Nicolaus Copernicus is known that Copernicus knew Polish on a par with German and Latin. Historian Michael Burleigh describes the nationality debate as a "totally insignificant battle" between German and Polish scholars during the interwar period. Polish astronomer Konrad Rudnicki calls the discussion a "fierce scholarly quarrel in ... times of nationalism" and describes Copernicus as an inhabitant of a German-speaking territory that belonged to Poland, himself being of mixed Polish-German extraction. Czesław Miłosz describes the debate as an "absurd" projection of a modern understanding of nationality onto Renaissance people, who identified with their home territories rather than with a nation. Similarly,
Nicolas Payen Nicolas Payen Nicolas Payen (also Nicolas Colin) (c. 1512, in Soignies – after April 24, 1559) was a Franco-Flemish composer and choirmaster of the Renaissance, associated with the "Grande Chapelle", the Habsburg imperial chapel, at the end of the reign of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Payen was born in Soignies, and received his earliest musical training in that town, in the church of St. Vincent. When he was about 13 years old he went to Spain to sing in the choir of Charles V; children were commonly recruited in the Low Countries for service in the imperial chapel. In