Kepler's Witch

by James A. Connor

  Before Guldin responded to Kepler’s letter, he sent it to an unnamed brother in the order. He wanted to make sure that Kepler got the best advice from the most proper sources, but this backfired. The implication was that Kepler’s friendship had not mattered as much as the push to convert him, and Guldin had referred the matter to a higher authority. His letter back to Kepler was riddled with heavy-footed theological argument. When Kepler received Guldin’s response, he smelled betrayal. He had already experienced enough of clergymen who could not keep confidences in the Lutheran church, and he considered his letters to Guldin to be confidential, between friends, and not a matter for public discussion within the Jesuit order. He understood quite well what the Jesuits, and indeed the emperor, wanted from him, but he could not give it. After reading Guldin’s response, he sent a short letter back restating his personal reasons for holding the beliefs he held without trying to muster any theological arguments to support them. And that was that. The debate was over.

  So Kepler was alone. He held to his beliefs and would not change them. His beliefs kept him outside of all the churches, and that was the way it had to be. But even so, he felt the loneliness deep inside him. True believers on both sides, Protestant and Catholic, friends on both sides, fretted about his salvation. During the long struggle with his own church, Lutheran friends had often written to him and worried about his apparent fall from the true faith. And what would this mean for the salvation of his soul? Now Guldin was doing much the same. “I assure you seriously that I have never been farther from toying with my salvation,” Kepler wrote to him.

  As before in Graz, Kepler’s faith had put him in an uncomfortable position. He had rejected the Jesuits’ advances, and therefore the emperor’s. Württemberg no longer accepted him. Many of his former Protestant patrons had been executed or exiled, so his list of powerful friends was growing shorter. Suddenly, as if from heaven, Kepler found himself with a new patron—Wallenstein himself, the new general colonel commander-in-chief of the emperor’s armies. But it was an odd relationship; both men were interested in the comings and goings of the heavens, but for very different reasons. Wallenstein was an astrology addict. Like every egomaniac, he believed that he had a destiny that the stars would sooner or later reveal to him. To a certain degree, Kepler was responsible for this.

  The story began in 1608, while Kepler was at the height of his career as the imperial mathematician. He was visited by a Dr. Stromair, a well-known physician, who had come to Prague partly to ask Kepler to cast a nativity, a birth horoscope, for an important man. This important patron would not give his name, however, and preferred to remain in the shadows. This was not too unusual in astrological circles, but one can still imagine the doctor providing Kepler with just enough information to do the horoscope, and then assuring him that the man was indeed a powerful lord and would be most grateful for Kepler’s cooperation, and his discretion. Of course, the man wished to remain anonymous for political reasons.

  Kepler responded to this request, as he always did, with his usual caveat: “My work is intended for people who understand philosophy, not for those whose minds are infected with credulous ideas, those who think that an astronomer should be able to predict particular events in a person’s life and pluck future eventualities from the heavens.”8 For Kepler, astrology revealed more about a man’s character than about his future. He well understood its limitations and warned everyone who came to him for a peek into the future that the astrological arts were of little use in predicting the particular events of life. For Kepler, the heavens said more about God than about destiny, and he would allow no one to go away mystified on this account. To do less than this would be dishonest. However, Dr. Stromair was a man with a reputation for learning, a man who understood philosophy and the limitations of the astrological arts, and therefore, Kepler agreed to a cast the horoscope on the basis of the doctor’s recommendations. Taking the birth information, Kepler wrote a long description of his shadowy patron, a description that was quite accurate in the end:

  One could honestly describe this man as alert, quick, industrious, of an impatient disposition, with a passionate craving for innovation, who dislikes the common run of humanity and human relationships, but who struggles for new, unproven, or otherwise abnormal means of human endeavor, yet is much more thoughtful than he lets anyone see. Saturn ascendant gives rise to a profound, yet melancholic nature, and carries with it a penchant for alchemy, magic, sorcery, communion with the spirits, contempt for the human laws and human customs, and of all religion, which infuses in him a suspicion of everything which either God or humans do, as if everything was a confidence game, and much more has been hidden from people than is generally believed.

