Tiedemann Giese | |
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![]() Tiedemann Giese, around 1525–1530, painting by Hans Schenck | |
Born | 1 June 1480 Danzig (Gdańsk), Kingdom of Poland |
Died | 23 October 1550 70) Lidzbark (Heilsberg) | (aged
Occupation(s) | Theologian author, Bishop of Chełmno, Prince-Bishop of Warmia (Ermland) |
Notable work |
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Tiedemann Giese (1 June 1480 – 23 October 1550), was Bishop of Kulm (Chełmno) first canon, later Prince-Bishop of Warmia (Ermland) whose interest in mathematics, astronomy, and theology led him to mentor a number of important young scholars, including Copernicus. He was a prolific writer and correspondent, publishing a number of works on the reformation of the church. Tiedemann was a member of the patrician Giese family of Danzig (Gdańsk). The Giese family ancestors originated from Unna in Westphalia, near Dortmund. [1] His father was Albrecht Giese and his younger brother, the Hanseatic League merchant Georg Giese.
Giese was the fifth child of Albrecht Giese and his wife, Elisabeth Langenbeck, both members of wealthy merchant families. His paternal family had emigrated from Cologne to Danzig in the 1430s. His father was the Mayor of Danzig, and his mother's uncle, Johann Ferber, had been Mayor of Danzig. [2]
At the age of 12 years, Tiedemann, along with his cousin, Johann Ferber, entered the University of Leipzig, and subsequently studied at Basel and in Italy. He earned a Master of Theology degree. [3] Giese was one of the best educated scholars in Prussia, well versed in both theology and the sciences. [4] At age 24, he and Mauritius Ferber (possibly a cousin) became priests at the Catholic Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.[ citation needed ]
He was secretary to the King of Poland, and later appointed canon of Frauenburg (Frombork), where he remained for 30 years. His residence was the Episcopal Castle at Frauenburg. The King appointed him Bishop of Kulm on 22 September 1537 (ratified by the Pope on 11 January 1538). [3] Toward the end of his life, he became Bishop of Ermland. [5]
Giese was supported by Chancellor Lucas David. He was a humanist and a liberal in the Erasmian mould. Although a Catholic, he demonstrated relative tolerance towards Lutherans. [6] He made himself the spokesperson for a group of liberal and tolerant men who wanted to mediate between the "old-believers" and "the new-believers". [7] In his writings, he expressed the aim of reconciling the Catholic and Protestant branches of the church, but ultimately alienated both of them. [8]
Bishop Giese was a lifelong friend and frequent companion of the astronomer and proponent of heliocentrism Nicolaus Copernicus [9] and shared his interest in astronomy. [10] As a very wealthy man, Giese had the best instruments which, [11] from time to time, he loaned to Copernicus. [12] Giese, seven years younger than Copernicus, was sufficiently well educated to be able to follow Copernicus' studies. Giese bought his friend an ingenious sundial, and gave him an instrument with which he could observe the equinoxes. [13] The mathematician, Rheticus, published a list of Giese's astronomical instruments, which he considered to have been made by men who really understood their mathematics. [11]
Giese actively encouraged his friend, Copernicus, to publish his findings in relation to the movement of the planets in the solar system. In turn, Copernicus regularly acknowledged his indebtedness to the many friends, especially Giese and Rheticus, who had supported him and encouraged him to publish. [14]
In 1516, Giese was the co-author, with Copernicus, of a letter to the Polish King Sigismund I the Old asking for the King's protection of Prussia against the Teutonic Knights, and generally supported the interests of the Polish Crown against that of the Teutonic Order. [15] Danzig had been part of the State of the Teutonic Order since the Teutonic invasion of Gdańsk Pomerania in 1308. [16] Its population became ethnically German as a result. [17] In 1466 Danzig reverted to the Kingdom of Poland, within which it retained considerable independence (e.g. had its own judiciary and minted its own coinage). The region's ethnic German inhabitants resisted full incorporation into Poland, but turned to the Polish King for support against the Teutonic aggressors. [18]
He also worked on updating the Kulm law while a canon in Ermland. On 1 July 1536 he was designated by King of Poland, Sigismund I, who considered him a very valuable diplomat, as Bishop of Kulm, which was later confirmed by the Pope.[ citation needed ] After Mauritius Ferber's death, Giese became prince-bishop. [19]
Giese was described by his contemporaries as a very pious man, an extremely learned man, a loyal friend, generous and a man who supported those in need. Nicolaus Copernicus explained that his "devoted friend, Tiedeman Giese, [was] a man filled with the greatest zeal for the divine and the liberal arts." [20]
Giese was a prolific writer and correspondent. He regularly corresponded with young, ambitious scholars, encouraging them and following their careers with interest. In the preface of his book, De revolutionibus, Copernicus credits Giese with encouraging publication and urging him not to conceal the principles on which he deduced his theory of planetary motions. [21] He carried out active correspondence with the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Lutheran reformer, Philip Melanchthon and the humanist philosopher, Damião de Gois. [22]
Among his known publications is Centum et decem assertiones, quas auctor earum Flosculos appellavit de homine interiore et exteriore and Antilogikon, a polemical refutation of Lutheran reformer Johann Briesmann. [23] He also wrote De Regno Christi in which he envisions a reformed, reunited and reinvigorated church, but which now only survives in fragments. [24] He also wrote a treatise defending Copernicus's theory of planetary motions. Most of his other works have been lost, including a treatise on Aristotle.[ citation needed ]
His friend, Copernicus (who died in 1543) willed his writings to Giese and left his library to the church administration of the Prince-Bishopric of Ermland (Warmia). Bishop Giese died in Heilsberg (Lidzbark) and was laid to rest next to Copernicus at the Frauenburg (Frombork) cathedral. [25]
Albrecht Giese was a councilman and diplomat of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk). He was a member of the Hanseatic League, and part of an important merchant family who had offices in London and Danzig.
