Coin memorial

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The memoranda on coinage were written by Nicolaus Copernicus to advise the Prussian state parliament, the Hanseatic cities and the Polish king, first in Latin and then in his native German.

Copernicus lived as a canon in the prince-bishopric of Warmia , which was ruled by a prince-bishop, an office held by his uncle Lucas Watzenrode (1447-1512). His successor as the Warmian prince-bishop was Fabian von Lossainen (1470–1523); the prince-bishop was also president of the Prussian state parliaments of Prussia with a royal share . Hanseatic cities like Danzig , Elbing and his hometown Thorn minted their own coins. Due to trade with the Hanseatic League , the deterioration in coins in the last few years of the government of the Teutonic Order in the Teutonic Order State of Prussia , which was secularized in 1525, and heavy trade with Poland upstream from the Vistula , one faced foreign exchange problems. The equestrian war (1519 to 1521) worsened the situation of the Prussian coinage. As the son of a merchant who also traded in large quantities of copper , Copernicus was familiar with the problem.

As early as 1519, the year of the birth of Sir Thomas Gresham , Copernicus, known as a canon, mathematician and later as an astronomer, recognized the rule later known as Gresham's law that "bad money" under certain conditions "good money" with a high proportion of precious metals displaced as the latter is then melted down. During his service in Olsztyn in Warmia he made notes (Tractatus de Monetis Nicolai Copernici) and reported about it in 1522 to the Prussian state parliament in Graudenz in the early New High German that was customary there at the time . This was recorded, the lecture was reflected in Caspar Schütz ' Historia Rerum Prussicarum and in the Danzig City Archives.

For the Diet in 1528, the work, now formulated in Latin, was announced as Monetae cudendae ratio and was used for financial policy decision-making, especially at the Polish-Lithuanian court. Copernicus pleaded for a stable monetary union that was difficult to reconcile with the autonomy of the cities. After he supported the position of the royal mint administrator Jost Ludwig Dietz at the conference in October 1530 , the now 57-year-old withdrew from the financial policy decision-making processes.

This Latin script was first published in Warsaw in 1816 as the Dissertatio de optima monetae cudendae ratione , of which only a few copies are still available. Leopold Prowe published the German and Latin versions of the memorandum in 1875 in the second volume of his two-part biography Nicolaus Coppernicus .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Carrier : Nikolaus Kopernikus. , Beck'sche Reihe, CH Beck, 2001, ISBN 3-406-47577-9 , p. 65 .
  2. ↑ "He had concluded a deal with Copernicus for the delivery of 38 quintals of copper at a price of 86 marks and 16 Skot." In: Nicolaus Copernicus Complete Edition . [1]
  3. ↑ "Muncze wyrdtt genennett, geczeichennt goldtt, adir Sylber do with the money of the kouffliche adir verkoufflichen things, to be paid, ..." In: Heribert Maria Nobis et al. (Ed.): Nicolaus Copernicus Gesamtausgabe . [2]
  4. ^ Angus Armitage: The World of Copernicus. Pp. 89-91 (chapter 24: The Diseases of Money) [3] .
  5. ↑ Jo (b) st Ludwig Dietz , also Jodocus Ludovicus Decius (1485–1540 / 45), from Weissenburg / Alsace ( Nicolaus Copernicus Complete Edition - Documenta Copernicana ), secretary to King Sigismund I in Krakow, mint master in Thorn 1528 to 1535 ( [4]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. [5] )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / cerl.sub.uni-goettingen.de  
  6. ↑ Nicolaus Copernicus Complete Edition. [6]
  7. ^ The American Historical Review. [7]

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Wikisource: Memorandum on the Coin  - Sources and full texts
  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1517), 'N. [icolai] C. [oppernici] Meditata XV Augusti anno domini MDXVII' (1517) In: Erich Sommerfeld (trans. And ed.): The theory of money of Nicolaus Copernicus: texts, translations, comments ; in memoriam Kurt Braunreuther 1913–1975. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 24–31.
  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1519), 'modus cudendi monetam' [manner of coinage (Latin title of the German translation by :) N. (icolaus) C. (oppernicus) Meditata XV Augusti anno domini MDXVII, 1517; dt. 1519], Niklas Koppernigk (trans.), In: Erich Sommerfeld (ed.): The theory of money from Nicolaus Copernicus: texts, translations, comments; in memoriam Kurt Braunreuther 1913–1975. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 33–37.
  • Nicolaus Copernicus 1526a, 'Monete cudende ratio per Nicolaum Coppernicum' (1526), ​​In: Erich Sommerfeld (trans. And ed.): The theory of money from Nicolaus Copernicus: texts, translations, comments; in memoriam Kurt Braunreuther 1913–1975. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 48-67.
  • Nicolaus Copernicus (1526b), 'Epistola Consiliariorum Prussie ad Ludouicum Decium Cracouiensem de Ratione restituende monete Pruthenice' (Letter from the Prussian councilors to Ludwig Dietz from Cracow, concerning the improvement of the Prussian coin; 1526), ​​In: Erich Sommerfeld (ex. And ed .): Nicolaus Copernicus' theory of money: texts, translations, commentaries; in memoriam Kurt Braunreuther 1913–1975. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 112-123.

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