant vnder my hand) or my Astrostereon, (a booke I wrote in the hart and heat of the last great Visitation, wherein with a reuerend reconciliation of the Word, with these scrupulous Paradoxes, I haue neither done iniury to God nor Nature) they would (without doubt) haue been better opinionate of mee.Footnote 7
According to Gresham, his accusers deem him atheist and heretic because he differs from the authorities in his view of the ‘frame and systeme of the world’. As Gresham implies, these critics had not seen his other works, in which those paradoxes are reconciled with Scripture. But on what grounds did they make these accusations? His opponents might have been referring to Gresham's prognostication for 1606, in which he explicitly wrote about the Earth circling the Sun: ‘Our Orbe (as any other) obliquely circling the globouse body of light, is variablie affected with light and darknesse, and in utmost limits with greatest difference’.Footnote 8
Of the other texts mentioned by Gresham, it seems that only Astrostereon (1603) is extant (in five manuscript copies, three in the British Library in London, and two in the Bodleian Library in Oxford).Footnote 9 The treatise was written at a time of plague in London in 1603 in order to refute claims that a planet would fall and thus determine the consequences of the epidemic. Allegedly, this rumour was started by Gresham and John Dee (1527–1608/9), though there are no extant printed sources (if there ever were) to prove it.Footnote 10 Gresham wanted to defend his reputation and tried to convince the people who might have believed the hearsay – both of the ‘vulgar’ and ‘better sort’ –that due to the real frame of the world, such an event could never occur.Footnote 11 Although the text was never printed in Gresham's lifetime, the layout of the copy dated 1610 (BL Sloane MS 3936) indicates that it might have functioned as a scribal publication, or that it was prepared with a printing publication in mind. The most prosaic reason why Gresham never published Astrostereon could be lack of money and patronage. Nearly a hundred years after its creation, fragments of the treatise (with changes) were published in instalments in John Gadbury's Ephemeris for the years 1700–5, reflecting the astrologer's fascination with Gresham's work.Footnote 12 Gadbury's copy of Astrostereon is listed in Edward Bernard's Catalogue of English Libraries (1697), with a note that the things discussed in Astrostereon, such as the influence of the solar light and heat on the planets, ‘at that time were very rare’.Footnote 13 Gadbury appreciated Gresham already in his Collectio Geniturarum (1662), in which he calls him ‘the most ingenious person and good Artist’, endowed with ‘sharp active Fancie’.Footnote 14 In his Ephemeris, he calls Gresham a ‘Learned author’.Footnote 15 Gadbury's high opinion of Gresham's skills stands in sharp contrast with widespread views of him expressed in seventeenth-century texts.
But what is interesting here is that a person who, in his time, was primarily perceived as an almanac maker, an astrologer–physician and, eventually, a wrongdoer – a person of whom there are no easily retrievable records proving his engagement in any of the national or international intellectual networks (such as that of William Gilbert, for example, or the Royal College of Physicians) – presented in his treatise an extensive view of Copernican astronomy grounded in natural philosophy, which certainly goes beyond purely hypothetical considerations. Although Astrostereon was known to twentieth-century researchers, until recently it has not received extensive critical attention.Footnote 16 To name just a few instances of Gresham's remarkable insights contained within this text: he is the first person in the history of astronomy to have predicted the occultations of stars by planets using the Copernican theory; he also rejected the existence of solid celestial spheres, promulgating the free movement of planets in space.Footnote 17 As Jarosław Włodarczyk has recently proposed, Gresham's naked-eye observations of the Moon might have prompted Thomas Harriot's (c.1560–1621) first telescopic lunar observation of 26 July 1609.Footnote 18 Furthermore, Gresham's attempts to reconcile heliocentrism with Scripture – apart from being heavily influenced by the Calvinist interpretations (see below) – also include a unique perspective on Hebrew biblical etymologies. In a semi-Neoplatonic, semi-Paracelsian vein, Gresham further develops his views, assuring his readers that a heliocentric and – more importantly – a heliostatic system is entirely compliant with the Bible.
Although the third generation of Copernicans turned towards the natural-philosophical implications of heliocentrism – which would partially explain Gresham's approach – there were few stronger supporters of the validity of the Copernican model in the pre-telescopic era. Similarly, it would be difficult to find an ordinary practitioner openly promulgating such views then. The discrepancy between Gresham's popular image and his philosophical and mathematical inclinations is precisely the reason why such hitherto neglected figures of the English intellectual landscape should be reconsidered and their works thoroughly investigated.Footnote 19 Such an analysis may help us better grasp the fluctuation of trends, practices and needs which characterized intellectual debate at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Gresham's Copernicanism in context
We must remember that ‘Copernicanism’ was not a monolith term.Footnote 20 Even that ‘handful’ of most devout supporters of Copernicus's thought cannot be considered a homogeneous group.Footnote 21 Robert Westman's shortlist comprises – apart from Rheticus, Kepler, Galileo, Harriot and Stevin – a Jesuit ‘biblical commentator’, Diego de Zuñiga; a ‘gentleman–harbour engineer’, Thomas Digges; a ‘court mechanician’ and astronomer, Christoph Rothmann; a ‘professor of astronomy and mathematical subjects’, Michael Maestlin; and a ‘peripatetic natural philosopher’, Giordano Bruno.Footnote 22 Their social and intellectual backgrounds, as well as their religious denominations, determined the way they first approached and later developed and appropriated Copernicus's ideas. Katherine Tredwell and Peter Barker supplemented Westman's list with Gemma Frisius and William Gilbert, showing that new names could still be added.Footnote 23 Gresham is such a case, though his persona (or at least previous depictions of it) seems rather modest in comparison with the main protagonists. At the same time, Gresham appears to be well acquainted and preoccupied with some of the themes which were raised in the crucial debates on the nature of the universe, such as the physical qualities of celestial bodies, or the astronomical implications for astrology.Footnote 24 Gresham's vested interest in the restoration of true astrology based on solid foundations in mathematical astronomy seems understandable, but what were the intellectual influences that can explain the mathematical and cosmological development of his astronomical thought?
Gresham's contemporary, Thomas Bretnor (1570/1–1618), who is often called ‘the most advanced Copernican among the almanac-makers’, was friendly with Edmund Gunter (1581–1626), the third Gresham Professor of Astronomy, which could partially explain Bretnor's mathematical interests.Footnote 25 We lack such direct links for Gresham, although, in Astrostereon, he mentions the ‘learned friends’ who dissuaded him from publishing his more scholarly works (such as the treatise on the better use of prognostications) for a vulgar audience.Footnote 26 But he never gives the names of these friends, nor indicates his influences.