Frombork is a town in northern Poland, situated on the Vistula Lagoon in Braniewo County, within Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. As of December 2021, it has a population of 2,260.
Royal Prussia or Polish Prussia became a province of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, which was annexed following the imposed Second Peace of Toruń (1466) from territory in Pomerelia and western Prussia which had been part of the State of the Teutonic Order. Royal Prussia retained its autonomy, governing itself and maintaining its own laws, customs, rights and German language for the German minority and Polish language for the Polish majority.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.
Lucas Watzenrode (1400, in Thorn, Ermland – 1462, in Thorn) was the maternal grandfather of Nicolaus Copernicus.
Johannes Abezier, most usually known as Johann Abezier, was a Roman Catholic religious and political leader of the Teutonic Knights. Abezier was provost of Frauenburg in Warmia (1411), and afterward the Prince-Bishop of Warmia (1418).
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance. The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times.
The triquetrum was the medieval name for an ancient astronomical instrument first described by Ptolemy in the Almagest. Also known as Parallactic Rulers, it was used for determining altitudes of heavenly bodies. Ptolemy calls it a "parallactic instrument" and seems to have used it to determine the zenith distance and parallax of the Moon.
Lucas Watzenrode the Younger was Prince-Bishop of Warmia (Ermland) and patron to his nephew, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
Mauritius Ferber was a member of the patrician Ferber family. As Roman Catholic Prince-Bishop of Warmia (Ermland), he prevented most towns in his diocese from converting to Protestantism while the surrounding hitherto Catholic State of the Teutonic Order was transformed into the Duchy of Prussia and became the first state to adopt Lutheranism.
De libris revolutionum Copernici narratio prima, usually referred to as Narratio Prima, is an abstract of Nicolaus Copernicus' heliocentric theory, written by Georg Joachim Rheticus in 1540. It is an introduction to Copernicus's major work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543, largely due to Rheticus's instigation. Narratio Prima is the first printed publication of Copernicus's theory.
Johann Haller or Jan Haller (1463–1525) is considered one of the first commercial printers in Poland.
The Diocese of Chełmno was a Catholic diocese in Chełmno Land, founded in 1243 and disbanded in 1992.
Georg Giese was a prominent Hanseatic merchant, who managed his family's office at London's Steelyard for at least 12 years and is noted for having had his portrait painted by Hans Holbein the Younger.
The Nicolaus Copernicus Monument in the home town of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was erected in 1853 by a "monument committee" of the city's residents.
Antonio Urceo, called Codro was an Italian humanist who taught grammar and eloquence in Bologna.
The Prince-Bishopric of Warmia was a semi-independent ecclesiastical state, ruled by the incumbent ordinary of the Warmia see and comprising one third of the then diocesan area. The Warmia see was a Prussian diocese under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Riga that was a protectorate of the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights (1243–1464) and a protectorate and part of the Kingdom of Poland—later part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1464–1772), confirmed by the Peace of Thorn in 1466. The other two thirds of the diocese were under the secular rule of the Teutonic Knights until 1525 and Ducal Prussia thereafter, both entities also being a protectorate and part of Poland from 1466.
Portrait of Georg Giese is a 1532 portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It is one of a series of portraits of wealthy Hanseatic merchants made by Holbein in the 1530s. This series of portraits signals the increasing importance of the emerging merchant class, as they took their place on a world stage.