The very nature of human organizations creates orthodoxy, and orthodoxies, in turn, give birth to reformers and mavericks, men such as Luther and Kepler. Kepler, as a good Lutheran, found himself at odds with the Lutheran church, but as a thinking Lutheran he almost had to. He believed that to be a good Lutheran, he had to follow his faith, which meant attending to his own conscience, which also meant that if he did not agree with the Formula of Concord in every detail, then he must not sign it. This did not mean that he stood against his church; it meant that he participated in it more fully. For the Württemberg consistory, however, if anyone, especially a famous man such as Kepler, were to be allowed that kind of freedom of conscience, it could eventually spell the end of the church itself.
Kepler and his own church were at odds, and there was no solution in sight. But his position was not completely eccentric. He had searched the works of Christian antiquity, the writings of John of Damascus, Gregory Nazianzen, Fulgentius, Origen, Virgilius, and Cyril, and he could find no trace of the ubiquity doctrine. It was, in his opinion, not part of the Christian heritage. Oddly enough, while the consistory condemned Kepler as a dangerous innovator, Kepler himself believed that the Formula of Concord, by including the ubiquity doctrine, was itself dangerously innovative.
Therefore, Kepler’s fight with the consistory continued. He informed them in a return letter that he would avoid scandal and cause no further troubles for Pastor Hitzler. However, he would not abandon his request for admission to Communion, stating that he would return to it at a later date, perhaps in a different community. Neither the consistory nor Pastor Hitzler would let the matter rest, however. Much of Europe was heading blindly toward the Thirty Years’ War, and the tensions between the Christian confessions drove the authorities in each church to demand rigorous compliance from all of their members. Kepler the famous mathematician could not be allowed to step out of line, which of course was the very attitude that led to the Thirty Years’ War itself. Accusations against Kepler mounted daily:
I have been denounced as a man without principle, approving everyone, incited not by an honest heart, but by a desire to have the friendship of all parties, whatever may happen, today or tomorrow. I have been called a godless scoffer of God’s word and of God’s holy Communion, who cares nothing about whether the church accepted him or not, and who, instead of being eager to receive Communion, decided that it should be kept from him. I have been attacked as a skeptic who in his old age has yet to find a foundation for his faith. I have been condemned as unsteady, now siding with this group, now with that group, as each new and unusual thing is brought into the arena.5
Accusations grew up all around like fungus. Some people accused him of taking sides with the Catholics on specific points just to help his career. Others said he was a Calvinist because he believed in their ideas on Communion. He was like a weathervane turning in the wind—Calvinist in some things, Catholic in others. So he rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, calling it “barbarous.” This didn’t make him a true Lutheran. He wouldn’t accept Dr. Luther’s great book on the captive will either. He even agreed with the Jesuits on the doctrine of ubiquity. So was he Catholic or Lutheran or a Calvinist? He wasn’t any of these things, but a man alone, unchurched, a man who wanted to start his own confession, the Church of Kepler! He was a newcomer, and perhaps an atheist and a heretic. So much for the great mathematician.
