The book that Tycho now held in his hands was even more disturbing. Not only did it attack Tycho as an astronomer and plagiarize his work, it was also a scurrilous personal assault on him and his family. According to Ursus, Tycho had been forced to leave Denmark because he had committed an atrocious crime. Ursus mocked Tycho’s disfigurement, commenting that Tycho could “discern double-stars9 through the triple holes in his nose.” Of Tycho’s wife and eldest daughter, Ursus wrote “the daughter . . . was not yet nubile at the time I was there and so not of much use to me for the usual purpose. But I don’t know whether or not the merry crew of friends who were with me had dealings with Tycho’s concubine or his kitchen-maid.” If there had previously been any question whether Ursus had actually plagiarized Tycho’s system, this book made it clear he had. “Let it be theft,” Ursus jeered, “but it was intellectual. Learn to safeguard your possessions hereafter.” The book also brought Tycho the chilling news that Ursus was now Rudolph II’s imperial mathematician. Though Tycho could never hold that title himself, because it was too lowly for a nobleman, Ursus clearly stood in his way.
As Tycho leafed through Ursus’s book, he saw that Ursus had included a reprint of a letter from a young scholar in Graz. The name, Johannes Kepler, meant nothing to Tycho, but the tone of his letter—Kepler had written to Ursus, “The bright glory10 of thy fame . . . makes thee rank first among the mathematici of our time like the sun among the minor stars”—was enough to ensure eternal enmity between Tycho and this fawning young idiot.
When Tycho put aside Ursus’s book and picked up the second book he had received that day, he found that by astounding coincidence it was from this same Kepler. The book introduced a new scheme for explaining the planetary orbits using the Platonic solids. The third item Tycho received, the letter, was also from Johannes Kepler, asking Tycho to give his opinion of his book. There were only two possibilities: Either this Kepler lacked the wits to foresee that Ursus’s book would inevitably come to Tycho’s attention, or else Ursus had published the letter without Kepler’s knowledge or permission.
Tycho did not react by tossing Johannes Kepler’s book into the fire. Instead he looked carefully at the little volume. Tycho disagreed with its espousal of Copernican theory, but the book gave clear evidence of a brilliant mind entirely out of sync with a mind such as Ursus’s. Tycho had experience judging young talent and knew it when he saw it. He must also have recognized a fellow master of adulatory and not necessarily sincere rhetoric. Here, side by side, were Kepler’s letter in Ursus’s book that praised Ursus as “first among the mathematici of our time like the sun among the minor stars,” and Kepler’s letter that called Tycho “the prince of mathematicians11 not only of our time but of all times.” Perhaps Tycho was wryly amused that this ranking did, in fact, place him somewhat above Ursus.
The title page of Ursus’s scurrilous book On Astronomical Hypotheses.
Tycho concluded that a campaign to discredit and destroy Ursus could no longer be postponed. He wrote to Longomontanus, asking him to try to remember everything he could about Ursus’s visit to Uraniborg and to come to Wandsburg as soon as possible to discuss the matter. He also began to round up copies of Ursus’s book to burn them. Finally, he set in motion a plan to turn Johannes Kepler’s blunder to his own advantage.
Due to lack of dependable mail or courier service in late-sixteenth-century Europe, though Kepler had sent his book off to Tycho in the late winter of 1598, no news from or concerning Tycho would reach Kepler until the following late autumn. During those beleaguered months, when Kepler was twenty-six, he had many other concerns in addition to who was reading and reacting to his book, but he found the time to pen a whimsical description of himself, in the third person, as a “house dog”:
That man [Kepler] has in every way12 a dog-like nature. His appearance is that of a little house dog. His body is agile, wiry, and well-proportioned. Even his appetites were the same: he liked gnawing bones and dry crusts of bread, and was so greedy that whatever his eyes chanced on he grabbed; yet, like a dog, he drinks little and is content with the simplest food. His habits were also like a house dog. He continually sought the goodwill of others, was dependent on others for everything, ministered to their wishes, never got angry when they reproved him and was anxious to get back into their favor. He was constantly on the move, ferreting among the sciences, politics, and private affairs, including the most trivial kind; always following someone else, and imitating his thoughts and actions. He is impatient with conversation but greets visitors just like a dog; yet when the smallest thing is snatched away from him he flares up and growls. He tenaciously persecutes wrong-doers—that is, he barks at them. He is malicious and bites people with his sarcasms. He hates many people exceedingly and they avoid him, but his masters are fond of him. He has a dog-like horror of baths, tinctures, and lotions. His recklessness knows no limits; yet he takes good care of his life.
