What is the title of Rheticus's 1540 summary of Copernicus's heliocentric theory?
Answer
Narratio Prima
Answer
Narratio Prima
What is the title of Rheticus’s 1540 summary of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory? The title was Narratio Prima.
The full Latin title, De libris revolutionum Copernici narratio prima, means roughly “First account of the books of Copernicus on the revolutions.” Georg Joachim Rheticus wrote it as an introduction to Nicolaus Copernicus’s developing heliocentric system, which placed the Sun at the centre of the planetary arrangement rather than Earth.
Rheticus visited Copernicus in Frauenburg in 1539 and became his pupil and advocate. The Narratio Prima was published in Danzig in 1540, before Copernicus’s major work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, appeared in 1543. It was issued as an open letter addressed to the astronomer Johannes Schöner.
The work was more than a brief publicity notice: it explained key features of Copernicus’s astronomical scheme and helped persuade Copernicus to allow his larger manuscript to be printed. That makes it an important early printed presentation of Copernican astronomy. Commentariolus was an earlier, privately circulated outline by Copernicus, while Epitome of Copernican Astronomy was a much later work by Johannes Kepler.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026