Anton Maria Schyrleus de Rheita

Background

Anton Schyrleus de Rheita was born in 1597 in Bohemia.

Education

After joining the Augustine order in 1622, Schyrleus was sent to the University at Ingolstadt, where he probably follows courses in astronomy and learns how to grind lenses.

Career

Following his graduation, Rheita does not return to his convent but enters the Capuchin order, which sends him to Linz in 1636 where he is to teach philosophy. Here, he comes in the service of Kurfürst Philipp Christoph von Sötern, the archbishop of Trier and Speyer, who is held captive by the emperor, Ferdinand III.

He was a priest and a Capuchin, at first a member of the community in Vrajt (Rheita) in Bohemia. He apparently left that monastery during the Thirty Years' War, and by the 1640s was a professor of theology at Trier. It is not certain when he went to Ravenna.

Rheita’s work in observational astronomy and optics was carried out in Belgium in the 1640’s.

In 1643 he published at Louvain a tract of rather dubious scientific value entitled Novetn stellae circa Jovetn visae, circa Saturnum sex, circum Martem nonnultae. Two years later, at Antwerp, he brought out the work on which his scientific reputation rests, the Oculus Enoch et Eliae, opus theologiae, philosophiae, et verbi dei praeconibus utile et iucundum. This treatise contains, among a somewhat curious variety of topics, Rheita’s description of an eyepiece for a Keplerian telescope that left the image reverted, his own invention; in it Rheita also made use of the terms “ocular" and “objective,” which he himself had coined.

Most interesting to historians of science, however, is Rheita’s map of the moon, drawn according to his own observations. The map is eighteen centimeters in diameter, and although it is rather scanty in detail (and decidedly inferior to that published in Antwerp in the same year by M. F. van Langren), it is the first representation of the moon that places its southernmost part at the top, reproducing the image seen through an inverting astronomical telescope.

Achievements

• 

  Rheita's major achievement was in becoming a first astronomer who produced the first lunar map to represent the Moon as seen through an inverting telescope - with its southern-most features at the top. Rheita's scientific treatise of value is Oculus Enoch et Eliae, opus theologiae, philosophiae, et verbi dei praeconibus utile et iucundum (1645), in which he describes an eyepiece, of his own invention, that re-inverted the inverted images of Keplerian refracting telescopes (1645). Rheita coined the terms "ocular" and "objective."

Religion

In his religious affiliation Schyrleus was a Roman Catholic and at some point served as a priest and was a Capuchin.

Connections

employer:

Philipp Sotern

Schyrleus of Rheita was in service of Kurfürst Philipp Christoph von Sötern, the archbishop of Trier and Speyer, who is held captive by the emperor, Ferdinand III.

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975