Announcement I have compared Helga s original version and Helga s condensed version to each other as promised To be fair Helga only claimed to have condensed and not re written the article in this she is completely correct The problem however is that this condensation in no way makes the article less of a copyright violation As written there is no way that this should be included on the site IMO I have included the article below with questions and comments in bold that I think must be answered in order to make the article useful and not just another way of trying to prove that Copernicus was Prussian That said I really think that this deserves no more than a couple of lines in the Copernicus article Thanks all for bearing with me and helping make this work Helga plese help out by answering the questions and perhaps even doing a bit more research so that we can work together to make this a well written meaninful article Copernicus as Ermland Administrator and the Prussian Coin Reform Nicolaus Copernicus is today world famous as Astronomer but at home he wore many different hats Amongst other positions he held he was Nicolaus Copernicus Thornensis Prussus Mathematicus the Prussian mathematician from Thorn This really isn t a position I don t think he wasn t hired as a city mathemetician Also I think there should at least be some kind of connection for new readers as to how the whole Ermeland Thorn Prussia thing works it is very unhelpful to assume that the reader will know that one is a city the other a region the other a principality etc In the Copernicus manustript an entry from December 1603 states in partial Nicolai Copernick Canonici Varmiensis in Borussia Germaniae mathematici In what manuscript this appears to be a random comment and doesn t make much sense Besides being a church canon and administering as physician to his people Nicolaus Copernicus worked with the other Prussian states on coin reform Again reference What Prussian states What does this mean in practical terms The situation in Prussia as well as in other parts of Europe in the years before during and after the Reformation became very insecure and confused Copernicus died in 1543 well before the Peace of Augsburg Although this statement is correct I m not sure how Copernicus the church canon physician astronomer etc fits in There were cities in Prussia that fought for keeping the government of the Catholic Teutonic Knights and others who fought to get the Papal domination out and to become Protestant During this time the crown of Poland held by the Lithuanian Jagiello s married to the imperial Habsburg s had some limited influence in the politics of Prussia Sigismund I wanted the Prussian cities to give up their right to mint coins The leading cities of Prussia Thorn Danzig and Elbing declared never would they give up their individual city rights to mint coins Minting coins was a right given by the emperor and giving up this right would mean loss of sovereignty This helps to explain something about the former in that it sets up a Catholic Protestent conflict My questions What cities if any were ruled by the Teutonic Knights at the time or was it all of Prussia Does this have something to do with either the Second treaty of Thorn or the abdication of Albrecht of Prussia from his position as Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights From the other info on the site it looks like there may have been some conflict over jurisdiction between Albrecht and his heirs and the TKs who began to get their Grand Masters by imperial appointment and from the impreial read Habsburg family How do the Jagiellos fit in Is their involvement because of their distant connection to the Habsburgs as Helga implies or because as we know from other articles at one point residents of the area had appealed to the Polish rulers for help in overthrowing the Teutonic Knights Could the objections of the cities mentioned not have something to do with their being members of the Hansa a group notoriously jealous of their independence and privileges In answer to the much anticipated imperial comment viz that the objections had to do with an infringement of imperial right and law I cry bullshit The Hansa cities regularly played off their position between the emperors and other rulers Emperors could grant them independence from local rule but the cities fought hard to keep the emperors from having too much control They like rich bankers like the Fuggers and Welsers used their economic sway as much as possible to influence th