Dudith (Duditius), Andreas

Dudith (Duditius), Andreas

(b. Buda [now Budapest], Hungary, 16 February 1533; d. Breslau, Germany [now Wrocław, Poland], 23 February 1589)

astronomy, astrology, mathematics.

Andreas Dudith combined political and religious activity with humanist and scientific interests in a manner fairly common in the sixteenth century. Of mixed Hungarian and Italian descent, Dudith was educated in the Hungarian tradition of Erasmian humanism. He traveled widely in Italy, France, and England from 1550 to 1560, serving for a time as secretary to Cardinal Reginald Pole. After attending the Council of Trent in 1562–1563, Dudith received the bishopric of Pécs and performed various diplomatic missions to Poland for the emperors Sigismund II and Maximilian II between 1563 and 1576. Dudith’s first marriage in 1567 to Regina Strass, a Polish noblewoman, and his subsequent adherence to Lutheranism brought upon him the condemnation of Rome and weakened his position at the Viennese court. (His second marriage, in 1574, was to Elisabeth Zborowski.) After some political reverses he retired from affairs of state in 1576 and later devoted himself to scientific and theological matters at Breslau, inclining to Calvinist and Socinian doctrines.

Dudith was familiar with the leading intellectual movements of his day; his visits to Italy had acquainted him with humanists and bibliophiles like Paulus Manutius and Giovanni-Vincenzo Pinelli and also with the works of Pietro Pomponazzi and the Paduan Averroists. In the 1570’s Dudith took up the study of mathematics and cultivated the friendship of the Englishmen Henry and Thomas Savile and the German Johann Praetorius. Medicine also interested Dudith; he studied Galen and corresponded with many physicians, including the imperial physician Crato. In the breadth of his intellectual interest Dudith was typical of Renaissance humanists, and his library of printed books and manuscripts reflects this encyclopedism. Like many Italians, notably his friend Pinelli, he collected Greek mathematical manuscripts for both their philological and scientific interest. Among his manuscripts were the Arithmetic of Diophantus (which he loaned to Xylander to use as the text for the first Latin translation published at Basel in 1575); the Mathematical Collections of Pappus; the Elementa astronomiae of Geminos (used for the editio princeps of 1590); and his own transcription of the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy. Several of these manuscripts were lost following the dispersal of his library, but many of his manuscripts and his 5,000 printed books are now in the Vatican, Paris, Leiden, and various Swedish libraries.

Dudith is known mainly for his contribution to the controversy over the comet of 1577. (Hellman lists more than 100 publications on this comet.) He knew several of the personalities involved in the dispute, including Thomas Erastus, Thaddaeus Hagecius (Hayck), and Tycho Brahe; and a collection of tracts on the topic was dedicated to him in 1580. Although originally interested in the astrology of the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy, Dudith became an opponent of the astrologers. His De cometarum significatione shows the influence of Erastus in its rejection of astrology as a vain pseudoscience. Both Dudith and Erastus argued that comets could appear without causing or portending natural or political calamities. (In his first letter to Hagecius, Dudith remarked that astrology was condemned by Christian authorities and, despite his own Calvinist leanings, that astrology infringed upon free will.)

Dudith accepted, however, Aristotle’s physical explanation of comets as accidental exhalations of hot air from the earth that rise in the sublunar sphere. But an insistence on mathematical astronomy rather than astrology soon led Dudith to the rejection of Aristotelian physical doctrine. In 1581 Dudith learned in a letter from Hagecius, a believer in astrology, of the latter’s observation that the parallax of another comet indicated that the comet was beyond the moon. In his letter of 19 January 1581 to Rafanus, Dudith argued that this observation proved the Aristotelian explanation fallacious. If the comets were terrestrial in origin they could not penetrate beyond the sublunar sphere; if, however, they originated in the immanent heavens comets could not be classified as accidental phenomena. Dudith remarked that many recently observed comets seemed to form and dissolve in the region of permanent things. This fact suggested serious flaws in the Aristotelian system. (Tycho arrived at a similar conclusion from his observation that the 1577 comet had no parallax and must therefore be farther from the earth than was the moon. Tycho also attempted to calculate the orbit of that comet.)

Dudith’s use of a mathematically precise observation to criticize a general physical theory of Aristotle’s betokens the same kind of dissatisfaction with Aristotelian physical doctrines that was most eloquently expounded in the works of Galileo fifty years later.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Dudith’s main scientific work is De cometarum significatione commentariolus... (Basel, 1579), repr. in the 2nd pt. of De cometis dissertationes novae clariss. Virorum Th. Erasti, Andr. Duditii...(Basel, 1580). Dedicated to Dudith, it includes Dudith’s letter to Erastus of 1 Feb. 1579. Subsequent eds. are: Breslau, 1619; Jena, 1665; Utrecht, 1665. The first letter to Hagecius (26 Sept. 1580) is in J. E. Scheibel, Astronomische Bibliographie, II (Breslau, 1786), 160–182, with other materials on the comet of 1577. The second letter (1 Feb. 1581), congratulating Hagecius on his observation of a comet’s parallax, appears at the beginning of Thaddaeus Hagecius, Apodixis physica et mathematica de cometis (Görlitz, 1581). The letter to Rafanus is in Lorenz Scholtz, Epistolarum philosophicarum medicinalium, ac chymicarum volumen (Frankfurt, 1598), letter 28. Details of Dudith’s voluminous correspondence are given in the Costil biography cited below.

For Dudith’s writings on the marriage of priests see Q. Reuter, Andreae Dudithii orationes in concil. Trident. Habitae... (Offenbach am Main, 1610), See also the references to Dudith in J. L. E. Dreyer, ed., Tychonis Brahe opera omnia, 15 vols. (Copenhagen, 1913–1929), IV, 453,455; VI, 327–328; VII, 63, 123, 182, 214; VIII, 455.

II. Secondary Litirature. An excellent biography and bibliography is Pierre Costil, André Dudith: humaniste hongrois 1533–1589, sa vie, son oeuvre et ses manuscripts grecs (Paris, 1935). For the controversy on the comet of 1577, see Dreyer, op. cit., IV, 509; C. Doris Hellman, The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy (New York, 1944); and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York, 1923–1958), VI, 67–98, 183–186.

Paul Lawrence Rose