Jarosław Włodarczyk has recently suggested that Gresham might have been familiar with Gilbert's map of the Moon (eventually published posthumously in De Mundo Nostri Philosophia Nova in 1651, but created c.1600).Footnote 27 As mentioned above, Gresham's observations from Astrostereon might in turn have influenced Thomas Harriot. However, these links – as any other of such type – are not attested in any known written records, documents or correspondence. Similar ambiguity surrounds other prominent figures with whom Gresham is sometimes associated, such as John Dee (see above) and Simon Forman (1552–1611). Forman is listed along with Gresham and other popular astrologers in Ben Jonson's play The Devil Is an Ass (Act I, scene ii):
I, they doe, now, name Bretnor, as before
They talk'd of Gresham, and of Doctor Fore-man,
Francklin, and Fiske, and Sauory (he was in too).Footnote 28
As the Overbury trial testimonies indicate, Gresham replaced Forman as the conjuror in service to Frances Howard.Footnote 29 Whether Gresham knew Forman in person is uncertain, but a ‘Master Gressam’ appears in Forman's papers over a decade earlier, as someone to whom astrological and astronomical books, stolen from Forman's house at Lambeth in March 1598, were offered for sale by three Cambridge students. Forman's friend, George Coney, received this information from ‘Master Napier’ (either Richard or Robert), who indeed might have been one of Gresham's acquaintances.Footnote 30
A direct documented connection can be made only between Gresham and ‘Savory’, i.e. Abraham Savery (fl. 1604–33) of Westminster, who was a gentleman and, like Gresham, lived in Thames Street. He was an actor and an impostor–physician who was also involved in the Overbury case, though he was eventually cleared of all charges. As Mark Eccles has found, on 7 September 1611 Savery (Savorie) gave bail for Edward Gresham, ‘his fellow astrologer and conjuror, to answer charges at the next gaol delivery’.Footnote 31
These loose threads do not allow us to draw any reliable conclusions as to whether there was someone in particular who helped Gresham to form his unorthodox views. It was most probably a combination of various factors – his immediate influences, readings, university training and mathematical practice. We do know, however, how Gresham chose to defend those views – just like his opponents, he referred to the authority of Scripture.
As we have seen in the letter to the Reader quoted above, Gresham was aware that what he believed to be the real system of the world, for the majority of both simple and educated people, remained a paradox.Footnote 32 ‘Paradoxes’ were claims against common opinion, and at the time common opinion followed the geocentric model of the universe, which theologians and some philosophers supported with the relevant excerpts from the Bible. The most often quoted passages were Psalms 104:5, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 19:6, Joshua 10:12–14, and Ecclesiastes 1:4–6.Footnote 33 Those who practised Lutheran literalism in reading Scripture could not allow heliocentrism to be any more than hypothesis. However, in the light of new mathematical and empirical evidence, the supporters of heliocentrism often referred to the so-called ‘accommodation principle’ which, in Peter Harrison's words, ‘was an elaboration of a long-standing hermeneutical principle Scriptura humane loquitur – Scripture speaks in human language’ – so that it could be understood by everyone.Footnote 34 Therefore, in the development of the studies in natural philosophy conducted in parallel to those of Protestant theology, there were two approaches in reading the Bible – literal and exegetical. These two strategies were being used in order to solve one of the biggest epistemic conflicts in the Protestant Reformation period – the conflict between truth and appearance.
Pointing to the consequences of the independent reading of the Holy Writ, Peter Harrison has claimed that
Protestant insistence on the primacy of scriptural authority demanded a new approach to the interpretation of scripture, and that this hermeneutical stance brought with it an alternative conception of the natural order – a conception which was the precondition for the emergence of natural science.Footnote 35
For early modern thinkers, seeking the correspondence between the Word of God and natural philosophy was not easy, especially as they all carried the burden of their confession and ecclesiastical exegesis of the Bible. Therefore the task of those scholars who were leaning towards the Copernican system and who were faced with these theological predicaments was to aver that there was no discrepancy between God's two books –Scripture and Nature.Footnote 36 Consequently, those who favoured the Copernican system felt prompted to prove that there was no clear evidence in the Bible to contradict the fact of the Earth's mobility.
In Astrostereon, Gresham uses the authority of Scripture in relation to cosmology on numerous occasions (most prominently in Chapters 1.8, 1.9, 2.2 and 3.3), starting with a Latin motto from Job 38:37 – ‘Quis enarrabit Caelorum rationem, aut concentrum Caeli quis dormire faciet’ – which he places on the title page.Footnote 37 Gresham's voice in the discussion on Copernicanism and the Bible is unique, as he uses Hebrew etymologies to demonstrate that Scripture does not contradict the movement of the Earth. What is more, he employs arguments from the Bible to support the idea of the free movement of planets in space. In order to appreciate the complexity of Gresham's viewpoint, we must first take a closer look at how the discussion of Copernican theory and the Bible was shaped both in Elizabethan England and in the most prominent circle of Protestant scholars associated with Wittenberg University.