Kepler was hurt to the quick by all these accusations. How little those who made them understood him. He struggled daily with his own conscience and could find no way out, for his conscience was the bellwether by which he made all his decisions:
I bear witness before God that I am not happy with this position I find myself in, nor do I want them to judge me as a new man, separate from others. It hurts my heart that these three great blocs have ripped at the truth so terribly that I am left collecting it piece by piece, wherever I can find them. I have no misgivings, however. Instead, I work at reconciling the divisions, if I can do so with the truth, which allows me in all honesty to agree with several of them. So some call me a mockingbird, when I say I often side with two of the divisions against the third. See! I am always hoping for an agreement, agreeing with either all three parties or with two of them against the third one. My antagonists, on the other hand, are happy with only one party, and they imagine for themselves a single irreconcilable quarrel. God willing, my hope is Christian; what those others imagine, I cannot say. God already has rewarded our warring Germany with lamentation.6
Kepler could see what was coming down the road for Germany. This was not prescience, for just about anyone with an honest mind and open eyes could see that what he said was true. The true enemy of Christianity was sectarianism, and what Kepler wanted was peace and unity. He wanted the clouds of war then gathering to dissipate. “I bind myself to all simple Christians, whatever they call themselves, through the bond of Christian love; I am the enemy of misunderstanding, and I speak kindness wherever I can.”7 In this, as in so many things, Kepler was a man out of time. “My conscience commands me to love an enemy and not harm him, to avoid adding new causes for separation; it tells me that I ought to be an example of moderation and mildness for my enemy; perhaps through my actions, I might encourage him to do the same, and then at last may God send us the dear desired peace.”8
For Kepler, it was the authorities of his own church who were beating the war drums, who had broken the peace. “My argument about religion is that the preachers are becoming too haughty in their pulpits. They do not live by the old simplicity. They arouse dispute; they bring up issues that hinder devotion, accuse one another wrongly, stir up the nobles and lords against each other, are too malicious in their interpretations of the actions of the pope, and cause many to fall away when a persecution begins.” In writing to Mästlin, he said “I could quiet the entire dispute by signing the Formula of Concord without reservations. Yet I cannot be hypocritical in questions of conscience. I would sign, if they accepted the reservations I have already presented. I want no part in the fury of the theologians. I shall not judge brothers; for even if they stand or they fall, they are still my brothers and brothers of the Lord. Since I am not a teacher of the church, I should pardon others, speak well of others and interpret favorably, rather than indict, vilify and distort.”9
But this did not end it. The war with his own church had begun and would not pass away that easily. The whispering campaign had had its effect. People glared at him in the streets. People warned one another against him. Those in authority tried to remove him from his teaching position, so that by the autumn of 1616 Kepler’s position as a teacher was in question. The commissioners for the school suddenly discovered that they were paying too much for their mathematics teacher and that the money could be better spent elsewhere. The matter came before the representatives, and some of the members raised all their old objections to hiring Kepler in the first place. There were four groups in the body of representatives: the prelates, the lords, the knights, and the city officials. Old class resentments rose to the surface. The barons were for Kepler, and therefore the knights were against him. Baron von Starhemberg and Baron von Tschernembl defended him once again, and their side won the day, but the matter stayed precarious.
Suddenly a letter arrived from the University of Bologna. Giovanni Antonio Roffeni, a philosophy professor at the university, had written Kepler about the death of the astronomer and mathematician Magini, offering the chair to Kepler. He quickly refused, because Bologna was a Catholic city and too closely allied with the papacy. At heart, he was a German and would never leave his country for another. Also, how could he give up the fight?
A year after Kepler’s arrival in Linz, in 1613, in the middle of his entire struggle with the church, Kepler married again. She was Susanna Reuttinger, a twenty-four-year-old woman from the town of Efferding. Her father and mother were both dead, but they had been upstanding citizens—her father had been a cabinetmaker—so Susanna had a good reputat
ion. Baroness Elizabeth von Starhemberg, the wife of Kepler’s patron, adopted her after her parents had died and for the next twelve years acted as her guardian.
Just before his wedding he wrote to an unknown nobleman, possibly Peter Heinrich von Strahlendorf, and told him the entire sordid story of his courtships. The attacks from the church authorities were in full swing, and Kepler typically wrung his hands over his unhappy conscience. “Can I also discover God inside myself,” he asks, “the God whom I so easily grasp when I consider the universe?”10 Were all his failed courtships not a sign of moral weakness? Maybe they were right about him. Maybe he had so many false starts because of lust, or because he was a fool and lacked judgment, or because he knew nothing. Then Kepler finds his feet and the rest of the letter goes on tongue-in-cheek. One can almost hear him: If I am a fool, then I might as well show it. Perhaps it was all God’s will anyway.
