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Kepler's Witch

Page 36

by James A. Connor


  Reports of war filtered down to Kepler almost weekly: a bloody skirmish here, another battle there, someone denouncing the emperor, someone being denounced. Kepler hated it, calling the whole warlike noise “barbaric neighing.” Worst of all for Kepler was the loss of intellectual freedom. No one could think honestly; no one could argue; no one could search for the truth in mutual fellowship. The slightest disagreement had become a cause for debate, and the slightest debate had then become the cause for denunciation. “What execrable stupidity forces these people to run into the middle of new fires when trying to escape old ones!”15 The world had become chaos all around him, with people running as if they were crazed from one battle to the next, and Christianity itself had become the cause for war.

  Kepler’s solution to this chaos was typically Platonic. Everyone should study mathematics and philosophy, he said, “so that the contemplation of these things would lead the mind away from desire and the other passions, out of which emerge wars and all other evils, to a love of tranquillity and temperance in all things.” This was a sweet idea, if a bit naïve. But it fit the rest of his mysticism—if one could not find peace on earth, one could find it in the contemplation of the heavens. But Kepler also understood that the world had gone beyond good advice. The people of his time had become beasts, driven mad by religion, which was a state of affairs that, in the long run, only God could cure. “The more anyone falls in love with mathematics, the more fervent will be his dedication to God, and the more he himself will make every effort to practice gratitude, the crown of virtues, so that he will join me in prayer to the merciful God that much more sincerely: let him crush the warlike confusion, eliminate devastation, snuff out hatred, and venture forth to discover that golden harmony once again.”16

  Ultimately, Kepler was a man of hope. He believed that the war would end and that sooner or later Christian Europe would come to its senses. When that happened, he believed, God’s grace would shine in the world, for those who committed the sin of war would repent in dust and ashes, and Europe would be reborn. But no one wanted to listen to such optimism. This was partly because of their stubbornness and partly because in this religious war Kepler was sitting out alone in no-man’s-land. His own church, the church of his parents and grandparents, the church that had raised him and had given him his education, the church of his own conscience, had rejected him. It had rejected him because, like his mother, he would not bend, he would not be the obedient believer that they demanded he be, because he would not believe in the authority of the consistory to overthrow his reason. It had rejected him, but he had not rejected it, for no matter what they thought, Kepler was a Lutheran—in his heart a member in good standing. The fact that they would not include him in Communion hurt him deeply, but in his own mind it did not place him outside the church. How the church leaders wanted to behave was their business.

  Meanwhile, the Catholic Counter-Reformation was waiting to pluck Kepler like a pear. Because of his desire to treat all Christians with courtesy and to befriend anyone who shared his love of astronomy, Kepler had built many friendships among the Jesuits and often stayed in Jesuit houses as he traveled across Europe. Jesuits Johannes Deckers in Graz, Albert Curtius in Dillingen, and Paul Guldin in Vienna were all regular correspondents and often debated the fine points of theology with him. Each of these men was deeply interested in astronomy, and all harbored a not so secret desire to bring Kepler to the Catholic faith. They would fail. In his letters, Kepler repeatedly reminded his Catholic friends that it was their church that created laws to oppress their Protestant fellow Christians, laws that Kepler too had suffered from. They were the ones using the power of the state to silence opposition and in that were one of the worst offenders. Kepler reminded them that he was still a Lutheran and would remain so. He proved this when Pastor Hitzler, the Lutheran minister who had caused him so much trouble and done so much damage to him, was finally released from prison and exiled from Upper Austria. Kepler regularly wrote to him in Württemberg to send along his greetings and good wishes.17

  In 1625, however, things began to move in the wider world. Duke Albert von Wallenstein had convinced the emperor to put him in command of an army, so that he could fight under the general command of Count Tilly, the victor at White Mountain and also the commander-in-chief of all the forces loyal to the Catholic League. The emperor was not disappointed. Wallenstein soon defeated the remaining followers of Friedrich, the onetime king of Bohemia, and consolidated Ferdinand’s power over his territories. Ferdinand was now more powerful than ever, which was fine for Ferdinand, but the rest of Europe worried. It was good that Ferdinand had managed to put down his little rebellion, and everyone agreed that the Catholic church’s success with the Counter-Reformation in Austria was laudable, but having a Habsburg emperor with real power behind him frightened everyone.

