Beginning in the cold November of 1572 for years on end a favourite illustration for
scholarly books in Europe was that of a queen (Cassiopeia) seated on the throne. Why
did this constellation, visible beside the Milky Way and resembling a letter W, so
occupy the attention of the theologians, astrologers, philosophers and astronomers
of the last third of the sixteenth century? If we were to undertake the impossible
task of summarising the history of sixteenth-century science in a few words, we might
choose the two years 1543 and 1572. The two years refer to two appearances, which
differ markedly in their form and content, yet completely revolutionised the traditional
(classical–medieval) notions of the cosmos. (...) This work is emphatically a preliminary
and partial survey of the reception in Hungary of new findings in astronomy in local
sources of the literacy history, but our intention is to examine the entire body of
source material, according to clear principles and methods, and to draw up the first
comprehensive interpretation. Thus we will have a more complete picture of the level
of astronomical culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hungary, and we will
be able to delineate the Copernican and Tychonic cosmoses, and the reception and dissemination
in Hungary of the modern Keplerian–Newtonian worldview that took shape after the appearance
of the new star in 1572 and the comet in 1577.
