Theology and Science

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The German Reformation and the

Mathematization of the Created World

Charlotte Methuen

To cite this article: Charlotte Methuen (2011) The German Reformation and the Mathematization
of the Created World, Theology and Science, 9:1, 35-44, DOI: 10.1080/14746700.2011.547003

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Theology and Science, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2011

The German Reformation and the Mathematization of

the Created World

CHARLOTTE METHUEN

Abstract This article explores the emergence of mathematics and mathematical method as a means
of defining authoritative truth in the thought of some scholars in the German Reformation. Against
the background of Martin Luther’s critique of Aristotelian philosophy, Philip Melanchthon presented
mathematics as an ideal discipline for preparing the mind to understand God. His approach drew on
the work of humanist mathematicians such as Regiomontanus. It finds resonances in the work of the
Basel humanist Simon Grynaeus, and (in a less mathematically informed way) in the thought of
Peter Ramus. These discussions about the divine nature and certainty of mathematical truth formed
the context within which Johannes Kepler’s Platonist astronomy emerged.

Key words: Mathematics; Reformation; Authority; Regiomontanus; Philip Melanchthon;

Johannes Kepler; Peter (Petrus) Ramus; Martin Luther; Michael Maestlin; Simon Grynaeus;
Galileo Galilei

There can be no doubt that the growth of experimental science in the early-
modern era relied on the assumption that mathematics offers a key to
understanding the world. The process of ‘‘the mathematization of nature’’ has
often been identified as central to these developments, with particular attention
being paid to the way in which mathematics and physics were drawn together in
the work of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).1 However, Galileo was not the only early-
modern scholar to seek to apply mathematics in a new way to the interpretation of
the natural world. Although Galileo’s interest in the sub-lunar sphere was more
pronounced, like him, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) combined the principles of
mathematics and physics in a new way in his descriptions of the heavens.2 Rather
less attention has been paid to the context within which Kepler developed his
decidedly Platonist appeal to mathematics.3 This article will consider how for
some German reforming humanists, mathematics came to be seen as yielding
authoritative truth, and explore the ways in which these ideas are reflected in the
thought of Johannes Kepler.
As the sixteenth century developed, questions of authority emerged as critical
within the Protestant Reformation. Although both Martin Luther (1483–1546) and
Huldrych Zwingli (1483–1531) appealed to scripture as the sole basis of authority,
claiming the motto sola scriptura, they and their followers had in 1529 found
themselves divided over the interpretation of Matthew 26:26: Hoc est corpus meum

ISSN 1474-6700 print/ISSN 1474-6719 online/11/010035-10

ª 2011 Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
DOI: 10.1080/14746700.2011.547003
36 Theology and Science