  Cardinal Richelieu began scheming at once. He had been running the French government for one year when Wallenstein took command and, typical of Richelieu, the arch-Frenchman, he did everything he could to undermine Ferdinand’s position. Admittedly, he was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church and a supporter of the Counter-Reformation and, admittedly, Ferdinand was doing the work of the church, but Richelieu was a Frenchman first and gave his primary efforts to the ascendancy of France, even at the expense of the faith.

  Secretly, he contacted the Danish king Christian IV, who was always looking for good fight, and offered him money to take on the Habsburgs. Christian invaded, and Tilly and Wallenstein quickly made plans to coordinate their armies in the fight against the Danes and then to take on the princes of northern Germany along with them, thereby bringing the Counter-Reformation into another Protestant stronghold.

  Then, unexpectedly, in the spring of 1626 a peasant revolt exploded in Upper Austria. The pressure that Kepler could see building after his return to Linz 1621 had finally burst. The forced conversions, the loss of a proper Lutheran ministry, the insulting presence of the Bavarian soldiers had all slowly enraged the Austrian peasants, and, as if with a single unified shout, they rose up and formed an army. Amazingly, they organized themselves into troops and burned and plundered the homes and castles of the powerful. Monks and nuns fled into the night as peasant battalions gathered around their cloisters and burned them to the ground. A new leader emerged among them—Stephen Fadinger—who not only formed them into an army, but a successful army. They quickly conquered the city of Wels, occupied it, and then laid siege to Linz. That day was June 24, a day when farmers would ordinarily be planting and growing crops, and so the quick drop in agriculture promised a lean winter. Many starved in the city, and some took to eating horsemeat. The peasants besieged Linz for nearly two months, until August 29, when the peasant army withdrew at the appearance of imperial forces. Eventually, by the end of that year Count Peppenheim defeated the peasants and slaughtered them by the thousands.

  During the siege, the peasants started a fire that destroyed the house of Johannes Planck, Kepler’s printer. Planck was in the middle of printing the Rudolphine Tables at the time, and his printing press and all that he had printed up to that time was destroyed, with the exception of those parts that Kepler had taken home. Kepler would have to begin again with another printer. To do that, he would have to leave town.

  At the time, Kepler was living in a country house near the city walls. The battle burned on all around him, and the city had garrisoned troops in Kepler’s house. Every time the battle caught fire one more time, men rushed out to fight, no matter what time of the day or night. Guns fired off all the time, the air was filled with the smell of gunpowder, and the noise of the war was all about him. All in all, Kepler was lucky. He was one of the few who did not starve during the siege. He had enough food to keep his family healthy, so none of them were forced to eat horsemeat or rats.

  When the battle was finally over and the peasant rebellion put down, Kepler knew that he could no longer print the Rudolphine Tables in Linz, so he wrote to the emperor to ask permission t
o leave Austria and move to Ulm. Ferdinand agreed, for there was nothing else the emperor could do if he wanted the tables printed. Once again, Kepler packed his bags, his possessions, his family, and his precious set of printer’s type, loaded them onto a barge, and traveled up the Danube to Regensburg. He would complete the Rudolphine Tables. He must. He was committed to it.

  LETTER FROM KEPLER TO JOHANN MATTHIAS BERNEGGER

  FEBRUARY 15, 1621

  My second homeland, that I left behind, is in much danger with the yoke of tyranny around its neck. If the noose tightens, my return will not be possible. But I won’t despair just yet, I still hesitate to extend my thanks to the Stände and continue my duty under danger, if I am able to and they will not dismiss me. Shall I go overseas, where Wotton invites me? I, a German who loves the mainland and fears the closeness of an island…. I, with a young wife and a flock of children. The maternal inheritance of my children and my assets are deposited with the Austrian Stände. If the Stände will be dissolved, which I see coming, all that will remain is that the people forgo their property. Recently it became illegal in Bavaria to pay even a penny to a creditor or wage earner. Even if this is a temporary law, I fear it can become a permanent one.