Kepler had decided that he wanted to marry again only a few months after Barbara’s death. There was a widow in Prague whom Barbara had introduced to Johannes before her illness. The widow had been a close acquaintance of Barbara’s, perhaps even a friend, and as her illness deepened Barbara apparently recommended the woman to her husband as a suitable replacement. Shortly after Barbara’s death, out of respect for his dead wife, Kepler presented his case to the widow, who considered it quite seriously: “At first she appeared to agree; she certainly contemplated the matter, but finally excused herself most humbly.”11 This was probably a wise move on her part, because Kepler’s interest in her was founded mostly on grief and on a sense of obligation to Barbara’s memory. This is rarely a good basis for a marriage.
Apparently, there were enough people around who wanted to play matchmaker, so there was another attempt to fix him up. A woman in Prague offered him one of her daughters for marriage, a girl who was quite attractive, “the looks of the curent one and her pleasant face caught my attention.”12 Still, there would have been hell to pay if honor had not been satisfied to the letter. Oddly enough, however, this pretty young girl was too educated for him. “Her education was more brilliant than necessary for me. She had been given more than her share of intellectual pleasures, and she is too young to take on household matters.”13 Apparently, Kepler was not looking for an intellectual equal, but a woman to take care of his children and to run his domestic affairs. In the end, however, the choice was taken out of his hands, when the girl’s mother decided on her own that her daughter was too young for marriage. After that, Kepler left Prague. On his way to Linz he stopped at Kunstadt with his children, and there he met a young girl who turned his head. “Here my soul grew warm. I liked the girl, for she was well brought up, the way I prefer it. She cared about my children with extraordinary willingness.”14 They struck an agreement, and Kepler left his children with her, promising to return from Linz at a later time to collect them and to finalize their arrangements. Before the year was out, however, the girl had, not too surprisingly, become engaged to another man.
In Linz, the process started all over again. The first of the Linzer women was something of a dish. “I fell for her because of her tall build and athletic body, and it would have been settled, had not both love and reason forced a fifth woman on me.”15 We should all have such problems. The fifth woman was Susanna Reuttinger, and he would marry her, but he did not know that yet. “This one won me over with love, humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the stepchildren. I also liked her loneliness and the fact that she was an orphan.”16
But then, he actually listened to people’s advice, which he shouldn’t have done. Helmhard Jörger’s wife preferred the dish athlete to Susanna and convinced Kepler to drop Susanna in favor of the other girl. Kepler was angry at this, but he did it anyway. After all, women know about these things. Then his stepdaughter, Regina, and her husband got into the act and recommended another woman, who came from the nobility and had money to boot. As Kepler said: “…and not without money, which was attractive.” But once again, she was too young for him, and he worried about her noble status, which he feared might make her proud and difficult. Besides, the wedding would have cost him a fortune. All the while, Kepler was still thinking about Susanna and remembering her presence, her voice, the way she carried herself, her kindness. She was in fact perfect for him, because she was intelligent enough to appreciate something of his work and supportive enough to help him continue on with it. But that didn’t stop him from courting a seventh contestant, a woman presented to him by friends, who praised her sophistication and her skill in running a household. Another pretty girl, but Kepler’s heart wasn’t in it. Even as he courted her, he warned her about himself and revealed the doubts he had about her. He wasn’t surprised when she refused him.
Then there was an eighth woman, and he liked her well enough. She wasn’t pretty, but she would have made a good mother; she was honorable, with a good education, and had some money of her own. At first, things went well, but then the woman had doubts, and no one could figure out whether she wanted to marry Kepler or not, so he quietly backed away and found woman number nine. He was unsure; she was unsure—nothing happened. Number ten he didn’t find attractive at all. He was thin as a stick, and she was short and round. Then a friend introduced him to number eleven. Once again, she was a young girl who was not ready for marriage, but the friend wanted to act as go-between and carried on the negotiations in secret. This went on for four months, but once again nothing happened. The girl was too young, as Kepler already knew.