[this is my body]. Luther was adamant that est here meant ‘‘is,’’ so that Christ’s
body was physically present in the bread at the Eucharist; whilst Zwingli was
equally convinced that est should be read as meaning ‘‘signifies,’’ so that the
sharing of the Eucharistic bread caused the believer to call to mind Christ’s death
on the cross, without actually being Christ’s body. For scholars already shaken by
the crisis of interpretation which had arisen within later Scholasticism, these
differences, which split the nascent Protestant movement, gave further impetus to
the search for a certain and secure knowledge.
The doctrines of creation and of providence, pointing to the conviction that God
not only created but also sustains the world for the good of its human inhabitants,
seemed to many theologians to support the idea that a better understanding of the
natural world and of the way that it had been ordered by God might provide such
a basis. However, so did the elegant a priori proofs of mathematics. Aristotle had
recognized that the deductive proofs of mathematics, which emerged from the
definition of the object, were superior in certainty to the a posteriori, inductive
proofs arising from observation. Medieval philosophers and theologians conceded
that mathematical proof was the most certain, but they had nonetheless
subordinated mathematical proof to theological on the basis that the subject
matter of theology was more noble than that of mathematics, even if its proofs
were not.4 The events of the sixteenth century and the intellectual developments
which followed raised questions about this distinction. Questions about methods
of proof and certainty of knowledge were at the heart of the methodological
questions being explored in this period.
One of the fundamental questions for scholastics—and one of the fundamental
differences between realists and nominalists, however hard it is to characterize
them—was a difference of opinion about the extent to which human, philo-
sophical knowledge could be used to yield knowledge of the divine. Whilst
Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274) was optimistic that the use of Aristotelian natural
philosophy could assist in uncovering the mysteries of, for instance, the Eucharist,
John Duns Scotus (1265–1308), and after him William of Ockham (c.1287–1347/9)
were more cautious, emphasizing the gap between human knowledge and divine
truth. Ockham’s nominalist approach thus lessened the significance of human
intellectual endeavour—such as natural philosophy—in pointing beyond itself
to God. At the same time, it could open up the possibility of studying and
understanding nature for its own sake.5 The Thomist approach, on the other hand,
encouraged the observer of the natural world to believe that their observations
might help them to a deeper understanding of divine order. These two different
approaches both found their place in the thought of the Protestant Reformation.
The nominalist refusal to apply philosophy to the divine was fundamental to
the theological approach of Martin Luther. Luther rejected Aristotelian moral
philosophy as a means of gaining a reliable understanding of what behaviour
was necessary for salvation, a suspicion which he extended to natural philosophy.
In the Heidelberg disputation (1518), Luther affirmed that the ‘‘interaction
of ideas’’ taught by Plato was ‘‘better’’ either than that of Aristotle, or than
‘‘the mathematical order of material things . . . ingeniously maintained by
Pythagoras.’’6 Luther’s interest in Plato did not persist, but his suggestion is
 German Reformation and Mathematization of the Created World 37

illustrative of his conviction that Aristotle’s philosophy had failed to observe its
own limits with relation to theology.
Luther’s comments formed the context within which his colleague Philip
Melanchthon (1497–1560) explored the role not only of natural philosophy but
also of mathematics as offering access to divine revelation. Almost certainly
influenced by the rediscovery of Platonic philosophy which was exemplified by
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494),
Melanchthon taught that mathematics formed the first steps for understanding the
order of the natural world which had been given to it by God and which was
intended as a model for the order of society.7 He adopted the saying attributed to
Plato, ‘‘God always geometrizes,’’ to explain how the study of mathematics could
be believed to offer a reliable revelation of God’s mind, arguing that because the
human mind is made in the image of God, it reflects the mind of God in its ability
to recognize order and number:

Let superior minds, originating from the heavens, think about where they come
from; from time to time let them study this theme and realize that this most
beautiful spectacle of celestial bodies and movements has not been set forth to
humankind in vain, and let them inquire into the order of these most admirable
things, because it is most appropriate to human nature and because it carries great
usefulness for life. [ . . . ] For as in all things it is best to be ruled by God, so in this
consideration of studies, as we might call it whenever we contemplate the sky itself,
let us be reminded of the Architect. Let us not think that he instituted this amazing
order and transmitted the understanding of these movements to the human race for
nothing.8

However, although Melanchthon believed that that mathematical proof is the

clearest because it demonstrates how confused things may be unravelled and
understood,9 and although he was convinced that the whole of creation revealed
God’s order and plan, he did not suggest that the natural world was susceptible
to mathematical explanation. It was the heavens—and in particular the motion
of the planets—which could be predicted mathematically. Mathematics, for
Melanchthon, offered a way for fallen human reason to transcend the restrictions
of the fallen, corrupted sub-lunar sphere and be raised to heaven, not only in the
cosmological sense, but in the sense of understanding the mind of God.
Melanchthon’s conception of the role of mathematics was rooted in a strong
reading of the Aristotelian distinction between the imperfections of the sub-lunar
sphere and the perfection of the celestial realm. For him, mathematics in the form
of pure geometry really only pertained to the latter. Astrology, which he thought
was properly conceived as ‘‘the part of physics which teaches what effects the
light of the stars has on simple and mixed bodies, and what kind of temperaments,
what changes and what inclinations it induces’’—as opposed to the superstitious
use of astrology which misled the practitioner—offered a means of understanding
the import of those mathematically observed motions for humankind. Astrology,
properly used, employed mathematics as a way of allowing the intentions of
God for the world to be known.10 Melanchthon’s understanding of mathematics
thus had a strong ethical undertone: the study of mathematics—and indeed of
philosophy as a whole—was for him a means by which divine order could be
38 Theology and Science