  For with this man, it can also be seen that he possesses a great eagerness for glory and a need to pursue worldly honors and worldly power, and because of this he will make many dangerous enemies, both hidden and revealed, but he will be able to overcome them. It can also be seen from this nativity that this man has many similarities to the former Polish chancellor, the English queen, and people like them, for these people have many planets standing around the horizons in positions of rising and setting. For such reasons, one cannot doubt, if he pays proper attention to the events in the world, that he will attain the high honors he seeks, along with great wealth, and after making friends at court for himself, he will also find a high-ranking lady, and make her his wife.9

  Wallenstein was then only twenty-five years old, but was already hungry for news of his future and believed that he possessed some magnificent destiny. Despite the cloak and dagger, it is possible, even likely, that Kepler knew the identity of his shadow patron. Wallenstein had the look about him of a man whose stars were happy. If Kepler knew who was behind the request, then he read him well and gave him just enough detail with just enough obscurity to make him think that the horoscope had come from the gods themselves.

  But then suddenly, in 1624, as Kepler’s life seemed to run into a box canyon once again, Wallenstein appeared once more. Sixteen years after casting the original horoscope, Kepler received a letter from Gerhard von Taxis, an officer working for Wallenstein and also the man who originally sent Dr. Stromair to visit Kepler. That letter contained his original manuscript of the horoscope along with a cover letter written by von Taxis. Von Taxis was now an important man himself, the captain general of Friedland. But once again, he kept the name of his famous patron a secret, and, if he also knew that Kepler had known all along who is patron was, he kept that a secret as well. The letter from von Taxis asked that Kepler revisit his original horoscope for his secret patron, because much had changed in sixteen years, and the patron wanted to know more specific details about his destiny. Kepler found a series of notes scribbled onto the manuscript in the margins, notes that had been penned by Wallenstein himself, responding to the predictions and making comments about what he believed was true about Kepler’s predictions.

  What was Kepler to do? His service with the emperor was coming to an end, all because of his most inconvenient conscience, and, well, there was money in doing the horoscope. Wallenstein had offered him a sizable stipend for the work. Kepler took on the task, because he had nothing better going at the moment. Once again, he warned Wallenstein that only a fool is led around by the wild predictions of an astrologer. Only a fool would “let himself be used like an entertainer, actor, or a mountebank. There are many young astrologers who are perfectly willing to play such a game, and anyone who likes to be tricked while still awake, may seek them out and enjoy their theatrics. Philosophy and therefore real astrology testify to the works of God, and are therefore sacred and not frivolous, and I for one do not wish to dishonor them.”10

  Perhaps it was Kepler’s honesty that drove Wallenstein to pursue him. Certainly, he could have picked any one of a thousand young astrologers to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. But Kepler was honest and only half believed in astrology, but then again, his predictions, for all of his doubts, all too of
ten came true. He was a very good soothsayer, whether he believed in it or not. No one could deny that. Even so, although Wallenstein evidently trusted Kepler, he did not really want to hear his warnings and exceptions. He wanted to know other things. He wanted to know if, when he died, would he die of a stroke? Would he die in some foreign land far away from his homeland? If he chose to leave his native land, would he find wealth and power in this new land? Should he stay in the military? If so, where would he serve? Would he continue to have good luck as a soldier? Who were his enemies, and what would their astrological signs be?

