Astronomical Images : Title-page with the bear emblem of the Orsini family

Christoph Scheiner

Astronomical Images

Christoph Scheiner (1573-1650) joined the Society of Jesus in 1595. He studied at the University of Ingolstadt, where he was appointed Professor of Hebrew and Mathematics from 1610. He is also known for having invented the pantograph and for establishing the retina as the seat of vision. Scheiner began to make astronomical observations using a telescope from 1611 and noticed specks on the Sun. He believed them to be planets around the Sun, and published his views anonymously, calling himself 'Apelles hiding behind the painting' for fear of bringing the Jesuit order into disrepute. Three Letters on Solar Spots (1612) were published by Marc Welser to whom Scheiner had written about his discoveries. Galileo correctly identified the author as a Jesuit and wrote a refutation addressed to Welser, published as History and Demonstrations about Sunspots and their Properties by the Lincean Academy in Rome in 1613. Galileo further criticized Scheiner in The Assayer. Scheiner's astronomical research, punctuated by service at the court of Archduke Maximilian at Innsbruck and as confessor to Archduke Charles, the bishop of Neisse, culminated in Rosa Ursina sive Sol (The Rose of the Orsini, or the Sun) in which he defended his position against Galileo and showed that the inclination of the axis of the rotation of the sunspots to the plane of the ecliptic was 7Ë?30'. Rosa Ursina sive Sol was a large tome richly illustrated with engravings, and therefore costly. Scheiner originally sought the support of Cardinal Alessandro Orsini (1592-1626), who was close to the Jesuits, and after Alessandro's death, that of his brother, Paolo Giordano II, Duke of Bracciano. Rosa Ursina sive Sol was thus published at Bracciano, though over several years (1626-30) due to financial difficulties. The book, starting with its title, is replete with references to the Orsini family whose heraldry included the rose and the bear (orsus = ursus = bear). Given the strained relations with Paolo Giordano II, who was unwilling to pay for the book, these references to the Orsini family quickly became obsolete. The vignette on the title-page shows three bears in a cave surrounded by garlands of roses and rose bushes, a reference to the Orsini family. In the top cave is a bear dubbed 'custodian of the rose' holding a pair of compasses and a board on which the sunspots are cast through a small aperture in the cave. Above the rose bush on the left, the quotation (ipsa dies aperit) from a poem on roses by the fourth-century poet Ausonius, states that the day never fails to display the Sun; the inscription over the right-hand bush (visu blanda aspera tactu) ' clear to the eye but harsh to touch ' refers to the risks of observing the Sun and to the thorns of the rose. In the bottom left cave, a bear is shown licking its cub 'into shape' (constans industria format), a wide-spread classical topos that also points to Scheiner's long years of labour in forming his theory. The bear nourishing itself on its paw during hibernation in the bottom right cave is labelled 'I am my own food' (ipse alimenta mihi), a reference to self-sufficiency and to the fact that Scheiner was the first to see the sunspots and did not have to 'beg anything from others', a statement against Galileo's claim to priority.