introduced into human life, and this was his primary interest in it. At the same
time, his high regard for the mathematical disciplines presented them as ideal
tools for exploring the relationship between the human and the divine, promising
deeper understanding of the place of humankind in God’s creation and his
providential plan.
Melanchthon was not himself a skilled practitioner of mathematics. None-
theless, his assessment of mathematics and the way in which he wove it into his
understanding of the humanist ideal of what it meant to prepare to live a good life
(within the restrictions to that ideal laid down by Luther’s theology)11 greatly
increased the standing of the study of mathematics, and particularly of astronomy,
in a context in which the mathematical arts were not always regarded as being as
pure as Melanchthon saw them.12 The association of mathematics with astrology
and divination had tarnished its reputation, with the result that humanist-
educated mathematicians were eager to demonstrate the true nature of their
discipline and to show its value, for instance by demonstrating the antiquity of
their knowledge and methods. A generation before Melanchthon, the mathema-
tician Johannes Regiomontanus (also known as Johannes Müller of Königsberg
[1436–1476]) had argued that the mathematical disciplines might be fundamental
to the search for truth. Regiomontanus was one of the leading mathematicians and
astronomers of his age. He published the influential Theoricae novae Planetarum
written by his teacher Georg Peurbach, which became a standard teaching text for
astronomy in the sixteenth century.13 Regiomontanus’ observational work opened
the way for the reform of astronomy in which Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543),
Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) would all emerge as
key figures.
An oration held in Padua in 1464, the first and only surviving lecture in a series
on the Arabic astronomer al-Farghani, demonstrates both Regiomontanus’s
humanist education and his mathematical skills: ‘‘[whilst the oration] is
stylistically consistent with humanist norms, the vision of mathematics presented
in it is also deeply grounded in the university mathematical curriculum and in
Regiomontanus’s own reading of mathematical texts.’’14 Regiomontanus put
forward a strong argument for the supremacy of mathematics in the search for
truth, pointing to the divisions amongst philosophers and contrasting these to the
certainty of mathematical disciplines:

How many different branches have grown from the trunk of that [Aristotelian] sect?
Some follow Scotus; others St. Thomas; a few, out of innate promiscuity, follow
both . . . . However many leaders philosophy has, by that much less is our time
learned . . . . No one, unless insane, would dare speak these things of our own
discipline [i.e. mathematics], since indeed neither time nor the ways of men are able
to detract from them. The theorems of Euclid are just as certain today as they were a
thousand years ago and the discoveries of Archimedes will be no less admired after
a thousand centuries [than they are now].15
Regiomontanus viewed mathematics as having a certainty which was not shared
by other disciplines and which made it more valuable than the schools of
philosophy in the search for truth. Nevertheless, intriguingly, he identified not
geometry but astrology as the greatest of the mathematical arts: ‘‘you [astrology]
 German Reformation and Mathematization of the Created World 39

