SCHöNER, JOHANNES

(b. Karlstadt, Germany, 16 January 1477; d. Nuremberg, Germany, 16 January 1547)

astronomy, geography.

On or after 18 October 1494, Schöner paid the full fee when he enrolled in the University of Erfurt,¹ Where he studied theology. He left the university before he took a degree, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, and served in Bamberg, where an astrological tract was addressed to him in October 1506. In 1509 he bought manuscript ephemerides for the years 1464–1484, and on 20 March 1518 he was paid for binding a book for his bishop.

Schöner assembled a printing shop in his house in Bamberg. He himself set the type, carved the woodblocks for the illustrations, and bound the finished product. He also made his own globes. His earliest terrestrial globe named the recently discovered continental mass “America,” the first printed globe to do so. This globe was issued with his Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio (Nuremberg, 1515), which Schöner dedicated to his bishop on 24 March 1515. He likewise dedicated to the bishop his Solidi et sphaerici corporis sive globi astronomici canones usum et expeditam praxim ejusdem exprimentes (Nuremberg, 1517). In 1521, again using his own press in Bamberg, Schöner published his Aequatorium astronomicum, with movable disks to represent the motions of the planets. Having neglected to celebrate mass, Schöner was relegated to oficiate at early mass in Kirchehrenbach. In this small village near Forchheim he printed on his own press his De nuper...repertis insulis ac regionibus, with the gores (triangular segments) for his globe of 1523. On 24 April 1525 he finished the last of his Kirchehrenbach books, his correction of a faulty Latin translation of a work by al-Zarqālī. The threat of the rebellious peasants to kill all Roman Catholic clergymen ended Schöner’s career as a priest in 1525.

Fortunately, in 1526 Nuremberg opened the Melanchthon Gymnasium, where Schöner taught mathematics for two decades. He turned Lutheran and married Anna Zelerin on 7 August 1527.² The appearance of a comet in August 1531 impelled him to publish Regiomontanus’ De cometae magnitudine...problemata XVI (Nuremberg, 1531). Thus began Schöner’s valuable editions of many previously unpublished works by the greatest astronomer of the fifteenth century. As a zealous defender of astrology against its critics, Schöner printed on his own press his Horoscopium generale, omni regioni accomodum (Nuremberg, 1535).

After Schöner’s death his mathematical works, all of which had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, were published by his son Andreas, with a portrait of the father at the age of sixty-nine (Opera mathematica [Nuremberg, 1551; 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1561], signature B4v).

NOTES

1. H. J. C. Weissenborn. ed., Acten der Erfurter Universität, which is Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete, vol. 8. II (Halle, 1881–1899), 185, left column, line 10.

2. Karl Schornbaum. Ehebuch von St. Sebald in Nürnberg 1524–1543 (Nuremberg, 1949), 91, no. 3043. Our “Johann Schöner” was confused with a Hanns Schonner, who married on 15 May 1537 (Schornbaum. 80, no. 2617); see Johannes Kist. Die Matrikel der Geistlichkeit des Bistums Bamberg 1400–1556 (Würzburg, 1955–1960), 367, no. 5585; Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft für fränkische Geschichte. IV. Reihe; Matrikeln fränkischer Schulen und Stände. 7.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is no full-length biographical study of Schöner. His astronomical publications are listed in Ernst Zinner, Geschichte und Bibliographie der astronomischen Literatur in Deutschland zur Zeit der Renaissance, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1964). For the works that Schöner printed on his own press in Bamberg, Kirchehrenbach, and Nuremberg. see Karl Schottenloher, “Johann Schöner und seine Hausdruckerei,” in Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 24 (1907), 145–155; and Henry Stevens. Johann Schöner, Charles H. Coote, ed. (London, 1888), 149–170, with the Latin text of Schöner’s De nuper ... repertis insulis ac regionibus, pp. 47–55, and an English trans., pp. 91–99. The Latin text of this letter was printed also by Franz Wieser; see “Der verschollene Globus des Johannes Schöner von 1523,’ in Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 117, no. 5 (1888), 15–18. Wieser’s Magalhâes-Strasse und Austral-Continent auf den Globen des Johannes Schöner (Innsbruck, 1881) was recently reprinted (Amsterdam, 1967). Frederik Caspar Wieder, Monumenta cartographica, 1 (The Hague, 1925), 1–4, deals with Schöner; and the book was reviewed by George E. Nunn, “The Lost Globe Groes of Johann Schöner, 1523–1524.” in Geographical Review, 17 (1927), 476–480.

Edward Rosen