The early reception of Copernicus in England
Although John L. Russell has proposed that Copernican theory in England ‘began to earn popularity’ after the publication of William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600), the early reception of Copernicus in England started much earlier.Footnote 38 It was initiated by Robert Recorde's The Castle of Knowledge (1556), by John Field's Ephemerides (1556, 1558) based on Reinhold's Copernican tables, and most explicitly by Thomas Digges's A Perfit Description of the Coelestiall Orbes … (1576), which was reprinted at least seven times before 1605, accompanying his father's A Prognostication euerlasting.Footnote 39 Recorde discusses heliocentrism only briefly, in a dialogue between the Master and the Scholar.Footnote 40 Having praised Copernicus's learning, experience and ‘diligence in observation’, the Master concludes that a discussion of the ‘renewed opinion of Aristarchus Samius’ requires a deeper knowledge, and as such is out of place in an introductory context.Footnote 41 Field's Ephemeris Anni 1557 was published at London in 1556 with a preface by John Dee acclaiming Copernicus's mathematical skill. Although Dee leans towards the Copernican system, he never fully confirms his support.Footnote 42 It was Thomas Digges who had no doubt that the Copernican theory was more probable than geocentrism, as it reflected the true image of the world.Footnote 43
Digges (c.1546–95) had already promised to prove Copernicus's theory in his Alae seu Scalae Mathematicae (Mathematical Wings or Ladders) in 1573, a work prompted by the appearance of the nova in 1572, and written in order to improve the parallactic method devised by Regiomontanus through the enhancement of observational methods.Footnote 44 But it was in the Perfit Description that Digges wanted to present ‘demonstrative knowledge’, a ‘new Theorick’ supported by empirical proofs.Footnote 45 Although Robert Westman calls Digges ‘a Platonist who never left his comfortable chair’, Digges's augmented translation and edition of the fragments from Book I of De revolutionibus helped to popularize Copernican ideas in England.Footnote 46 Antonia McLean has suggested that, after Digges's publication, in university circles Copernican thought was widely known and appreciated even if not unanimously accepted.Footnote 47 Copernicus's theory was presented alongside (and often compared to) Ptolemy's.Footnote 48
Universities at Oxford and Cambridge went through curriculum reforms in the 1560s–70s which eventually led to establishing new lectureships in mathematics by the mid-1580s.Footnote 49 As John S. Mebane has argued, the advancement of learning in England in the 1580s was a response to new social and economic perspectives after the return of Sir Francis Drake's ship from a bountiful voyage around the world, and an ambition to match Spanish ‘wealth and power’.Footnote 50 Technological change was simply geopolitically expedient. Thus new astronomical or mathematical theories could be discussed in search of the best solutions to, for example, problems in navigation, gunnery or engineering.Footnote 51 The intensity and pragmatics of London mathematical practice from the 1580s to the 1590s have been thoroughly studied in relation to the urgent need to equip English seamen and military men with the necessary skills and instruments to face potential new threats from Spain, and to gain an advantage in the world of increasing geographical discoveries and colonial endeavours.Footnote 52
Various mathematical skills and improved scientific instruments were also needed on a local scale. Apart from the possibilities laid out by the scholars at London's Gresham College (founded in 1597), other merchant-inspired activities, such as Sir Thomas Smith's appointment of Thomas Hood (1556–1620), a mathematician, to give public lectures in London (1588–92), could have influenced many mathematical practitioners, sometimes of lesser prominence or pedigree, who often, in the privacy of their households, explored the secrets of nature and experimented with instruments produced on the spot.Footnote 53
However, as S.F. Mason rightly observed, such practical factors as ‘economic drive’ could explain the growth in such fields as ‘magnetism, mechanics, and astronomy, but not the structure and the pattern of the new theories, such as the heliocentric system of the world, or the theory of the circulation of blood’.Footnote 54 For Mason, the development of such notions – especially in England – was influenced by theology, and Calvinism in particular.Footnote 55 What is more, in England, there was no institutionalized opposition to new theories (unlike, for example, the resistance of the Catholic Church in continental Europe which led to the appearance of De revolutionibus on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1616).Footnote 56
It does not mean, however, that such an opposition based on religious arguments did not exist. Biblical citations were deployed by natural philosophers opposed to the heliocentric system because it contradicted both Scripture and the principles of Aristotelian physics. In his analysis of Bible usage in the English astronomical treatises in the Renaissance, Paul Kocher found,
By about 1600 … arguments from the Bible were being so widely applied against the new astronomy that its proponents could no longer continue to turn their heads the other way. As examples of this tendency may be cited two able popular treatises written at this time, Thomas Blundeville's Excercises (1597) and Thomas Hill's The School of Skil (1599), both of which discuss the Copernican theory but reject it for scientific and religious reasons alike.Footnote 57
Indeed, although Blundeville (c.1522–c.1606) – whose Exercises were in fact first published in 1594 – reveres Copernicus's intellectual prowess, he considers his heliocentric theory a mathematical supposition – a false supposition used only to make ‘truer demonstration’ of physical phenomena.Footnote 58 As proof of the Earth's immobility, he evokes the authority of Ptolemy and Aristotle, followed up by two passages from Psalm 104.Footnote 59 Similarly, Hill (c.1528–75) states that ‘both holy scriptures confirme, and Phisicke reasons prooue’, that Copernican theory cannot be accepted.Footnote 60 He then proceeds to quote (without giving the numbers of verses) Psalms 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5 and Psalms 104:2.Footnote 61
We must remember that Hill and Blundeville were skilful translators and compilers of works from the Continent.Footnote 62 They successfully popularized, rather than tested, the ideas. From their point of view, the Copernican world system was only a hypothesis or a supposition – as it was presented in the unauthorized Osiander's Letter to the Reader (Ad Lectorem) printed with the first edition of De revolutionibus – as a mathematically useful tool.Footnote 63 Since it was only a hypothesis, or an old paradox of the Pythagoreans, the attempts at reconciling the theory with Scripture were often limited to quoting the standard biblical passages as literal proofs against the Earth's mobility. Mathematical practitioners supporting the heliocentric system could choose either not to discuss the Bible in the context of the Copernican physical model of the world – this seems to have been Digges's strategy, for example – or to reconcile the theory with the Scriptures, using as a primary tool the accommodation principle.
The change in the approach to biblical fragments which Kocher noted can be found in Edward Wright's address published as a preface to William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600). Here we can observe how the accommodation principle works:
Nor do the passages quoted from Holy Writ appear to contradict very strongly the doctrine of the earth's mobility. It does not seem to have been the intention of Moses or the prophets to promulgate nice mathematical or physical distinctions: they rather adapt themselves to the understanding of the common people and to the current fashion of speech, as nurses do in dealing with babes.Footnote 64
In this way, Wright suggests that biblical references to the physical world were a necessary simplification. In addition, he also reinterprets those biblical passages which were commonly cited to support the geocentric system:
Thus, Genesis i.16 and Psalm cxxxvi. 7,9, the moon is called a great luminary, because it so appears to us, though, to those versed in astronomy, it is known that very many stars, fixed and planetary, are far larger. So, too, from Ps. civ.5, no argument of any weight can, I think, be drawn to contradict the earth's mobility, albeit it is said that God established the earth on her foundations to the end it should never be moved; for the earth may remain forevermore in its own place and in the selfsame place, in such manner that it shall not be moved away by any stray force of transference, nor carried beyond its abiding place wherein it was established in the beginning by the divine architect.Footnote 65
Here Wright argues that people often perceive physical phenomena as they appear to them, and not as they are in reality. With reference to Psalms 104:5, Wright interprets the Earth being ‘founded’ as being set as steady and constant in a place pre-established by God. As we shall soon see, there are strong parallels in Gresham's and Wright's arguments for the Earth's mobility, but Gresham certainly goes further than Wright and Gilbert by openly claiming that not only does the Earth move around its axis, but it also rotates around the Sun.
