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The '''Commentariolus''' (''Little Commentary'') is a work by Nicolaus Copernicus in which he outlined his revolutionary Copernican heliocentrism theory of the solar system three decades before he finally published his major six volume work ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' in 1543.
Copernicus did not publish the commentariolus, and handed it only to few friends. It is unknown who received the Commentariolus, and when. He had written the preliminary manuscript description of his early version of the theory sometime before 1515. Some scholars believe it was as late as 1533 due to the maturity of the theory.^[1] The "little commentary" was never printed or otherwise published, its existence was only known indirectly until a copy surfaced in Vienna in 1878.
In 1524, Copernicus published his only astronomical work on his own initiative, The Letter against Werner, challenging Johannes Werner, who had died in 1522, and his work ''De motu octauæ Sphær'' in which Werner outlines a trepidations method to describe precession of equinoctials.^[2]
The Commentariolus was known among scholars. In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered in Rome a series of lectures outlining Copernicus' theory. The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals. On 1 November 1536, Archbishop of Capua Nikolaus Cardinal von Schönberg wrote a letter to Copernicus from Rome, urging him to publish.
Georg Joachim Rheticus and Tiedemann Giese the compiled an introduction to Copernicus' theory, the Narratio Prima, and published by Rhode in in 1540. This was instrumental for Copernicus' approval to publish ''De revolutionibus''.

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Notes

1. Alexandre Koyré, ''The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus – Kepler – Borelli,'' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1973), pp. 25-28, 85-86.
2. Edward Rosen,Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus; The Letter against Werner; The Narratio Prima of Rheticus; Columbia University Press, 1939

External links

★ http://bertie.ccsu.edu/~dsb/naturesci/Cosmology/Cosmo2Copernicus.html

★ http://dbanach.com/copernicus-commentarilous.htm

★ http://www.geocities.com/soho/gallery/8084/copernicus.htm