Tycho and Kepler (30 page)

Among other scholars to whom Kepler sent copies of his book, the reception was mixed. Mästlin agreed with him entirely. Johannes Praetorius, a professor from Altdorf who responded
favorably at first, changed his mind on closer reading and declared that astronomy “could derive no profit
⁶
from these speculations. The planets’ distances should be found by observation”; they meant nothing beyond that. Professor Georg Limnäus from Jena was overjoyed that someone was “reviving the Platonic art
⁷
of philosophizing.”

In his correspondence with Limnäus, Kepler requested information
concerning a famous Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Limnäus’s reply mentioned that Nicolaus Reimers Bär was a “specialist”
⁸
who had “spent some time with” Brahe. Fatefully, Limnäus failed to add that there was antagonism between Tycho and Bär.

Bär, or “Ursus,” as he had latinized his name (
ursus
is Latin for
Bär
, or in English, bear), had risen dramatically in the world since his visit to
Hven. Using false credentials, he had contrived to ingratiate himself with Rudolph II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who was always eagerly on the lookout for a good astrologer. So successful had Ursus’s ploy been that he was now ensconced as imperial mathematician at Rudolph’s court in Prague. In spite of his status, Ursus was not one of the scholars to whom Kepler originally sent copies of
Mysterium
, but Ursus noticed the book listed in the Frankfurt catalog and wrote to Kepler requesting a copy.

That request was not Kepler’s first contact with Ursus. A year and
a
half earlier, in November 1595, at the urging of a supervisor in Graz who praised Ursus highly, Kepler had written to tell him about his polyhedral theory. It was not characteristic of Kepler to be dishonest in his
dealings, but on this occasion, in a flourish of ill-considered disingenuity, Kepler had written, “The little knowledge I have in astronomy I acquired with you, that is, with your books, as my teacher.”
⁹
In fact, Kepler had never read Ursus’s books. His letter also declared, “I love your hypotheses,” and he closed with the words, “Take care of yourself, for the sake of the stars and our science,
O Pride of Germany!” signing himself, “Your excellency’s pupil.” Kepler would live to regret that hyperbole. Ursus’s hypotheses—with which Kepler certainly did not agree (he admitted later in the letter), no matter how much he “loved” them—were those that had the Sun orbiting a motionless Earth and the other planets orbiting the Sun. In other words, Tycho Brahe’s system.

Ursus had not troubled
to reply to Kepler’s letter, but he had not discarded it either. Learning about
Mysterium
, he recognized a delicious opportunity: This obsequious young fool, this Kepler, was no longer a nobody. He had authored a book. Ursus saw that he could strengthen his claim that the “Tychonic system” was his invention by reprinting Kepler’s adulatory letter in his own forthcoming book
De Astronomicis Hypothesibus
(On Astronomical Hypotheses), a vitriolic attack on Tycho. To scholars who read the book, it would appear that Kepler had entered the contest on Ursus’s side.

Kepler had no way of knowing why in May 1597, a year and a half after he had first written Ursus, Ursus was suddenly so friendly, addressing Kepler as “most distinguished man”
¹⁰
and “esteemed friend.” Kepler innocently sent Ursus not
one but two copies of
Mysterium
, requesting that he pass one on, if the opportunity arose, to Tycho Brahe.

I
N THIS SAME
late spring of 1597, Tycho was facing a fresh set of problems in Copenhagen. Though by and large Uraniborg and
the
University of Copenhagen had maintained a relationship that was useful to both—with the university sending
some of its most promising students, such as Longomontanus, to Uraniborg to take advantage of the opportunities there—Tycho had some jealous enemies among the university faculty. Now his presence in the city, in a mansion with an observatory that no university could match, provoked afresh the resentment of men who argued that Tycho’s research drained the university of financial support and its
ablest students.

The animosity came not only from astronomers but also from theologians who were pleased to see him at bay. Tycho found himself in the crossfire between two warring schools of Lutheran theology, the Philippists, who were enthusiastic about the study and advancement of science, and the Gnesio-Lutherans, who were less so. There were other differences, including their attitude
toward marriage. Particularly relevant for Tycho and Kirsten, the Philippists tolerated mutual pledges of betrothal that did not involve a church wedding, while the Gnesio-Lutherans strongly supported the royal ordinance of 1582 that had already caused Tycho to stop taking Communion.

Leaving the island also did not mean leaving behind the problem of Tycho’s tenants. The report of the two royal
commissioners led to a summons to court. Tycho and the peasants of Hven were to appear before the king himself. This time the peasants’ charges had more to do with Tycho’s relationship with the church of St. Ibb’s than with their own oppression. Perhaps they were aware that maintenance of church property had been an issue between Tycho and the king before, and that there were also problems between
Tycho and theologians at the university. The villagers accused Tycho of letting the church deteriorate and pocketing incomes and tithes for himself, of expropriating glebe lands, tearing down parsonage buildings, underpaying the pastor, and appointing and dismissing pastors at whim. Exorcism had been omitted from the ritual of baptism at St. Ibb’s, and Tycho had not corrected this omission.
Tycho countercharged that
the
peasants had maliciously damaged the Stjerneborg instruments. The proceedings were discontinued pending further investigation.