Despite Wright's promising preface and John Henry's claims that Gilbert was ‘evidently one of the earliest committed Copernicans’, Gilbert's attitude to heliocentrism in De Magnete is not entirely clear.Footnote 66 Suzanne Kelly points out Gilbert's reluctance openly to state his opinion about the Earth's possible annual motion in De Magnete, and she states that it was ‘only in the De Mundo that Gilbert referred to their [the planets’] revolution around the Sun’.Footnote 67 There Gilbert writes, ‘The place of the Earth is in the middle, because the planets in their circular motion do not observe the Earth as a centre of motion, but the greater Sun’.Footnote 68 Moreover, Gad Freudenthal argues that Gilbert's diagram of the universe published in De Mundo is a proof that he had a heliocentric model in mind, since if the Sun and the planets rotated, they would penetrate the zone of the fixed stars, and there would be an observable annual parallax.Footnote 69 Freudenthal also suggests that Gilbert did not identify heliocentrism as a physical system of the world in De Magnete, as he failed ‘to supply magnetic foundations for all celestial motions’.Footnote 70 Nonetheless, De Magnete definitely encouraged the advancement of science in England, leading to improvements in the description of the physical world.Footnote 71
In this light, Gresham's approach is unique. As I shall demonstrate, not only does he devote a whole section to the reconciliation of the Copernican theory with the Bible, but apart from the predictable application of the accommodation principle in defence of heliocentrism, he also presents how the problematic passages should be read, explaining their correct meaning based on the analysis of the Hebrew Bible. It is highly likely that at the time of composing Astrostereon Gresham knew Gilbert's De Magnete and was also familiar with Wright's preface. Both Wright's address and Gresham's argumentation heavily rely on the Calvinist exegesis of the Bible. The similarities between Wright and Gresham are especially visible in three points: references to the accommodation principle, references to the apparent sizes of celestial bodies (especially the Moon), and, with regard to Earth, explaining the meaning of ‘founded’ as ‘established’ or ‘constituted’ by God. In order to better understand Gresham's developments of this approach, we must turn to the intricacies of such debates over Copernicanism on the Continent.
Rheticus and the Wittenberg circle
Copernicus's letter to His Holiness Pope Paul III published in De revolutionibus states that those who make Bible-based objections to his demonstrations are ‘babblers’, ‘ignorant of the subject’, and that they distort the true understanding of Scripture in order to criticize and censure Copernicus's work.Footnote 72 He stresses the fact that his treatise is meant for mathematicians, and he tries to mollify potential papal objections by referring to the improvements in the ecclesiastical calendar – a project he had been engaged in since the Fifth Lateran Council.Footnote 73 Copernicus did not pursue the topic of the possible compatibility of his theory with the Bible in De revolutionibus, however. Such a task was undertaken by his only student and the earliest advocate for his ideas – Georg Joachim Rheticus.
Rheticus's claims regarding the reconciliation of Copernican theory with the Bible are presented in De terrae motu.Footnote 74 The existence of this short treatise, written in Latin and published anonymously only in 1651, is averted to in the letter from Tiedemann Giese to Rheticus (26 July 1543), in which the Bishop of Kulm encourages the young scholar to publish the treatise with every consecutive copy of De revolutionibus, because there he ‘entirely correctly defended the earth's motion from being in conflict with the Holy Scriptures’.Footnote 75 The authorship of the treatise, which was printed in the Netherlands by Johannes van Waesberge, together with David Gorlaeus's Idea Physicae, was identified by Reijer Hooykaas in the 1970s, and convincingly demonstrated in his English edition of the text published in 1984.Footnote 76 The De terrae motu seems to have been designed to accompany Narratio Prima in the full presentation of De revolutionibus's astronomical arguments. In De terrae motu, Rheticus advocates pious reading of biblical passages, respecting the authority of the Bible, yet allows for the accommodation principle in approaching the problematic excerpts. For example, when Rheticus refers to Joshua 10:12, Ecclesiastes 1:5, or Psalm 19, he speaks of the apparent motion of the Sun, and he says that it is ‘common speech’, which ‘mostly follows the judgement of the senses’.Footnote 77 Earlier in the work, recounting St Augustine's understanding of a technique used in Scripture, he asserts that sometimes the Bible ‘borrows a style of discourse, an idiom of speech or a method of teaching from popular usage’.Footnote 78 At the same time, Rheticus stresses the Bible's primary purpose – it is a path leading to salvation, rather than an explanation of all physical phenomena.Footnote 79
Nienke Roelants, in her PhD dissertation ‘Lutheran astronomers after the Fall: a reappraisal of the Renaissance dynamic between astronomy and religion (1540–1590)’, gives a detailed analysis of Rheticus's views on the Bible. In Roelants's opinion, Rheticus shared the assumption of the primacy of Scripture in philosophical reflection in the absence of sensible impressions.Footnote 80 But, as Kenneth Howell has suggested, Rheticus was inclined to search for ‘causal explanations’.Footnote 81 Rheticus's approach to Scripture made for a ‘pious’ exegesis, which worked alongside natural philosophy and did not hinder the development of knowledge about the surrounding world.Footnote 82 It is first alluded to in Narratio Prima, when Rheticus says that God equips us with various instruments and talents to deepen our knowledge of nature. This inquiry, however, should not breach limits devised by God.Footnote 83
In order to explain the way in which the Bible is compatible with Copernicus's theory, in De terrae motu Rheticus refers to the passages which later form a canon in the discussion. Rheticus's exegesis of Psalms 8:4 (‘When I see Thy heavens, the works of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast founded’) rejects the possibility of reading the form ‘founded’ (fundasti) as making something immobile, because it would mean that the Moon was immobile, and ‘What in heaven is more unfixed or mobile than the Moon?’Footnote 84 Rheticus immediately links it with the occurrence of the verb fundare in Psalms 104:5:
Just as David said that the earth was founded, – that is, fixed and established – on its foundations, which it is to keep for ever, so we also will correctly understand the Moon, and any other moving heavenly body, to be founded and fixed, as it were, on its stability, from which it will never decline.Footnote 85
Earth, with its co-elements, remains stable in its disposition (ut est condita), rather than in a physical place; it follows its due course according to God's plan.Footnote 86 Although Rheticus was educated in Wittenberg and was the professor of lower mathematics (i.e. arithmetic and geometry) there, his reading of the Bible in the manner shown above, allied with a strong belief that Copernicus's heliocentric system had a representation in a physical world, leads Robert Westman to exclude him from the so-called ‘Wittenberg interpretation’ of the Copernican theory.