  FROM KEPLER’S JOURNAL 1623

  The year 1623. A son, Fridmar, was born to me on January 24 in Linz. He was baptized in the country home of the honorable Johannes Reu (?), first preacher. Godparents: Dr. Abraham Schwarz, Herr Sebastian Paumaister, Baron Jörger with wife Katharina, maiden name Hagen, from Kärnten. My son Sebald, completely exhausted by smallpox, died on Corpus Christi Day. I published the “Glaubensbekenntnis” [“Confession of Faith”].

  XV

  My Duty under Danger

  Where Kepler seeks a home for his last few years after fleeing Linz, argues with the Jesuits, finds patronage with Wallenstein, and dies in Regensburg.

  KEPLER TOOK TO THE ROAD once again, but this time there was no Tycho Brahe waiting at the other end to welcome him. Where would he find a home this time? How would he live? How would he raise his children? Where would he find a place to work in peace? All of Europe was at war it seemed, and wherever he tried to run, the war was already there. Kepler’s greatest joy was in the ecstasy of perfect order, in the astonishing beauty of God’s mind, and that is where he preferred to stay; and yet, as if by some irresistible force of gravity, he was forever pulled back to the mud and the blood of the earth, to live out his life in the battlefield that was Germany.

  The most immediate task before him was to find a publisher for the Rudolphine Tables, and the best place to do that was in Ulm, on the Danube River, a few days’ walk from Tübingen. He had many connections there, old friends and acquaintances, correspondents of many years standing, even relatives. Ulm was the home of his distant cousins the Ficklers, the city where the great Benigna Fickler, a woman of learning, had once held court. With great sadness, Kepler gathered his family about him once again and bought passage for the journey upriver, away from their home in devastated Linz. It was the middle of winter, however, and the river was frozen above Regensburg, so they could go no farther together than there.

  After spending a few days finding a safe residence for his wife and children, Kepler packed his precious letter type into a wagon and continued the journey on to Ulm alone, fighting cold and snow all the way. Once in Ulm, he found residence with an old friend of his from Prague, Gregor Horst, who had once been a professor of medicine at Wittenberg and was now the city physician. Horst owned a small house adjoining his own larger house near the Cathedral Place, but facing a back alley; there Kepler, exhausted from his trip, unpacked his bags and settled in.

  Horst immediately sent out feelers to his friends and acquaintances in town to scout out a printer for the Tables. The word on the street was that one local printer, Jonas Sauer, could do the work quickly and cheaply—especially cheaply. Horst spoke well of him, which was good enough for Kepler. He was ready to begin printing. He had the ink. He had plenty of paper, already sent to him in Ulm—two bales of the good stuff for the presentation books and two bales of the ordinary stuff for the general market. And he had his set of letter type, including the special type blocks he ordered cast in Linz to print the astronomical symbols.

  The work carried on, but Kepler was soon disappointed with the personality of the printer. The man was proud, rash, and unpleasant. At one point, Sauer ran into money problems and tried to extort more money out of Kepler, money that Kepler didn’t have. Then, as his money problems increased, Sauer began arguing with Kepler over the contract and even threatened not to finish the job unless Kepler helped him with his problems. Furious, Kepler decided to take the printing job away from him and find someone else in Tübingen. Because Kepler was feeling cornered by his situation, his moods had become more erratic, and he did his best to fend off depression, that dark beast always lurking inside him, waiting like a leopard for him to slip and fall. In a sudden fit of pique, he set out for Tübingen to check on alternate printers. He couldn’t ride a horse, though, or sit in a rough wagon for long, for he had developed an inflamed abscess on his buttocks, and the gunshot of pain he felt with every trot of a horse or bounce of a wagon had become intolerable. Instead, he set out on foot, and made it all the way to the town of Blaubeuren, when the deep February weather stopped him. He was not as young or as healthy as he used to be, so he turned right around and walked back. Sauer got to keep the job after all and, surprisingly, completed it without too much more trouble. Kepler, however, fought through the blizzards of his own changing moods. The world had once again become too heavy for him, and eventually the depression avalanched over him.