Sick of endless rounds of dating, he prepared for a trip to Regensburg and all the while thought of Susanna. Before leaving, he rode over to see her, declared his love, proposed marriage, and Susanna accepted. One can imagine that she knew he would come back all along.
The wedding took place in Efferding on October 30, 1613. The reception took place at the Sign of the Lion. One story has it that during the reception Kepler got distracted by the problem of inventing a new way to measure the amount of wine in a barrel and spent half the time in a mathematical haze. Because he was the imperial mathematician, he invited Emperor Matthias, who sent his regrets. He also invited the representatives of the Estates, who sent him a wedding gift of a goblet worth about 50 gulden.
When the festivities were over, everyone started complaining again. People did not approve of his choice. Regina wished that he had married the aristocratic girl, and she did not think that Susanna was capable of properly caring for Kepler’s children, who were eleven and six. With time, however, Kepler and his new wife proved them wrong. His marriage to Susanna was far happier than his marriage to Barbara, for she understood him. For the first time, perhaps in his entire life, with his wife and children around him Johannes Kepler found peace.
Over the next fourteen years, Susanna Kepler gave birth to six children. The first three died as babies. Margareta Regina, born on January 7, 1615, struggled with epilepsy and died two years later on September 8 of a simple cough that turned into consumption. Katharina, born July 31, 1617, died eight months later, on February 9. She too caught a cough that turned into consumption or possibly pneumonia. Sebald was born January 28, 1619, and died from smallpox on June 15, 1623, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ.
The last three children survived. Cordula, born on January 22, 1621, came into the world while her mother was visiting Regensburg. Then, two years later, Susanna gave birth to Fridmar on January 24, 1623, and finally, after another two years, Hildebert on April 6, 1625. Kepler liked the name Hildebert and chose it for scholarly reasons. There had once been an eleventh-century theologian by that name who wrote beautifully on the nature and importance of the Eucharist and was the first to use the term “transubstantiation.”
LETTER FROM LUTHER EINHORN, MAGISTRATE OF LEONBERG, TO THE DUKE OF WÜRTTEMBERG
OCTOBER 22, 1616
Highest Honorable Dear Duke and Master:
Recently, the wife of Jörg Haller, a poor townsman and day laborer, forwarded a complaint to me
. Accordingly, on October 18, her little daughter, a girl of about twelve years, helped the brick maker’s daughter carry bricks and limestones to the kiln. That is when the Kepler woman passed them and hit Haller’s girl on the arm. The girl felt pain immediately and her agony grew by the hour, so that she couldn’t move hand or finger. Although the plaintiff (Haller’s wife) does not openly accuse the Kepler woman of magic making or witchcraft, she respectfully requests an investigation as to why the Kepler woman hit her daughter on the arm. Since I saw the girl’s injured arm and hand, I summoned the Kepler woman to the courthouse and had her confronted with the charges.
The Kepler woman did not want to confess and instead called her accuser a liar. She said she did not touch the Haller girl, who was coming toward her at the time. She said she merely passed the girls, but I say that was when she turned around and hit the Haller girl on the arm, which was witnessed by the brick maker’s daughter. So I summoned the brick maker’s girl and, since she is only eleven years old, also her father and mother. The witnesses stated that their daughter, right after it happened, came running home and told her parents that the Kepler woman had hit Haller’s Catarina on the arm and that the Haller girl is in pain. They told their daughter to keep quiet about it. They also stated that the Haller daughter is a pious girl who would not give anyone reason to hit her.
The Kepler woman is now over seventy years of age and her husband, who according to her is still alive, left her twenty-eight years ago. She has been under the intense suspicion of witchcraft for some years now. The wife of the local glazier, Jakob Reinbold, in her defense to the civil charges brought against her by the Kepler woman, swears to her death that the Kepler woman gave her a magic potion four and a half years ago. That potion caused her to suffer inhuman pain that could not be relieved by any remedy or cure. The trial date (for the slander case) had been fixed for last Monday in order to examine the witnesses; however, it was then canceled in light of the above developments.
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