The ‘Wittenberg interpretation’ is a term coined by Westman in order to describe
a common methodological outlook or style, a consensus on how to ‘read’ the newly published De revolutionibus [1543] which was shared by a group of young astronomers at the University of Wittenberg under the fatherly tutelage of the famous Protestant reformer Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560).Footnote 87
The basic premise of their views was that Copernicus's theory was mathematically useful in making predictions about the angular position of planets.Footnote 88 Westman further suggests that Copernicus ‘was seen, in general, as the reformer of Ptolemaic astronomy, not in a revolutionary sense, however, as later thinkers such as Kepler would believe, but in an essentially conservative sense, as the admired inventor of new planetary hypotheses and an improved theory of precession’.Footnote 89 From Melanchthon's published lectures, Initia doctrinae physicae (1549), we learn that Copernicus's new theory that the Sun stands still and the Earth moves is Aristarchus’ ‘old paradox’ and should not be considered as it contradicts the Bible.Footnote 90 Sashiko Kusukawa has rightly observed that Melanchthon argued for the absurdity of heliocentrism much earlier, for example in a letter to Burkhard Mythobius dated 16 October 1541.Footnote 91 Therefore, although the Philippists welcomed the studies of astronomy, arithmetic and geometry as propellers of knowledge of the intricacies of God's creation and rule, they believed that those aspects of new theories which were against Scripture, or which conflicted with the acknowledged Aristotelian principles, should not be trusted or taught to students.Footnote 92 Nonetheless, the mathematical and geometrical assumptions embedded in Copernicus's theory were highly praised.Footnote 93
The discussion led by Melanchthon and his followers concerned the connection between the World of God and the Word of God revealed in biblical writings. On a theological basis, Copernicus's theory was unacceptable to Melanchthon and his son-in-law, the professor of mathematics at Wittenberg, Caspar Peucer (1525–1602). As Robin Barnes has proposed, both Melanchthon in his Initia doctrinae physicae and Peucer in Elementa doctrina de circulis coelestibus (1551) were Christian theologians rather than natural philosophers seeking ‘a thoroughly logical understanding of reality’.Footnote 94 Similarly, Peter Barker has presented the Wittenberg scholars as ‘humanists with high-level astronomical competencies’, capable of learned translations, but not specialists, or practitioners.Footnote 95 Their approach to nature was determined by what was manifest in Scripture. Following Luther, Melanchthon and Peucer stuck to the letter of the Bible, especially the Book of Genesis.
Both Melanchthon's Initia and Peucer's Elementa quote the standard biblical passages, i.e. Psalms 104:5; Ecclesiastes 1:4–5; Psalms 19:6–7 and Joshua 10:12. In his meticulous analysis of these passages in Melanchthon, Peucer and Kepler, Peter Barker shows the differences in the order of their presentation in the texts. As he has noted, Melanchthon's scriptural evidence against the Earth's mobility is based solely on these four passages, of which only Ecclesiastes 1:5 is given a direct reference.Footnote 96 Peucer uses almost the same arguments and wording as Melanchthon (though he presents the passages in a different order) to prove that there is no physical possibility of Earth's circular movement.Footnote 97 None of the passages are discussed in detail. According to Melanchthon, the authority of the Bible is the surest confirmation of the Earth's stability and the Sun's movement; hence the Copernican hypothesis should not be further considered as probable.Footnote 98 The same opinion is shared by Peucer.Footnote 99 However, both of these thinkers praise Copernicus as an exceptional mathematician, whose ideas might have been used to discover the secrets of the Word of God manifested in the physical world.Footnote 100
The influence of the ‘Wittenberg interpretation’ extended beyond the university.Footnote 101 An important voice in the debate over the Copernican hypothesis was that of the Dane, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) (whom Miguel A. Granada calls a ‘Melanchthonian astronomer’), especially in his correspondence with Caspar Peucer and Christoph Rothmann, published as Epistolae Astronomiae in Uraniborg in 1596.Footnote 102 Brahe rejected Copernicus's system and eventually opted for a geo-heliocentric model of the universe, but his exchanges with Peucer and Rothmann had vital meaning for the understanding of the fluid structure of heavens and for the eventual dissolution of solid celestial spheres.Footnote 103 Rothmann's arguments in particular, reflecting his views presented in Scriptum de cometa anni 1585, and supporting the Copernican system, could have influenced English thinkers at the turn of the seventeenth century.Footnote 104
As for Brahe's opinion on the biblical arguments, however, the situation is slightly more complex. As Kenneth Howell informs us, the Dane never quoted the typical biblical passages relating to the Earth's stability, although his correspondents alluded to them several times; his main argument proving the Earth's immobility was based on Genesis 1:14–18.Footnote 105 Brahe's conviction that God placed the Sun, Moon and stars as signs in the firmament for time and seasons was also conveniently used by him in the context of astrology, situating stars as portents of God's decrees.Footnote 106 Both Miguel A. Granada and Kenneth Howell underline Brahe's reluctance to conduct a non-literal reading of the Bible, stressing the fact that he followed the ‘Mosaic account of creation’.Footnote 107 And although Brahe knew that God's two books should be considered separately, he relied heavily on the authority of the Bible, especially with reference to geocentrism.Footnote 108
Christoph Rothmann (1560–1600), a Wittenberg-educated mathematician and a skilled astronomer who worked at the observatory for the Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hessen-Kassel (1532–92), was one of Brahe's correspondents who was fully convinced of the validity of the heliocentric system.Footnote 109 In order to reconcile the Copernican world view with the Bible, Rothmann applied the accommodation principle, as expressed in a letter to Brahe of 19 September 1588:
Authority of Sacred Scripture is no obstacle. It is not written solely for me and for you, but for all men; and it speaks after their capacity of understanding, as all Theologians declare in the exposition of the first chapter of Genesis. Otherwise the moon would be, against all demonstrations of geometry, greater than all other stars … God speaks accommodating Himself to the capacity of the Hebrews.Footnote 110
Here Rothmann makes the same reference to Genesis 1:16 regarding the real and apparent sizes of planets which, as we have already seen, was later used by Wright in his preface to Gilbert's De Magnete. This argument was widespread in Protestant circles, as it is based on Calvin's exegesis:
Moses makes two great luminaries; but astronomers prove, by conclusive reasons that the star of Saturn, which on account of its great distance, appears the least of all, is greater than the moon. Here lies the difference; Moses wrote in a popular style things which without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, are able to understand …Footnote 111
Calvin, who did not support the Copernican system, praises in this commentary the achievements of astronomy:
For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God. Wherefore, as ingenious men are to be honored who have expended useful labor on this subject, so they who have leisure and capacity ought not to neglect this kind of exercise.Footnote 112
The premise that through the enlarged and meticulous knowledge of the world around us we increase our spiritual understanding of God has its widely discussed foundations in Romans 1:20: ‘For the invisible things of him [God], that is, his eternal power and Godhead, are seen by the creation of the world’ (GNV).Footnote 113 As Charles Webster has argued, the gloss on this passage in the Geneva translation of the Bible (‘all men have a most cleere and evident glasse wherein to behold the everlasting and Almightie nature of God, even in his creatures’) encouraged English practitioners to represent ‘experimental science as a form of good works’ which were a manifestation of the Calvinist doctrine of the elect.Footnote 114 According to Hooykaas, the principle of Calvin's exegesis was to make the Bible ‘accessible to everybody’.Footnote 115 He further adds that the astronomers who supported the Earth's mobility and who read Calvin's commentaries (e.g. he includes Edward Wright in this group) ‘would reject “biblical” arguments against their theory, with a reference to his [Calvin's] exegetical principles’.Footnote 116 Gresham is especially intriguing in this context, as he combines the exegetical approach (adducing meaning and applying the accommodation principle whenever necessary) with what he understands as literalistic reading of some of the problematic passages which, to his mind, were being distorted by the mistranslations and misinterpretations of the Hebrew version of the Bible.