Kepler’s relationship with his father-in-law was not going well. “He hurt me with his contempt13 and mocking,” Kepler wrote, “though my imagination made this problem worse than it was in reality. He wanted to take away or alienate my stepdaughter. I provoked him [all the more] through the intensity of my anger.”
Kepler and Barbara’s first child, Heinrich, had been born on February 2. The horoscope Kepler had cast for him promised a life far happier than those of the two previous Heinrich Keplers, Johannes’s father and brother. The stars suggested that he would be like his father, “only better14, with charm, nobility of character, nimbleness of body and mind, and mathematical and mechanical aptitude.” None of that was to be, for the baby Heinrich lived only two months.
In June Kepler wrote to Mästlin, who had also recently lost his own little son, “Time does not lessen15 my wife’s grief, and this passage [from Ecclesiastes] strikes at my heart: ‘O vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.’” In the same letter Kepler spoke of his increasingly serious misgivings about the religious situation in Graz. The tension between Catholics and Lutherans had been worsening from year to year and was beginning to erupt in open hostility. The present escalation dated from December 1596, the December after Kepler’s return from his leave in Germany. Archduke Ferdinand II had come of age and assumed rule over Inner Austria, including Styria and Graz. Ferdinand’s father had tolerated Protestants in his lands, but his wife, Ferdinand’s mother, was a fervent Catholic who was appalled by this tolerance, and Ferdinand himself had grown up in Catholic Bavaria and been educated by Jesuits. Protestants feared that Ferdinand would enforce his rights under the Peace of Augsburg and compel all his subjects to convert to Catholicism.
For the first few months after Ferdinand’s coming of age, those fears began to seem unfounded. However, in the summer of 1598, when Kepler brought the matter up in his letter to Mästlin, Ferdinand was meeting Pope Clement VIII in Rome, and the citizens of Graz were waiting with trepidation to see what changes might follow. They were right to worry: The Counter-Reformation in Graz was about to begin in earnest.
Kepler watched in despair as his fellow Protestants—buoyed by false confidence because they had so long held the balance of power in their hands—invited their own disaster, openly taunting Catholics, circulating vulgar caricatures of the pope, even mocking the worship of Mary with an obscene gesture from the pulpit. The Catholics retaliated. In the hospitals for the poor, Protestant patients were passed by without treatment. There were new high taxes for Protestant burials. Finally, the Catholic archpresbyter forbade every Lutheran sacrament, including marriage and Communion.
The Lutherans appealed to Archduke Ferdinand, but on September 13 Ferdinand responded with even harsher measures, and this time they affected the Keplers directly. The Lutheran college and all Lutheran church and school ministries would be closed within fourteen days. Ten days later the archbishop banished all Protestant ministers and teachers. They had to be gone from the city before the week was up, on penalty of death.
Again the Lutherans protested and s
ummoned the assembly of the Estates of Styria. The counselors begged the archduke to repeal his decree. Instead, Ferdinand ordered that all collegiate preachers, rectors, and school employees must not only be out of Styria within the previous deadline, but they must depart Graz and its environs by nightfall. Anyone failing to obey would face “the loss of life and limb.” Kepler and the rest of the faculty at his school hastily packed a few essentials and fled into the country outside the city, leaving their families behind and hoping the archduke would relent. Not one of them other than Kepler was allowed to return.
