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According to his disciple Rethicus, Copernicus had been "adiutor & testis observationum doctissimi viri Dominici Mariae", in the years in which he lived and studied in Bologna, at the end of the 15th century. This is Domenico Maria Ploti da Novara, holder of the chair “at Astronomiam” in the Bolognese Studium. A pupil in Ferrara of Giovanni Bianchini and in correspondence with Regiomontanus, both among the greatest astronomers of the fifteenth century, Novara in his time enjoyed a wide reputation.
He had hosted Copernicus at his home, was his teacher of astronomy and made him take part in his astronomical observations, some of which are mentioned in "De revolutionibus".
Novara was therefore a participant, certainly unaware, of the beginning of that passage between the closed and finite universe of late medieval astronomy-astrology and the next infinite worlds that will give rise to the new astronomy.
Hence the importance of the study of the only remaining works of the Ferrarese astronomer-astrologer, the year-to-year drawn up "Pronostici", to add a further step on Copernicus’ astronomical studies in Bologna.