are without doubt the most faithful messenger of the immortal God, you who
provide the rule for interpreting his secrets, by whose grace the omnipotent
decided to regulate the heavens, in which he everywhere placed starry fires, signs
of future events.’’16 For Regiomontanus, the point was not only that mathematics
was more certain, but that astrology—understood here, as for Melanchthon, as the
interpretative application of astronomy—was capable of revealing divine secrets.
As the sixteenth century progressed, it was not only theology, but also
mathematics, and the relationship between them which were subject to discussion.
Melanchthon, together with a range of other scholars, suggested that hope of
finding a better understanding of truth or better knowledge of God lay in
the mathematical sciences. When the humanist Reformer Simon Grynaeus
(1493–1541) came to write his preface to Euclid’s Elements, he expressed
sentiments about the value of the study of mathematics which were very similar
to those of Melanchthon. Although mathematics was difficult, Grynaeus argued
that it should be the first subject to be learned, for the benefits of mathematical
knowledge surpass what can be gained from reading any book: whilst the other
arts are earthbound, mathematics admits the human mind to the understanding of
the whole universe, and to an understanding and appreciation of the most
wondrous spectacle of God’s works.17 However, Grynaeus also expressed the
conviction, perhaps drawn from Regiomontanus, that knowledge of mathematics
and its certain proofs could counter the inaccuracies and quarrels of ‘‘the
sophists.’’ He sought a certain philosophy which was funded on the knowledge
and wisdom of God, but which was not susceptible to the ‘‘turbulences and
tumults’’ of philosophers or to the ‘‘monstrous absurdities’’ of scholastic
philosophy.18 Like both Melanchthon and Regiomontanus, Grynaeus turned to
geometry as the most clear and certain means of learning the reasoning associated
with such a philosophy, arguing that even Aristotle must be convinced by
geometrical proofs.19 Mathematics, Grynaeus asserted, offered a means of
transcending the ambiguity of words and thus a solution to the confusion of
different texts and methods with which he and his contemporaries found
themselves confronted.20 Grynaeus was convinced that mathematical proof and
mathematical method offered a means by which the uncertainties of observation—
all the works of nature being ‘‘subject to the measure of the eyes’’—could be
correctly interpreted.21 Grynaeus was beginning to explore what it might mean to
apply mathematical principles to the interpretation of human observation,
believing those principles to be divinely ordained.
Grynaeus probably had a reasonable grasp of mathematics. However, not all
such high estimations of the powers of mathematics were always based on a
secure understanding. Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) sought to develop a ‘‘natural
dialectic,’’ or method of proof, in order to withstand what he believed to be the
corruptions of Aristotelian philosophy. This he identified with mathematics,
which he took to be ‘‘a natural, immediately graspable science,’’ with simple, self-
evident proofs. However, ‘‘quite against his expectations, mathematics—the goal
and paragon of his natural, logical method—turned out to be difficult.’’22
Believing the remedy to lie in a reordering of the material, Ramus wrote his own
mathematics textbooks, on arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and optics, in the
40 Theology and Science

prefaces to which he laid the blame for the misleading complexity of ‘‘barbaric’’
mathematical proof firmly before Euclid and Theon.23 Ramus’ mathematical
textbooks were widely used, so that although he later came to deny the connection
between mathematics and dialectic (although he remained convinced that ‘‘the
material out of which mathematics was constituted had been handed over by God
to the very first human beings’’),24 he contributed significantly to the conviction
that mathematical methods offered a means of avoiding philosophical conflict.
The emphasis on the divine origins of mathematics and the consequent
assessment of mathematical sciences as revelatory of the mind of God resulted in
an assertion of mathematical authority in ways which could overcome traditional
Aristotelian interpretations. Michael Maestlin (1550–1631), whose observations of
the comets in 1577/8 and 1581 placed them above the moon—as opposed to
Aristotle’s understanding that they were sub-lunar phenomena—argued that his
observations should take precedence over Aristotelian cometary theory, since
careful observations and proper use of mathematics would reveal the truth about
the heavens as created by God, and thus were a form of worship of God.25
Maestlin cited Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1 and Isaiah 49:18 as a basis for his
argument that creation was intended to reveal God, concluding that since the
‘‘particular certainty’’ of astronomical knowledge was a gift from God, it must be
the duty of human beings to consider ‘‘the causes of the stars’’ based on evidence
of their own eyes.26
That the reassessment of Aristotelian cosmology on the basis of astronomical
observation and calculation was not consensus, can be seen from the varied
interpretations of the 1572 nova. Whilst some observers placed the nova below the
moon, as Aristotelian theory would predict, others placed it above the moon and
tended to appeal to theology to justify doing so. The observations of Caspar
Peucer (1525–1602) in Wittenberg and of Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel
(1532–1592) also led them to place the new star above the moon, and thus seemed
to introduce change into the unchangeable supra-lunar sphere. However, unlike
Maestlin, they regarded this conclusion as witnessing to a miracle performed by
God in order to warn humankind of its shortcomings.27 This latter interpretation
left Aristotelian cosmology and physics intact, recognising Aristotle’s authority as
an ancient writer; whilst the approach taken by Maestlin privileged contemporary
mathematical interpretation of observations over ancient theories, and also tended
to assume that God had created the world in orderly ways which were accessible
to human observers through the medium of mathematics. It was, notably,
Maestlin who was to become Kepler’s teacher.
Kepler’s approach to understanding the heavens was at the same time
profoundly mathematical and deeply theological. Conceiving of himself as a
‘‘priest of the book of nature,’’ he was convinced that mathematics, and in
particular astronomy, could aid the contemplation of God. In the preface to the
original edition of the Mysterium Cosmographicum in 1596, he wrote:
Here we are concerned with the book of nature, so greatly celebrated in sacred
writings. It is in this that Paul proposes to the Gentiles that they should contemplate
God like the Sun in water or in a mirror. Why then as Christians should we take any
less delight in its contemplation, since it is for us with true worship to honour God,
 German Reformation and Mathematization of the Created World 41

