Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/155

UNIVERSITIES AND OTHER CENTRES OF LEARNING 143 tiquity and of the Middle Ages. He had already prepared a catalogue and secured the co-operation of the great authorities at different German and foreign universities, when his premature death cut short his design. 1 Through the princely generosity of Bernhard Walther, Eegiomontanus was enabled to build the first complete observatory in Europe, and to furnish it with all those instruments for astronomical observations which he had himself either invented or improved. He was the first of the astronomers of the Western world who calculated the size, the distance, and the orbits of the comets, and thus brought these hitherto enigmatical bodies within the limits of distinct scien- tific observation. As the improver of the astrolabe, the inventor of Jacob's staff, and founder of the scientific annual called ' Ephemerides,' he connected German astro- " nomical with Spanish nautical knowledge, and thus, in fact, became a co-agent in the great discovery of the age. Without Jacob's staff and the perfected astrolabe, by means of which astronomical distances were calcu- lated from the height of the sun, it would have been impossible for the great navigators of the period — Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Cabot, and Magellan — to have ventured so far on the ocean and to have made their great discoveries. Columbus and Vespucius started for the New World equipped with the calcula- tions which Eegiomontanus had made during thirty-two years in the ' Ephemerides.' By means of these the 1 The plan has never been carried out, and the valuable letters of Eegiomontanus, which might have been of much use to science and students, remain unknown. Aschbach, i. 551-552.