  Kepler answered Wallenstein’s questions rather harshly. Anyone, he said, who turned to the heavens to find answers for daily problems or to peer at his future destiny without reference to his own behavior and personality never learned anything in school. Still, Kepler did try to answer Wallenstein’s questions. He did so, however, with demands that his patron keep Kepler’s original warnings in mind and on the basis of reason. “A ruler who believed in astrology as much as this person does, and knew all this, would, without any hesitation, send a commander with such a remarkable constellation against his current enemies, if he were sure of the man’s faithfulness.”11

  By looking at the celestial particulars of his patron’s birth, Kepler was able to make certain predictions that Wallenstein found useful. Because of the complexities of their different stars, Kepler predicted that Wallenstein and Emperor Ferdinand, while able to work together for the most part, would often find their relationship difficult. Finally at the end, Kepler’s predictions for Wallenstein, as they had sometimes done in the past, got spooky. Kepler stopped his horoscope at 1634, stating that “a horrible disorder” would assail him during the month of March. This was close enough, for Wallenstein was murdered by assassins on February 25, 1634. The general colonel commander-in-chief at once offered his patronage to Kepler for all of the work he had done on the horoscope. His patronage, he said through von Taxis, could be a great advantage to the gentleman.

  Kepler, with really no other prospects except to leave the empire entirely and go off to Italy, or even England, accepted Wallenstein’s patronage. The emperor, as Kepler expected, was not satisfied with Kepler’s modifications on his Catholicity, modifications that sounded suspiciously Lutheran. One of the honors that Ferdinand had lavished on his most successful general was the duchy of Sagan in Silesia, and Wallenstein quickly offered Kepler a comfortable residence there, a quiet place to work, and the use of a printing press in a place where Protestants were still permitted to practice. What more could Kepler ask for? Wallenstein promised him a salary of 1,000 gulden a year, and by taking residence there in the general’s territory he could practice both his religion and his astronomy without question. No one would bother him there. Kepler had been right about Wallenstein—he was loyal to his emperor, but tepid in matters of religion. The only qualm that he felt was about Wallenstein himself. The man had risen so far so fast, that he was bound to fall sooner or later. Wallenstein was almost a character in a fable, he fit the type so well. Sooner or later, one of his enemies would get him, and that would leave Kepler a pilgrim once more.

  But Sagan never quite worked out. Kepler had met up with his family in Prague, and they traveled the rest of the way to Sagan, carrying much of what they owned in a wagon, though they had left a good portion of their household items in Regensburg, including parts of Kepler’s library, a few globes, and his astronomical instruments. They arrived in midsummer, July 20, 1628. The house was comfortable enough, but very quickly they realized that Silesia was a foreign country. Austria had been much like Swabia, but Silesia was far different from either. None of them spoke the Silesian language adequately, and the people in Sagan often made them feel like barbarians. As for an intellectual life, Kepler had to rely on his correspondents to supply that. Not for the first time in his life, Kepler felt lonely and depressed.

  Moreover, it soon became clear that Kepler was not going to receive any of the money owed him by the imperial treasury. The emperor had handed over the responsibility of getting Kepler his money to Wallenstein, something that the general did not want to handle. He certainly did not want to pay Kepler the 12,000 accumulated gulden the treasury owned him, and so he offered the astronomer an estate and a title, none of which materialized. Then he offered Kepler a position at the University of Rostock, but Kepler did not want that. Rostock was in the middle of the war zone. Then, in the middle of all that, war broke out in Sagan between Protestants and Catholics, as it had done everywhere else in the empire. Wallenstein was generally an easy ruler on matters of religion, but this time he had to act, and suddenly the Counter-Reformation arrived in Sagan. The Jesuits soon followed. Grabes von Nechern, Wallenstein’s captain general, took charge of the conversions. He had been raised a Protestant himself, but what was that in relation to his lord’s command? In 1628, he published the order that everyone in the duchy would convert to Catholicism or emigrate—that was the only choice.

  In some ways, the persecution of Protestants took a nastier turn in Sagan than it had in either Graz or in Linz. Von Nechern, following the Jesuit lead, required that everyone attend the Corpus Christi processions. Lutheran churches had to pay the salaries once given to their Lutheran pastors to the Jesuit college instead. Obeying the new rules, they gathered all the books they considered heretical and burned them in the public square.