to venerate him, to wonder at him? The more rightly we understand the nature and
scope of what our God has founded, the more devout the spirit in which that is
done.28

Like Melanchthon, Kepler suggested that an understanding of mathematics can

help observers to grasp the proper order for the world, or even assist the
establishment of peace, a great benefit for one caught up in the violent conflicts
which would become the Thirty Years’ War:

according to Apollo’s opinion the Greeks turned to geometry and other

philosophical studies, as these studies would lead their spirits from ambition and
other forms of greed, out of which wars and other evils arise, to the love of peace
and to moderation in all things.29

However, Kepler went further: mathematics and astronomy offer not just
knowledge of God but potentially better knowledge of God than that revealed
by Scripture:

To whoever is too stupid to understand astronomical science, or too weak to believe

Copernicus without affecting his faith, I would advise him that, having dismissed
astronomical studies and having damned whatever philosophical opinions he
pleases, he mind his own business and betake himself home to scratch in his own
dirt patch, abandoning this wandering about the world. He should raise his eyes
(his only means of vision) to this visible heaven and with his whole heart burst forth
in giving thanks and praising God the Creator. He can be sure that he worships God
no less than the astronomer, to whom God has granted the more penetrating vision
of the mind’s eye, and an ability and desire to celebrate his God above those things
he has discovered.30

Kepler’s mathematical, geometrical approach to understanding the heavens on the

basis of the heliocentric Copernican system yielded a relationship between the
so-called Platonic solids—the five perfect polyhedra—and the ratios between
the planetary ‘‘spheres’’ which he regarded as so unexpected as to have to be a
revelation of the fundamental structures of the created cosmos:

For what could be said or imagined which would be more remarkable, or more
convincing, than that what Copernicus established by observation, ex phaenomenois,
from the effects, a posteriori, by a lucky rather than a confident guess, like a blind
man depending on a stick as he walks, and believed to be the case, all that, I say, is
discovered to have been quite correctly established by reasoning derived a priori,
from the causes, from the idea of the Creation.31

