On the Danish island of Hven, Tycho Brahe used to sit in his palace tower, studying the night sky with his sextant. The wooden roof panels could be removed to expose the heavens. Brahe would sit watching stars and comets, surrounded by cross-staffs and astrolabes. Across the sea at his home by the Thames, John Dee was scribbling down astronomical observations and weather patterns in a vast library containing thousands of books on every topic from Kabbala to botany to metallurgy.
A history of early science in northern Europe doesn’t sound like the most glamorous of topics. But Violet Moller brings this overlooked story to life in Inside the Stargazer’s Palace, a fascinating account of how scientific activity “proliferated and flourished in the northern parts of Europe” during the 16th century. There is no Italian Renaissance here, no elegant frescoes or marble statues. Instead we glimpse inside glittering observatories and ramshackle laboratories to better understand how science was first formed.
As an independent academic with a PhD in 16th-century intellectual history, Moller is a capable guide. In 2019 she published The Map of Knowledge, a historical account of how the ideas of Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy spread across Europe and the Islamic world.
Following critical acclaim, Moller continues her study of scientific history with Inside the Stargazer’s Palace, a rich and engaging examination of where early scientific activity occurred and the context in which it flourished. The work of Francis Bacon and René Descartes “didn’t fall out of the sky”. Before the traditional “birth” of science in the 17th century, scientific endeavour was germinating in the 1500s. Craftsmen forged clocks and globes, anatomists reconstructed skeletons, alchemists studied minerals. And as the title suggests, astronomers fixed their gaze to the stars, using ever more precise instruments to chart the movements of the night sky.
Moller’s approach to telling this story is highly deliberate. Her chapters are divided by places, rather than names, in order to “draw a broader picture” that examines not only well-known individuals such as Brahe and Dee, but also “the wider culture in which they operated”. Places such as Kassel and Hven will be less familiar to readers who associate 16th-century culture with Venice and Rome. But we are left under no illusions as to their historical importance. Kassel, for example, was a thriving German fortress city. It became home to Wilhelm IV’s pioneering astronomical instruments, including his torquetums, brass quadrants and even an intricately engraved Wilhlemsuhr (“Wilhelm’s clock”). Kassel became a centre of scientific learning that attracted scholars from across Europe.
Moller uses astronomy to link together these centres of knowledge. In the 16th century, astronomy was “the most prestigious of the mathematical disciplines”. Inside the Stargazer’s Palace uses astronomy as a starting point to describe innovations across the sciences, from globe-making to Gemma Frisius’s technique of triangulation (a survey method still used today).
Astronomy also highlights the polymathy of the time, defined by a curious blend of science and superstition. The same scholars who carried out rigorous astronomical observations might also use astrology to predict pregnancies or find missing necklaces.
But this is not a story defined by academia. Moller emphasises the intrinsic relationship between science and commerce. Hardworking craftspeople directly enabled the work of stargazers and anatomists. Workshops built instruments such as bronze spheres, giving scholars access to accurate materials for use in their research.
Academics even learned how to build their own instruments and sell them on. In Louvain, Frisius was both a professor of medicine and the owner of a thriving workshop. This was helpful at a time when independent scholars relied on patronage from wealthy monarchs. Instrument-making became a 16th-century “side hustle”.
Amid this excitement, the violence of religious persecution is never far from Moller’s history. Northern Europe was severely affected by the Reformation. Official religions could change overnight when a monarch died. Gerard Mercator, a renowned cartographer, fled his Louvain workshop when Charles V arrested “suspicious people” accused of heresy. Mercator was imprisoned and narrowly escaped death. Such practical concerns severely impacted the scientific work of Mercator and others, but new discoveries had more profound implications too.
In 1572 a new star appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia. This event sparked a frenzy. Why? In the 1500s, most people believed that the stars were part of “a perfect, unchanging heavenly realm”. The 1572 star led many to seriously question a reality that was grounded in Christian thought.
These discoveries form part of a kaleidoscopic history that prioritises places and material history. Moller’s vivid descriptions of smoky laboratories and bustling workshops are enlivening. Delightful passages abound, such as the anecdote about John Dee’s manuscripts being used to wrap pies “and other like uses”. The reader is immersed in the world of 16th-century scientific revolution. Inside the Stargazer’s Palace invites us inside the observatory to see the formation of science for ourselves.