Kepler had several advantages working in his favor. In addition to his position at the school, he was the district mathematician. Because this was a neutral office, neither Protestant nor Catholic, it provided a valuable argument for allowing Kepler to remain in Graz. Kepler also had friends in high places who could make this argument for him. He had been carrying on a lively correspondence about scientific questions with the Bavarian chancellor Hans Georg Herwart von Hohenburg. Although the chancellor was a devout Catholic, he remained a helpful and sympathetic friend in the present crisis. Kepler had other influential contacts as well and knew that Ferdinand himself enjoyed hearing about his scientific discoveries. When Kepler petitioned for permission to return to the city, his petition was granted. For the time being, he was safe.
Protestants still in Graz temporarily found ways to circumvent the ban on Protestant worship by attending services at nearby country estates whose Protestant clergy had not been sent away. There was soon an end to that as well, and new ordinances required Protestants to baptize their children as Catholics and marry only in Catholic ceremonies. “Heretical” books were banned, including Luther’s translation of the Bible. Searches took place throughout the city, and ten thousand volumes were burned.
Kepler had no teaching duties now that the school was closed. He spent his days immersed in new thoughts about the harmony of the heavens. Von Hohenburg loaned him books he could not find in Graz, but Kepler did more than read. As he put it, “He who distinguishes himself16 by intellectual agility has no inclination to concern himself much with the reading of the works of others. He does not want to lose any time.” He was beginning the speculation that would result in his book Harmonice Mundi twenty years later, and also keeping his eye out for a new job.
Thus it was that in the early autumn of 1598, Kepler, like Tycho, was seeking employment. He was making the best of a far less impressive network than Tycho’s. An appointment at the University of Tübingen seemed the obvious solution, but Kepler’s inquiry there aroused no interest at all. Meanwhile, the letter Tycho had written in April, reacting to Kepler’s letter and book and praise of Ursus, and a letter from Mästlin concerning the same, were floating about in European mail limbo. Kepler still had not learned that Tycho had actually penned a vague invitation to join him. There was no easy way Kepler could have acted on that invitation, even had he known of it. Tycho was far away, and the offer was not concrete enough to encourage Kepler to make such a journey. He could only go on yearning in vain for a glimpse of Tycho’s superior observations of the heavens.
TYCHO, from his Wandsburg palace, continued to play his cards brilliantly during that summer and autumn of 1598, showing no signs of having lost his touch as a courtier: Emperor Rudolph’s three most powerful advisers—his personal physician Hagecius, his vice chancellor Rudolph von Coraduz, and Johannes Barvitius—were all working in Tycho’s cause. Rudolph heard from this undisputed inner circle at his court—as well as from his gem artist and astrologer Caspar Lehmann—that princes, archbishops, and scholars all over Europe were poring over splendid illustrations in books Tycho Brahe had sent them as gifts. No book had arrived for Rudolph, but the reason for this omission was in the air at court: Tycho wished to present it to the emperor in person. Soon Lehmann reported that Rudolph could scarcely contain his eagerness to meet Tycho and would offer him a sumptuous dwelling. In mid-August Tycho heard from his other contacts that the time was ripe for him to come to Prague: The emperor was indeed prepared to extend his patronage.
Even while Tycho’s fortunes were improving, Ursus had never been far from his mind. Longomontanus, having just completed his master’s degree at Rostock, was back for a time that summer, mainly to discuss the Ursus problem. It gave much cause for celebration when the news arrived from Lehmann that the emperor had lost all confidence in the trustworthiness and abilities of his present imperial mathematician.
By September 29 Tycho, his family, and his retainers had packed everything up for another move, and the great household was ready to depart from Wandsburg. Instruments, library, furniture were on the wagons again, lashed down and protected from the weather. The carriages were brought, and the horses harnessed. Footmen helped Kirsten and the children into their carriages. The armed escorts mounted. Tycho’s carriage with its six horses led the way, and the long train of animals, wagons, carriages, and outriders fell into line, rattled back across the drawbridge of Wandsburg, and turned south along the Elbe River, in the direction of Prague.
This time, the journey was more like a royal progress than moving house. There had been time to prepare, have proper clothing made for himself and his wife and children, inform noble and scholarly friends and kinsmen that he would be calling on them along the way. By October 5 the convoy reached Harburg, not far from Hamburg, where Tycho elicited another letter of reference, this one from the aged Duke Otto II of Braunschweig-Lüneburg to the imperial high steward at the court.