Gresham's reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible
Gresham devotes the whole of Chapter 1, section 9, to the argument about the Earth's free movement. The section's subtitle reads: ‘That they [the planets] frelie moue in space, without vection traction or expulsion of any heavens or any thinge els other then the Earth: and that the Scriptures speake nothinge againste the moveinge of the Earth and the Sun's standing still’.Footnote 117 There are a number of different aspects of Gresham's argument to consider. The references to the Bible are spread throughout the whole text, but it is in defending the compatibility of the Copernican hypothesis with Scripture that he is primarily focused on the Hebrew etymology, which should be ‘dulie examined’.Footnote 118 His exegesis of the Bible goes beyond the verses typically quoted in the debate. Gresham embarks on a quest to access and spread the knowledge of physical truth, without undermining the authority of the Bible:
For the written worde of veritie (which with all scruple and religion I wishe inviolable, and so respecte as the true herculean-Stone for the probate of all truthes), I finde nothinge thearein (rightlie understode) which maketh for the Earth's centrall position and stabilitie, or for the Sun's excentricall mobillitie.Footnote 119
Gresham, who wholeheartedly supports the authority of the Bible by calling it the ‘herculean-Stone for the probate of all truths’, nonetheless rejects the literal reading of the biblical verses in the manner presented by Melanchthon or Peucer. His references to the accommodation principle are intertwined with the exegesis of the Hebrew quotations which are to secure the ‘right’ understanding of the problematic passages. Gresham believes the Bible to be the foundation of all truths, and in common with Wright's preface, he believes there is nothing in Scripture which would contradict the Earth's motion, but he also hastens to add that there is nothing which would support the movement of the Sun. Gresham's analysis is much broader than the four typical passages we have seen in Melanchthon and Peucer. In his reading, he primarily focuses on the two aspects mentioned by Rheticus, Rothmann and Wright: he stresses the accommodation principle and claims that the Bible speaks according to appearance.Footnote 120
Just like his learned predecessors, Gresham observes that in many places the Bible adjusts its content to the capacity of its audience, and does not necessarily describe the nature of the world in physical terms:
For the Sunn's mobillitie the cheifest places are Eccles. 1.5. The Sune riseth and the Sunne goeth downe and Ps. 96.6[Footnote 121] his goeinge out is from the ends of the heavens, and his compasse to the end[s] of the same: fecit Lunam in tempora et sol cognovit occasum suum,[Footnote 122] and many such like places. The answeare in a worde is this: that the scriptures in theis places speaketh accordinge to capacitye and apparance and not accordinge to the veritie of the thinge.Footnote 123
In a similar manner, Gresham evokes Psalm 24, and uses an argument from physics to prove that the Bible speaks according to appearance:
with like libertie as it appointeth the Earth's stabilitie, and foundation to be laid upon the waters Ps. 24.2,[Footnote 124] then (which literally taken) nothing is more absurde, especiallie for the mainetenance of the Earthe's stabilitie. For fluxible and lighte things, to give foundation and formitie to stable and ponderous, is against nature, but apparantlie understoode, it is not very obsonant. For to a man at the Seas the maine Lande appeareth mounted from the plaine of them, as a buildinge upon a levell-grounde.Footnote 125
Gresham opposes a literal reading of this passage and finds the same ‘libertye of speech’ in Genesis 1:16, which states that the Moon is one of the greatest lights, and groups it with Esau 13:10,Footnote 126 Ezekiel 32:8–9Footnote 127 and Joel 2:10.Footnote 128 He is concerned with the discrepancy between illusion and physical truth, and has no doubt what this physical truth is, despite the cries of ‘Phantasmongers’ who prefer to stay ignorant of his claims.Footnote 129 With so much emphasis laid on finding the direct correspondence between the biblical text and the physical world, Gresham does not try to explain, as Rheticus did in De terrae motu, that the primary aim of the Scriptures is to lead people to salvation. However, there are some similarities in their approach to the problematic biblical passages regarding the Earth's mobility.
While evoking Psalms 104:5, Gresham goes beyond the argument presented by Rheticus and Wright:
The places seemeinge to maintayne the Earthes stabilitye are, he set the Earthe upon her foundations, so that it shall neuer mooue,[Footnote 130] but that this maketh nothinge against the Earth's mobillitie, the hebrew text dulie examined maketh plaine. For the hebrew word תִּמּוֹט[Footnote 131] signifieth not to moue or goe forward but to fall, decline, slide or slippe, which (as I saide) semeth rather to confirme the Earthe's constancie and perpetuitie of motion in his disposition.Footnote 132
Gresham argues that the Earth will never go astray from the course that was predetermined for it, but instead of the analysis of the Latin verb fundare, he refers to the Hebrew תִּמּוֹט (timot) and to the verse's Hebrew meaning. Gresham further supports his claim by comparing Psalms 104:5 with 93:1Footnote 133 and 96:10,Footnote 134 which both use the root תִּכּוֹן (tikon), meaning ‘to be established’, in the context of תִּמּוֹט (timot). The only difference between those three psalms, Gresham assures us, is in the choice of the word תֵּבֵל (tevel) (universe/inhabited world) in 93:1 and 96:10 instead of אֶרֶץ (eretz) (earth/land) in 104:5.Footnote 135 Therefore, the ‘foundations’ of the Earth are connected with the globe's disposition and establishment and the phrase ‘should not be moved’ refers indeed to the planet's constancy.