  Kepler’s position with Wallenstein kept him free of the effects of these new rules, but he had suddenly become a suspicious character. People who once greeted him in the street suddenly kept away from him, and even his neighbors avoided him in fear. As the only tolerated Protestant in the city, Kepler was watched by von Nechern’s agents, and those who befriended him had the same shadow of suspicion cast over them. Although Kepler was not in danger himself, his neighbors were.

  There were, however, a few sweet occurrences in Kepler’s life at this time. The first was that he was finally able to set up his press, the one that Wallenstein had promised him. He had been searching for an appropriate one for several years and, after a few false starts, found one in Leipzig. To accomplish this, Kepler had to travel from Sagan to Görlitz, and then on to Friedland to make all the arrangements. Wallenstein then offered Kepler twenty fresh bales of paper each year, a treasure, and an extra 20 gulden a week for miscellaneous expenses. Kepler was in business. Within a short time, he published his Ephemerides, astronomical tables, for 1629. On top of that, he began work on a piece that had been sitting on his desk since his university days in Tübingen. This was the Somnium seu Astronomia Lunari, or The Dream, or Astronomy of the Moon. Really a work of science fiction, this was a little fable, with massive commentaries, about a man whose mother introduced him to the demons of the air, who carried him to the moon, where he described what he saw from there. This little fabulous exercise began with a debate that Kepler wanted to stage during his university days, in which he would describe what the earth would look like from the moon within a Copernican universe. But the debate never went anywhere, because the virulently anti-Copernican professor Vitus Müller refused to let Kepler stage his debate. Tales of this little story had even come up during his mother’s witch trial, as evidence of both Katharina’s and Johannes’s odious associations with the devil. But in 1629, Kepler picked up the fable once again and organized it into a little work of scientific contemplation.

  The other sweet event was the wedding of his daughter Susanna to Kepler’s assistant Jakob Bartsch, the young man who would, after Kepler’s death, help collect his papers and publish the Somnium. Bartsch married Kepler’s daughter Susanna after some romantic negotiation at the instigation of Kepler himself. He admired the young man and thought him a good match for his daughter. At the time, Bartsch was studying mathematics in Strasbourg with Philip Müller, an old correspondent of Kepler’s. The only reservation Kepler had about him was that he was studying to become an astrologer. After some deliberation, they decided that even if Kepler and his wife, Susanna, would not be able
to make the wedding, because they would have to travel through several war zones, the wedding should then take place in Strasbourg, far from the conflict. The very afternoon of the wedding, on March 12, 1630, young Bartsch also graduated as a doctor of medicine. The next month on April 18, Kepler’s wife, Susanna, who was still in her child-bearing years, gave birth to another daughter, Anna Maria. It was possibly the happiest time in Kepler’s life.

  Then the world collapsed once again. The emperor promulgated the Edict of Restitution, which commanded that all territories taken by the Reformation under the control of the Habsburg emperors should immediately introduce the Counter-Reformation into their territories. This meant that Württemberg, so long exempt from Ferdinand’s program, had finally come under the ax, and what Kepler had long before written to Mästlin and Hafenreffer had finally came true. The Thirty Years’ War, which seemed to have been winding down, suddenly caught fire once again, and as the fire burned on Württemberg burned along with it.

  In response to some political encouragement by Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden decided to weigh in on the side of the Protestants, and in June 1630 he invaded Germany at Pomerania. Wallenstein saw at once how much danger the empire was in and readied himself for war. Oddly enough, it was at this moment that Ferdinand removed him from command, the one moment when he needed Wallenstein the most. Ferdinand had become involved with his attempts to get his son Ferdinand set up to succeed him as emperor, and so he called a congress of imperial electors to meet in the traditional city of Regensburg. Young Ferdinand had already received the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, and all that was left was his election as imperial heir. However, the electors balked. They were unhappy with Ferdinand, unhappy especially with Wallenstein, who levied outrageous taxes in his territories in order to support the war, and also because, well, he was simply too successful.