Completing the Copernicus Gesamtausgabe

This volume calls for champagne, for it completes the massive Nicolaus CopernicusGesamtausgabe (NCG). Begun half a century ago, the nine-volume project has now reedited all of Copernicus’s Latin writings and published many related documents, together with German translations and introductions. By merely scratching the surface of this large fourth volume, this review can scarcely do justice to the whole of this impressive undertaking. Ordinally, NCG 4 is the first of two volumes devoted to Copernicus’s opera minora. It collects his shorter “mathematical-scientific” works; the “humanist, economic, and medical” writings are published in NCG 5 (1999). According to the editors, the primary focus here is the Latin texts; the German translations are meant to help readers bridge a half-millennium of conceptual and lexical gaps.