Krzysztof Mikulski: Nicolaus Copernicus. Sozialmilieu, Herkunft und Jugend. Torun: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika 2023.

Krzysztof Mikulski: Nicolaus Copernicus. Sozialmilieu, Herkunft und Jugend. Torun: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika 2023. ISBN (Hardcover): 978-83-231-5032-9

A prominent French historian, Fernand Braudel, in his works concerning the Mediterranean Sea stated that what is necessary to understand actions of even a single human being is a broad context created by the space and social environment in which the protagonist lives. For Braudel, the character of Philip II, King of Spain, served only as a pretext to analyse the entire civilisation of the Mediterranean of his times. In the present book, the author uses Braudel’s method in reference to Nicolaus Copernicus – the scholar. His biography remains a background to these considerations – the more interesting for the author, however, is the spatial and social context which to a certain extent had to shape Nicolaus’s  personality and his intellectual horizons. This context is created by the biographical entries of Toruń’s families related and linked to the astronomer and a genealogy of Copernicus family, totally different from the ones that have been presented to date. The author also reveals some new findings concerning the initial period of Nicolaus Copernicus’s life in Toruń.