In the final part of this argument, Gresham refers to the same concept of the Latin verb fundare presented by Rheticus in the analysis of Psalms 8:4 in De terrae motu. Gresham mixes the fragment of this verse with the Hebrew passage from Psalms 89:38: ‘Lastlie if theis wordes must nedes bynde the Earth to a poste, then shall the same make the Sune and Moone unmoveable, for stabilitie is attributed unto them as well as to the Earth Psalms 89:37 כְּיָרֵחַ יִכֹּון[Footnote 136] Lunam et stellas qua tu fundasti’.Footnote 137 Like Rheticus, Gresham tries to prove that fundasti cannot refer to immobility, as it would make the Moon still as well. What is more, by correlating fundasti with the Hebrew form tikon, meaning ‘shall be established’, he further supports his earlier claims.
From what we have already seen, Gresham's knowledge of Hebrew must have been more than cursory for him to be able to conduct such analyses. If Edward Gresham had indeed matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and pursued his education there, he would have been trained in philosophy, astronomy, perspective drawing and Greek.Footnote 138 His knowledge of Hebrew might have been gained through the teachings of Edward Lively, who was a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Regius Professor of Hebrew in the years 1575–1605.Footnote 139 He was also a person known for his impressive library, comprising many volumes on astronomy and chronology, such as Prutenic tables, Peucer's De sphaera, Peurbach's Theoria planetarum or Piccolomini's De sphaera.Footnote 140 Some of their contents might have been included in the university lectures.
Gresham's command of Hebrew certainly goes beyond elementary knowledge, as is clear from his analyses of biblical passages presented both in Astrostereon and in his Prognostication for 1604. For example, when Gresham talks of Air as the primary communicator of heavenly influence and impression, he refers to Ruah Jehovah and Ruah Elohim (‘the Spirit of Gods’ or ‘Divine Spirit’), knowing that ruah has the meaning of ‘wind’ as well.Footnote 141 Gresham explains that the ‘Divine spirit’ would be a better translation,
for as in true hebraisme a singular verbe joyned to a plural nowne, doth radically intimate the whole, and the nowne derivatively distinguisheth the partiall effects of the same, as in Bara Elohim, Elohim in other places of Scripture is expounded, the Power, or Worde, or Will, or Wisdome of God, as Jerem. 10.12., Prov. 8.22., Joh. 1.3. So doth a possessive Nowne plurally or partilye used, where nature or necessitie restraineth the totall to singularitie, as here in Ruah Elohim, not Spirit of Gods, but Divine Spirit, the word Divine implying plurallitie as predictable of all attributes of Deitie.Footnote 142
In presenting his views on the system of the world, Gresham refers to Hebrew etymology when he discusses the nature of planets as ‘extinguished stars’, deprived of their own light:
And for this respecte in the holye tongue – whose Etymilogie and notation is accordinge to the chiefest distinction and difference of ech Subiect from others so that the name of the thinge in a maner discouereth the nature thereof – they are called כּוֹכָבִים [kochavim, stars] of כָּבָה [kava, quench] signifieinge extinguere – to extinguishe.Footnote 143
This search for the prelapsarian, direct correspondence of the name and the thing itself will dominate Gresham's reading of biblical passages: a strategy which helps him to reconcile Copernican cosmology with Scripture. Even if Gresham's linguistic derivations are not always grammatically justified, they are deeply rooted in Hebrew exegesis of those passages.
Whenever such etymological explanations are not enough, the second technique Gresham uses, as we have seen before, is the accommodation principle. At times, Gresham uses both of these strategies simultaneously. As in the aforementioned case with planets, common biblical quotations supporting the claim that the planets have their own light include Genesis 1:15Footnote 144 and Jeremiah 31:35.Footnote 145 To these Gresham replies, ‘the Aegiptian Clarke speak accordinge to apparance (as manye thinges els shalbe prooved heareafter) for that they seemed to be luminouse bodies, whereas indede yt is the Sun-shyne on theire bodies that is reflected to us’.Footnote 146 Here Gresham again tells us that the Bible often relies on appearance.
The most prominent example of Gresham's double voice is his discussion of the waters above the firmament. In Chapter 1.8, in order to support his claim that planets are extinguished stars, Gresham discusses Genesis 1:2 and 2 Peter 3:6, referring to heavenly waters as a primeval state of any orb, before God's creation.Footnote 147 Gresham uses an often repeated, though somewhat skewed, etymology of the word shamayim (the heavens), connecting two words – sham (there) and mayim (water):
The Etymologie of theire [planets’] names alludinge as it weare thereunto כּוֹכָבִים [kochavim, stars] of כָּבָה [kava, quench] – to extinguish or quenche, a thing properlie belonginge to moyster or water. The heavens themselues also κατ'εξoχήν [kat′ exoche¯n, par excellence] deryveinge their notation from the outward apparance of theire contents שָׁמַיִם [shamayim, the heavens] as it were שם-מים ibi aqua – ‘water there’. If this dirivation come not from שָׁמַיִם vastum or angustum esse for theire excedinge compasse.Footnote 148
The same exegesis was presented in Caspar Peucer's letter to Tycho Brahe (10 May 1589). Peucer agreed with Tycho that the heavens were made up of ‘an ethereal substance that is refined, pure and accessible to all rays of light and is liquid and fluid’.Footnote 149 In order to support his claim of the watery character of heavens, Peucer uses the same quasi-etymology of the Hebrew word shamayim, meaning ‘water there’. He supports his claim by first referring to Genesis 1, where the word rakiya denotes a rarefied and expanded substance (and not a solid firmamentum). Further on, in the same letter, he evokes Genesis 8:2 (‘floodgates of heavens’), Isaiah 24, Psalm 18 and Psalm 104. Brahe strongly opposed Peucer's explanation based on the semantic deconstruction of the Hebrew word, but he agrees with the exegesis of the passage from Isaiah 40:22, in which the expanded nature of the heavens (sicut tabernaculum) is mentioned. In a letter of 17 August 1588 to Rothmann, Brahe writes, ‘I know that some theologians, following Moses – whom they understand incorrectly – claim that the heavens are made of waters; such an interpretation is denied by Philo the Jew who proves that in no degree are heavens built of elements’.Footnote 150
For Gresham, the watery substance of heavens is not connected with actual water (‘cataclismed contents thereof’) but with their true substance (‘the real Entitie’).Footnote 151 He admits that the watery surface of the orbs can give an impression of being greater than the Earth's refraction and thus ‘illudeth our eyes’ that the planets shine with their own light.Footnote 152 He continues his reasoning by stating that the orbs have a lot of space in which they can move, because the water and liquified air expand and rarefy.
