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The presentation of Copernicus's theory in its final form is inseparable from the conflicted history of its publication. When Rheticus left Frauenburg to return to his teaching duties at Wittenberg, he took the manuscript with him in order to arrange for its publication at Nurnberg, the leading centre of printing in Germany. Instead of going to the top printer in the city, Johann Petreius, he went to Andreas Osiander. Before he began printing the manuscript, Osiander had urged Copernicus to present his ideas as purely hypothetical, and he introduced certain changes without either Rheticus' or Copernicus' consent Both Petreius and Rheticus, having trusted Osiander, now found themselves double-crossed. It was not until Kepler that Copernicus's cluster of predictive mechanisms would be fully transformed into a new philosophy about the fundamental structure of the universe. Legend has it that a copy of De revolutionibus was placed in Copernicus's hands a few days after he lost consciousness from a stroke. He awoke long enough to realize that he was holding his great book and then expired, publishing as he perished.
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