When they reached Magdeburg, Tycho took advantage of the presence of an old friend and correspondent, Rector Georg Rollenhagen, to further his campaign to crush Ursus. It was from Rollenhagen that Tycho had first learned about Ursus’s earlier book, Fundaments of Astronomy, in which Ursus claimed the Tychonic system as his own, and Rollenhagen had put Tycho in touch with Lehmann, his brother, at the imperial court. Tycho now took the opportunity to question Rollenhagen in detail about an incident in 1586 when Ursus, asked to explain his planetary system, had proved mysteriously incapable of doing so—further evidence that he had not invented it himself. Rollenhagen supported Tycho’s decision that a nobleman should not sully himself by disputing directly with a pig farmer—no matter how high that pig farmer had risen—but should allow lawyers, clients, and friends to take care of this matter for him.
Tycho had also summoned Erik Lange to Magdeburg. After making it clear he would not cooperate with Lange’s “appalling plan” to accompany him to Prague to interest the emperor in underwriting his experiments for turning base metals into gold, Tycho compelled Lange to testify before a notary about Ursus’s behavior those many years ago at Uraniborg. By this time Tycho must have all but given up hoping that Kepler would ever respond to his letter of the previous April, which had included a request for a document Tycho could use against Ursus.
The stop in Magdeburg gave Tycho time to consider whether it might not work against his interests to arrive in Prague accompanied by family and twenty-two wagons, as though he were a refugee casting himself on Rudolph’s mercy or, on the other hand, an overconfident man taking Rudolph’s munificence too much for granted. A lack of total commitment to the move might even help in negotiations having to do with how generous the emperor’s patronage would be. If it seemed advisable to retreat for a time, Tycho would have a good excuse, to return to his family and work. Perhaps most compelling of all, the journey would go much more quickly than it could with all the wagons, and winter was not far away. Tycho reverted to an earlier plan of taking a small company of assistants and only a few of his instruments with him. He left the other instruments and much of the baggage train in Magdeburg, and Kirsten and their daughters and servants, escorted by Longomontanus, returned to Wandsburg. Tycho continued the journey with his two sons and a few other retainers, including the superbly effective Tengnagel.
They still did not ride posthaste to Prague, but stayed a month in Dresden while waiting for surer confirmation that a suitable welcome awaited Tycho. Word c
ame that the emperor was delighted to hear he was on his way to Prague, but that an epidemic was raging in the area, winter was closing in, and the court had temporarily moved from the city. Tycho was advised to wait until spring. He decided to winter in Wittenberg, Martin Luther’s old city.
fn1 It was this catalog—not a better one—that Kepler later used.
15
CONTACT
November 1598–June 1599
IN LATE NOVEMBER or early December 1598, Kepler opened a letter from1 an extremely agitated Mästlin. This was the first Kepler knew that he had made a fool of himself with potentially disastrous results for his career, and Mästlin’s letter did not even make it clear precisely what the situation was, except that it was bad.
The reply Tycho had written Kepler2 shortly after receiving the two books and Kepler’s letter at Wandsburg never reached Kepler. But Tycho had sent Mästlin a copy3, and Mästlin, reading that in June and assuming that Kepler had the original, had immediately written to Kepler, reprimanding him for praising Ursus when Mästlin himself had warned him that the man’s work was worthless. Then Mästlin’s reprimand had also gone astray and taken five months to reach Kepler.
Kepler asked Mästlin to send him a copy of Tycho’s April letter, and finally had that in his hands in February. It was not nearly so awful as he had been expecting. It was even rather polite and complimentary. Although Tycho expressed some reservations about the polyhedral theory, he wrote that he found it extremely ingenious and hoped Kepler would try applying it to the Tychonic system. He went on to comment, however, that Copernicus’s measurements for the planetary distances were not accurate enough for the purposes to which Kepler was putting them, and Kepler might want to use instead the more accurate observations that he, Tycho, had made.
Tycho and Kepler Page 22