  Meanwhile, his son Ludwig had reached university age and was studying medicine in Tübingen. The cost of a university education, then as now, was enough to drain a family’s resources, and Kepler had to shepherd his money carefully to be able to pay for his part of Ludwig’s education and the printing of the Tables at the same time. Ludwig, of course, always needed more money in order to live the life that every university student believes he deserves, and so he wrote to his father asking for help. Kepler would not give it, for he had given his son “expense money” enough, he said. He had given him the clear understanding that the Kepler family was poor and would have to live accordingly. Ludwig had enough money to survive and to complete his education. He would get no more from his father. Kepler had only enough money to complete the printing of the Tables, a task he considered his sacred duty. “To use this money, even a bit of it, for my son would delay the work, and that for me would be a sacrilege.” Although he loved his son and wanted to provide for him, the proper time for the production of the Tables was rapidly ending. The emperor expected the work to be done. His sense of responsibility to his old master Tycho Brahe hung over him. “This is the way the matter stands: either I finish the work now, or I don’t finish it at all.”1

  Finally, after months of work, the printing was nearly done. Kepler contacted the Brahe family to inform them of this so that they could write a dedication on behalf of their long-dead Tycho. The old master’s two sons, Tycho and Georg Brahe, composed a title page and a dedication, which they sent to Kepler, who then sent it on to the imperial commissioners, saying that he had no disagreement with what they had written. Kepler, however, had written another dedication to the emperor, which he wanted to include, a longer one, in which he explained the reasons for the long delay. With all this, the printing, almost miraculously, was finished.

  The print run was fairly large for Kepler—a thousand copies. Since he had paid for the entire printing himself, he needed to recoup its expenses, so he decided to send the entire run to a book dealer named Tampach in Frankfurt for the book fair. On September 22, 1627, Kepler arrived with a few copies of the Tables. But because of the legal issues raised by his complicated relationship with the Brahe family, Kepler could not set a price for the book, so the whole question went into arbitration. The imperial commissioner sent copies to various experts at the fair to ask
their opinion about the price. The Jesuits he sent one to set the price high, at 5 gulden. Some of the other experts set it at only 2, so the commissioner split the difference and set the price at 3.

  It was a decent price, but not enough to make any real money. Kepler figured that the amount of book sales of astronomical tables would never be very high, since mathematical works were rarely popular, especially in wartime. “There will be few buyers, as with all mathematical works, especially in these times.” He decided to pursue alternative markets, including international sales, so he secretly sent a number of copies to a friend of his in Strasbourg, Johann Bernegger, with the request that he spread the word about the Tables among the university crowd in that part of France.

  Then once again the Brahe family decided it was not happy and made a fuss. More than likely, they saw this as a duty to the memory of their father. A little rain, a little tempest, and no one would be allowed to forget Tycho the Dane. Kepler had broken their agreement, they said. He had not sent them a copy of the finished tables for the family to review before the book went to print. This was true. Kepler did not want to send them a copy of the Tables before the printing because they were such fussbudgets, and because it would give them another chance to harangue him about following the Tychonic cosmology rather than the Copernican. Kepler didn’t want to go through that again. They complained they didn’t like Kepler’s dedication because it took too much attention away from their illustrious parent. They didn’t like this phrase, they didn’t like that phrase. They wanted a new title page. Finally, to please them, Tampach the bookseller had to replace the signature page on all the copies, and then they nitpicked about that too. Needless to say, when they were done, Tampach wasn’t very happy either.

 

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