Kepler’s conviction that mathematics could reveal the deeper, divine structures of
the universe sent him looking for those structures, in a search which he explicitly
intended to have results which reached far beyond the mathematical. This in turn
privileged the status of mathematical knowledge to reveal God more accurately
than could scripture. It is perhaps not surprising that this privileging of
mathematics was tempered in later Protestant assessments of how God related
to the world.32
For Kepler, the way the Copernican system ‘‘fitted’’ with a fundamental
geometrical truth revealed the possibility that mathematics might unlock the
42 Theology and Science

secrets of the universe. Although his use of the Platonic solids was not, in fact, the
‘‘discovery’’ that he is remembered for—and now has no credibility at all in
astronomy—it was an important impulse to his project. This is only one step in the
development of an understanding that the world would yield to mathematics: the
work of Galileo importantly brought mathematics to sub-lunar dynamics in a way
that Kepler never explored; and Newton and Leibniz importantly discovered a
way of applying mathematics more accurately through their discovery of calculus.
For Kepler, the important realization was that the created world was profoundly
mathematical by nature: indeed, for him this assertion was almost a truism, since
he believed God to think in mathematical terms. And like Regiomontanus,
Melanchthon and Simon Grynaeus before him, Kepler hoped that the study of
mathematics and the revealed truths of the created world would lead that world
to peace.

Endnotes

1 See the influential work of William A. Wallace on Galileo, including Galileo, the Jesuits
and the Medieval Aristotle (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991); Galileo and His Sources: The
Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1984); Prelude to Galileo: Essays on Medieval and Sixteenth-century Sources of Galileo’s
Thought (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981). Compare also the studies of Jesuit mathematics and
early-modern science by Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in
the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Revolutionizing
the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500–1700, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2009). More recently, see Michela Massimi, ‘‘Galileo’s Mathematization of
Nature at the Crossroad between the Empiricist and the Kantian Tradition,’’ Perspectives
on Science 18 (2010): 152–188; Paolo Palmieri, ‘‘Mental Models in Galileo’s Early
Mathematization of Nature,’’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 34 (2003): 229–
264.
2 As noted by many commentators. See, for instance, Stillman Drake, ‘‘Kepler and
Galileo,’’ Vistas in Astronomy 18 (1975): 237–247.
3 For Kepler’s Platonism, see for instance J.V. Field, Kepler’s Geometrical Cosmology
(London: Athlone, 1988); Markus M. Illmer, Die göttliche Mathematik Johannes Keplers.
Zur ontologischen Grundlegung des naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbilds (Dissertationen
Philosophische Reihe 7; Erzabtei St Ottilien: EOS, 1991).
4 Aquinas treats the question of the superiority of theology due to its subject matter in
Summa Theologica I, qu. 1, especially art. 5.
5 For a discussion of the significance of nominalism in enabling the study of the natural
world, see David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific
Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. 2007). For a related discussion, see Peter
Harrison, ‘‘Voluntarism and Early Modern Science,’’ History of Science 40 (2002): 63–89;
the response by John Henry, ‘‘Voluntarist Theology at the Origins of Modern Science:
A Response to Peter Harrison,’’ History of Science 47 (2009): 79–113; and Harrison’s reply,
‘‘Voluntarism and the Origins of Modern Science: A Reply to John Henry,’’ History of
Science 47 (2009): 223–231.
6 Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Philosophical Theses 36 and 37 [WA 1, 355;
LW 31, 42].
7 For a more detailed discussion of Melanchthon’s understanding of mathematics,
see Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip
 German Reformation and Mathematization of the Created World 43

Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Charlotte Methuen, ‘‘The

Role of the Heavens in the Thought of Philip Melanchthon’’, Journal of the History of Ideas
57 (1996): 385–403.
8 Philipp Melanchthon, De astronomia et geographia (1542), Corpus Reformatorum, 21 vols,
ed. C.G. Bretschneider (Halle: Schwetschke, 1834–1860) [hereafter CR], 11, 294.
9 Philipp Melanchthon, Praefatio in arithmeticen Joachimi Rhetici (1536), CR 11, 291–292.
10 Philipp Melanchthon, De dignitate astrologiae (1535), CR 11, 263.
11 Luther rejected the idea that living a good life might prepare a Christian for salvation,
and was therefore outspokenly critical of the teaching of Aristotle’s ethics as part of the
university curriculum. As early as the Disputation against Scholastic Theology
(September 1518), he wrote: ‘‘Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy
of grace’’ [thesis 41; WA 1, 226; LW 31, 12], and he expanded this theme in several of his
early works.
12 See for instance Robert S. Westman, ‘‘The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the
Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican theory,’’ Isis 66 (1975): 164–193; and
compare more recently Claudia Brosseder, Im Bann der Sterne: Caspar Peucer, Philipp
Melanchthon und andere Wittenberger Astrologen (Berlin: Akademie, 2004).
13 Melanchthon would write a preface to a later edition of Peurbach’s work: Praefatio in
librum: Georgii Purbachii Theoricae nouae planetarum (Melanchthon to Simon Grynaeus,
Jan. 1535), CR 2: 814–820.
14 James Steven Byrne, ‘‘A Humanist History of Mathematics? Regiomontanus’s Padua
Oration in Context,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006): 41–61; here 42.
15 Regiomontanus, Padua oration, cited by Byrne, ‘‘Humanist History of Mathe-
matics?,’’ 59.
16 Ibid., 60–61.
17 Simon Grynaeus (ed.), Euclidis Elementa (Basel: Ioannes Hervagius, 1533), fol. a2r-3r. For
further discussion of Grynaeus’s preface, see Charlotte Methuen, Kepler’s Tübingen:
Stimulus to a Theological Mathematics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 166–171.
18 Grynaeus, Euclidis Elementa, a5r.
19 Ibid., fol. a3v.
20 Ibid., fol. a2r; a4v.
21 Ibid., fol. a2v; a3v.
22 Robert Goulding, ‘‘Method and Mathematics: Peter Ramus’s Histories of the Sciences,’’
Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006): 63–85; here 74.
23 Ibid., 75.
24 Ibid., 78.
25 For a discussion of Maestlin’s arguments about the positioning of the comets,
see Methuen, Kepler’s Tübingen, 174–181. For the theological aspects of his arguments,
see ibid., 155–160.
26 Michael Maestlin, Consideratio et observatio cometae aetherei astronomica, qui anno
MDLXXX . . . apparuit (Heidelberg: Jakob Müller, 1581), fol. A2r-v.
27 See Charlotte Methuen, ‘‘‘This Comet or New Star’: Theology and the Interpretation of
the Nova of 1572,’’ Perspectives on Science 5 (1997): 499–515, reprinted in Charlotte
Methuen, Science and Theology in the Reformation: Studies in Theological Interpretation
and Astronomical Observation in Sixteenth-century Germany (London: T & T Clark, 2008),
33–47.
28 Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), 53; KGW 1, 5, line 24–29, and compare KGW
vol. 8, p. 16, line 24–29. References to Kepler’s works give first the page number of any
English translation, followed by reference to KGW.
29 Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum (1621), 43; KGW 8, 11, 31–35.
30 Kepler, Astronomia nova, 65–66; KGW 3, 33, 17–26 (consilium pro idiotis).
31 Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum, 97, 99 (KGW I, 26; KGW VIII, 47).
32 Kepler’s position is explored in greater detail in Charlotte Methuen, ‘‘From Sola Scriptura
to Astronomia Nova: Authority, Accommodation and the Reform of Astronomy in the
44 Theology and Science

Work of Johannes Kepler,’’ in Charlotte Methuen, Science and Theology in the Reformation,
77–93; see also Charlotte Methuen, ‘‘‘To Delineate the Divinity of the Creator’: The
Search for Platonism in Late Sixteenth-century Tübingen,’’ in Naturwissenschaft und
Religion im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz and Thomas Kaufmann
(Gütersloh: Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte; Gütersloher Verlagshaus,
2010), 184–195.

Biographical Notes

The Revd Canon Dr. Charlotte Methuen is Lecturer in Church History at the
University of Glasgow, and Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History in the Faculty of
Theology at the University of Oxford. She has taught at the Universities of
Heidelberg, Hamburg, Bochum, Jena and Mainz. Her main areas of research are
the intellectual history of Reformation, particularly interactions between theology,
philosophy and astronomy, and twentieth-century ecumenical relations.