The pastor of St. Ibb’s, Jens Jenson Wensøsil, fared worse in this round of the investigation than Tycho did. Wensøsil was charged and found guilty of omitting exorcism from the ritual of baptism and failing to punish and admonish Tycho
Brahe for living a sinful life with his common-law wife and for missing Communion for eighteen years. The attack on Wensøsil was clearly a thinly veiled attack on Tycho. It was Tycho who had ordered Wensøsil to omit exorcism, thereby revealing his own Philippist rather than Gnesio-Lutheran sympathies. It was Tycho who had chosen not to take Communion and violate the ban having to do with common-law
marriages. Crown lawyers knew that attacks on Tycho’s marriage were pointless, for it was legal under the ancient Jutish law to which any nobleman had the right to appeal. Unable to touch Tycho himself, his enemies had brought down the vulnerable pastor instead. Wensøsil was imprisoned in a dungeon for a month and, according to Tycho, “would have been beheaded
¹¹
if powerful friends had not intervened.”
When Wensøsil emerged, he fled to Tycho’s mansion.

Tycho suffered an even greater indignity than having to defend himself against his peasants before the king or see his pastor take the brunt of the hatred that was intended for him. The town constable came to Tycho’s door in the name of the king, who had a view of Tycho’s mansion from Copenhagen Castle across the water, and ordered Tycho to
remove the instruments he had mounted on the bastions and the city walls behind the mansion. Christian claimed they spoiled his view. All work ended at Tycho’s Copenhagen observatory. He became, again, a laughingstock at court.

On June 1 Tycho sent Longomontanus away with a letter of recommendation to future employers. Franz Tengnagel, a young Westphalian nobleman who had been one of Tycho’s
assistants since 1595, departed for the Netherlands. The next day, Tycho and his household, still more than twenty people, left Copenhagen.

The long, lumbering column of carriages and heavy wagons took the road south. The carriages carried Tycho and Kirsten, their six children (all but Magdalene were in their teens), and the pastor Wensøsil. The wagons were loaded down with Tycho’s three thousand
books, his manuscripts, his laboratory equipment, the printing press, all his astronomical instruments except four in Stjerneborg, household goods, furniture, the family’s clothing and personal belongings, and iron-bound chests containing all their wealth in gold, silver, and jewels. Household servants rode in some of the wagons, and there were armed men on horseback for protection, as well
as extra horses and numerous teamsters for hauling, loading, tending the draft animals, prodding them on and off the boats where there was water to cross, wading with them through river fords, and prising wagons out of muddy ditches. Tycho probably also brought along good horses for himself and his two sons, so that they could make periodic checks on the entire length of the caravan.

Tycho
was taking his entire life with him, except for two empty mansions and four instruments in an observatory. He had always been somewhat prepared for this contingency, despite outward confidence and a recent dangerous tendency to forget how ephemeral the favor of princes could be. When he ordered his first quadrant at Augsburg, he had had it designed to be easily dismantled, and he had followed that
practice ever since except with the four largest instruments. “An astronomer must be cosmopolitan, because ignorant statesmen cannot be expected to value their services,” had been his youthful, prophetic words. More recently, while he had seemed to be struggling to continue at Hven, he had also been making thorough and extensive preparations to make this move and do it in a style befitting a man
of his wealth and stature.

The caravan wound past Vordingborg, the massive castle fortress where Tycho had lived as a boy. There, all the wagons and the carriages were loaded onto ferries for the next leg of the journey to the port of Gedser on the southern tip of Denmark, where they took a ship for
Rostock
, less than two months after saying farewell to Uraniborg and Hven. Tycho, at fifty
years old, was an exile from the country that had celebrated him and supported him and his work for twenty-one years.

Uraniborg stood deserted, an odd, magnificent shell of a house. On the wall where the mural quadrant had been, Tycho’s portrait gazed at nothing. The library shelves were empty, the great globe gone, the alchemical furnaces cold. No water spouted from the fountain at the center
of the house. No summons came to the garret rooms through the secret communication system. Beyond the formal gardens, the four great instruments of Stjerneborg gathered dust in the darkness, the wooden roofs that protected them from the elements stayed in place night after night, never pulled back so that the sights could be pointed at the stars. David Pedersen, Tycho’s bailiff, summoned laborers
from Tuna each day to maintain the manor and occasionally received aid from representatives of the crown to maintain order, for the peasants of Hven were ready to tear house, gardens, and observatory down stone by stone, use the materials elsewhere, and make the land a pasture again.

Eventually, that was what they did. Though all over Denmark and Sweden castles and stately homes older than
Uraniborg are still inhabited or lovingly preserved, nothing remains of Tycho’s. There is no record of a protest or any regrets when the cornerstone of his paper mill was found on Hven and removed to Knutstorp in 1824. It was donated then to the historical museum in Lund, but when the museum showed little enthusiasm about displaying it, it was trundled back to Knutstorp.
^fn2

Tycho’s name remained
anathema on Hven for generations. Not until the late twentieth century did attitudes on the island change and the legend of the evil lord who had built his detestable palace on the common land finally fade. Conservators of the site of Uraniborg planted a hedge to show its footprint, restored part of the outer wall and a quarter of the gardens, and made Stjerneborg a well-marked archaeological
site. They built a small museum and are currently also trying to repair Tycho’s reputation, for the image of him as a half-mad, fire-breathing tyrant had spread into the history books. Revisionist descriptions of Tycho give him much more sympathetic treatment than he has received in the past. In the restored garden at Uraniborg, a splendid statue of him, robed, instrument in hand, gazes with powerful
intensity at the heavens.