Eventually, Gresham states that the heavens are ‘no other thinges than water and Ayer, more rarefied in ampler space’.Footnote 153 His claim that the ‘watrie first attenuation’ from Genesis 1:6, i.e. rakiya (‘firmament’) can be nothing else than rarefied and expanded air is supported with the passages from Isaiah 40:22 and Psalms 104:2.Footnote 154 The heavenly water and air which constitute heavens are likewise expanding, forming enough space for the planets to move freely, ‘without any solid vectores or imagined circitors’.Footnote 155 In this way, through both etymological readings and references to ocular illusion, Gresham tries to reconcile the literal reading of the passages from the Book of Genesis with the theory of the air-like substance of the heavenly spheres.
The idea that the planets freely move in space was ascribed to Jean Pena (see note 103 above). Gresham might have known his preface to Euclid's Optics (1557), which was also reprinted in Peter Ramus's Collectaneae, Praefationes, Epistolae, Orationes (Marburg, 1599).Footnote 156 He might have got acquainted with it through Brahe's Epistolae Astronomiae, in which Rothmann discussed his theory. Many critics have suggested that Brahe was not absolutely convinced about the free movement of planets, and only having discussed the concept of fluid heavens with both Peucer and Rothmann, he eventually admitted the existence of a subtle, air-like substance.Footnote 157 In De Usu optics Praefatio, Pena was resolved that the substance was nothing but ‘the ordinary air’.Footnote 158
Similarly, Gresham's direct sources are difficult to identify when he declines the existence of the Aristotelian sphere of fire.Footnote 159 The existence of such a sphere was first denied by Girolamo Cardano in De subtilitate libri XXI, lib. II (c.1550), but the claim was later repeated both by Pena in De Usu, and in Brahe's letter to Rothmann of 17 August 1588.Footnote 160 Also in this case, Gresham seems to follow Rothmann's opinion that astronomical optics disprove Aristotelian physics in the matter of the order and composition of the heavens.
In Gresham's case, straightforward associations come with difficulty; however, we might suggest that his cosmological claims and mathematical practice were formed both by his Cambridge education and by his later experience and contacts in London. Although it is only a weak assumption – if we were to look for Gresham's teachers – he might have attended Thomas Hood's mathematical lectures either at Trinity College, Cambridge (where Hood was a fellow from 1581), or in London (sometime between 1588 and 1592). However, London mathematical practitioners, such as Hood or Gunter, rarely deliberated the questions of natural philosophy. Such (infrequent) combination of a mathematical practitioner and natural philosopher was valued at princely courts and was usually a trait of the greatest thinkers of the era, such as (in England) Dee, Digges, Gilbert and Harriot.Footnote 161 The more astonishing are Gresham's statements presented in Astrostereon, and the greater seems the urge to further investigate the environment of late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century London in terms of social dynamics which more often than not could reveal intricate networks of shared scientific interests, experiments and influences.
Conclusion
There is a span of sixty years between the publication of De revolutionibus and Gresham's Astrostereon. Although the early, pre-telescopic reception of Copernican thought in Europe in the period in question has been thoroughly researched, I would suggest that Gresham's attempts at the reconciliation of the Copernican theory with the Bible, and his advocacy for the free movements of planets in space, are examples of the continuity of thought in the development of astronomy and cosmology in the early modern period in Europe.Footnote 162
As we have gathered from Gresham's text, Astrostereon was written as an immediate response to the accusations of spreading improbable rumour, but it is also a strong-minded attempt to present an image of the world as it is, and not as it seems to be. In order to be successful, Gresham's rhetorical techniques must have resonated with the contemporary discussion on the (im)possibility of the reconciliation of the Copernican theory with the Bible.
In search of the physical correspondence between God's two books, Gresham uses the accommodation principle in the manner of Rheticus, Rothmann or Wright, and he rejects the literal reading of the biblical passages which was proposed by the ‘Mosaic philosophers’ from Melanchthon's circle. For Gresham, a real literalistic reading of the Bible is in fact the ‘correct’ understanding of the problematic passages in Hebrew. When he gives an extensive explanation of the etymology of the Hebrew words rakiya and shamayim, he seems to be doing the same thing that Peucer does in the discussed letter to Tycho Brahe (10 May 1588), and stresses that in the Bible there is nothing against the physical world view (i.e. heliocentrism) which he supports. On the other hand, his ‘literalism’ ends when he analyses Job 38:22–4, and concludes that no one who is rational would claim that God indeed has a physical storage space in heaven where He could keep winds, hail and snow.Footnote 163 Gresham's literal (i.e. etymological) reading of the biblical passages is still an exegetical reading. Moreover, for those looking for correspondence between the physical world and Scripture, without recourse to the accommodation principle, the literalistic reading of the Bible would only be reading by appearances.
Kenneth Howell has observed that Copernicans ‘argued, of course, that the Bible did not contain scientific content like an astronomical or physical text but, at the same time, they all believed that the truths taught in the Bible were related to and embodied in the universe’.Footnote 164 And although Howell means here the greatest, from Rheticus to Kepler and Galileo, the same paradoxical premise underlies Gresham's Astrostereon. Perhaps the most peculiar thing about Gresham's overt Copernicanism is the fact that he never really recalls Copernicus's work or the works of his supporters (even in England). In Astrostereon, he mentions Copernicus only once by name, in a passage which tells us a lot about Gresham's ego: ‘most of our Prognosticators farre from the knowledge of such calculation (notwithstanding their great Instruments observinge Eclipses a yeare before they happen, a thing that neither Ptolomie, Copernicus, nor my self could ever doe)’.Footnote 165 The fact that Gresham puts himself in line with the greatest echoes the well-known concept of Renaissance self-fashioning and is a manifestation of his unfulfilled ambitions.Footnote 166 It seems that by trying to secure his place as a respected mathematical practitioner in London, Gresham also helped to propagate the heliocentric system in England.
The example of Gresham's Astrostereon proves that there is still much to be done in the recognition of early modern manuscript material in the context of the development of scientific thought in the late Elizabethan/early Jacobean period. What is more, it is a call to look for the traces of such data between the lines – as it seems that such debates were not necessarily brought up only in academic treatises for the elite, but also in the vernacular pamphlets, ephemera, apologies or sermons.
