POLAND: The Baltic coastal village of Frombork prides itself as the home town of Nicolaus Copernicus, the astronomer and scientific revolutionary who showed that earth revolved around the sun.
There's a Copernicus museum and a Copernicus altar; even the tower where he did his stargazing almost 500 years ago has been carefully preserved. One thing has been missing: Copernicus himself.
The people of Frombork have long known that Copernicus died somewhere around here in 1543, but the failure of their ancestors to record exactly where he was buried has fuelled one of the most enduring mysteries in Polish history.
Recently, however, a team of archaeologists reported a breakthrough: the discovery of a skull deep below the flagstones of the 14th-century Frombork cathedral.
Aided by fresh historical research and a high-tech police crime lab, the archaeologists have tentatively concluded that the skull - that of a man with a broken nose who was approximately 70 years old when he died - is indeed that of the astronomer.
The findings have aroused excitement in Poland, where Copernicus is regarded as a national hero. But they have also forced Poles to make some uncomfortable reckonings with history, such as the question of whether Copernicus was Polish at all.
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland, in 1473, and moved to Frombork in 1510. Shortly after arriving, he began formulating radical theories about astronomy, including the idea that earth circled the sun, rather than vice versa.
Catholic leaders declared his work theologically incorrect, placing it on the church's Index of Forbidden Books, where it remained until 1835.
Under Poland's post-war communist government, Copernicus was celebrated as a national icon. But his burial site remained a mystery, in part because church leaders were not eager to allow communist functionaries dig up their property.
That obstacle was removed with the coming of democracy in 1989. But it wasn't until 2004 that another organised search began, on the instruction of the auxiliary bishop of Warmia, a region that includes Frombork.
The bishop, Jacek Jezierski, said his primary motivation was to bring some order to the jumbled mess of skeletons lying under the cathedral. But he acknowledged that it was important for the Catholic Church - and Poland - to give the astronomer his place in history.
"Among Poles there is a strong feeling of pride and sense of close bonds with Nicolaus Copernicus," the bishop says. "We have to bury him with due respect. This will be the homage paid by the church to Nicolaus Copernicus."
Although he was born and buried in what is now Poland, the astronomer spoke German and may have had German ancestors - a fact that is occasionally trumpeted by German newspapers and magazines, which rank Copernicus as one of the most eminent Germans of all time.
Such claims gall many people in Poland, where resentment is still acute over long German and Prussian occupations of their land. And that has added a touch of politics to the search for his body.
"There is this delicate issue of his nationality," Bishop Jezierski says. "After World War II, this matter was given immense attention, and his Polishness was stressed very strongly. But it is not so easy. We know that his family was undergoing the process of assimilation as Poles. We know that he wrote in Latin, but probably spoke German in everyday life."
Whatever Copernicus's nationality, a team of archaeologists set out last August to find him, digging a large, eight-foot-deep hole in the floor of the Frombork cathedral. After several days of painstaking work, the crew had uncovered more than a dozen skeletons, but none that appeared to be of a man of Copernicus's age.
The excavation pit was growing so deep that the crew feared it might destabilise the foundation of the massive cathedral, and they prepared to call off the search. Poking around in the dirt one last time, however, they discovered another skull.
It was missing its lower jaw, but an anthropological examination indicated that it belonged to a man about 70 years old who had suffered a broken nose. This raised the level of excitement, because contemporary portraits of Copernicus suggest his nose was crooked.
The only way to eliminate any doubt is to match DNA from the skull with a sample from a known descendant or relative of the astronomer. That won't be easy, since Copernicus had no children.
But researchers think they have a solution. They are now preparing another excavation to look for the remains of Copernicus's uncle, the former bishop of Warmia, who is also believed to be buried in Frombork cathedral.
Exactly where, no one is sure. - (Los Angeles Times/Washington Post service)