Figure: The Religious Situation in Europe about 1560

Caption: The religious division of Europe circa 1560.

Further explication:

1. The lower panel gives the best impression of Europe as whole with the black line showing the approximate border between Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe. The religous situation was not much different in Nicolaus Copernicus' (1473--1543) later years.

2. Copernicus died 1543 long after Protestant Reformation's fiducial beginning in 1517, but before the Council of Trent (1545--1563) helped solidified the Roman Catholic side of the divide into the Counter-Reformation.

   As a Roman Catholic official (a canon law lawyer) in the Poland region---which as one can see is on the borderline of the religious divide---Copernicus must have been acutely conscious of the religious strife of his age.

3. Copernicus was born in 1473 in Torun (Thorn in German which is how it is marked on the map) on the River Vistula in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1496--1506, Copernicus was mainly in Italy, mostly in Bologna (in the Emilia Romagna region of northern Italy) and Padua (near Venice). He was studying at the University of Bologna and the University of Padua.

4. Copernicus from 1512 to the end of his life lived close to the frontier between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in Frombork (German Frauenberg) (just northeast (NE) of Elblag (German Elbing) and in modern Poland) on the Vistula Lagoon of Baltic Sea. In fact, Frombork was in the mixed Catholic and Protestant region by 1560 as the map shows.