8. Caspar, Kepler, p. 65.
9. Kepler’s journal for 1597, Frisch, Opera Omnia, 8, 2, p. 689. In Justus Schmidt, Johann Kepler: Sein Leben in Bildern und eigenen Berichten (Linz: Rudolf Trauner, 1970), p. 226.
10. Burke-Gaffney, Kepler and the Jesuits, pp. 6–9. The letter to Mästlin was also quoted here. I have followed Burke-Gaffney’s succinct account fairly closely.
11. Letter to Mästlin, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, p. 226.
CHAPTER 7
1. Some in Weil der Stadt refer to Charles as “Banana Charlie” because of the floppy hat on his statue, which stands in the market square; the hat looks like a peeled banana.
2. Christopher Hibbert, Rome: The Biography of a City (London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 153–62.
3. Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. and ed. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Dover, 1993), p. 77.
4. Letter of Kepler to Mästlin, June 11, 1598, GW xiii, nr. 99:379–82. Quoted in Caspar, Kepler, p. 78.
5. Caspar, Kepler, p. 78.
6. Kepler’s journal, 1598, in Frisch, Opera Omnia, 8, 2, p. 699.
7. Letter from Kepler to Mästlin, June 11, 1598, GW xiii, nr. 99–360f. In Caspar, Kepler, p. 77.
8. Letter from Kepler to Georg Friedrich von Baden, October 10, 1607, in GW xvi, nr. 451. Quoted in Caspar, Kepler, pp. 81–82.
9. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, December 9, 1598, in Justus Schmidt, Johann Kepler: Sein Leben in Bildern und eigenen Berichten (Linz: Rudolf Trauner, 1970), p. 227.
10. Letter to von Hohenberg, December 9, 1598, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, p. 227.
11. Caspar, Kepler, p. 82.
12. GW xix, 337, nr. 7.30. In Caspar, Kepler, p. 82.
13. Letter to von Hohenberg, December 9, 1598, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, p. 227.
14. Caspar, Kepler, pp. 80–81.
15. Letter from Mästlin, July 4, 1598, GW xiii, nr. 101.
16. Letter from Tycho, April 1, 1598, GW xiii, nr. 92.
17. Ferguson, Kitty, Tycho and Kepler (New York: Walker, 2002), p. 233. The original letter has been lost, except as a copy that Kepler had also sent to Mästlin.
18. Letter to Mästlin, February 26, 1599, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, p. 229.
19. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, April 10, 1599, GW xiii, nr. 117:174–79.
20. GW iv, 308:9–10.
21. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, August 6, 1599, GW xiv, nr. 130–226f.
22. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, July 12, 1600, GW xiv, nr. 168:109–11. In Caspar, Kepler, pp. 102–3.
23. Letter to Mästlin, September 9, 1600, GW xiv, nr. 175:52–56.
CHAPTER 8
1. Eduard Petiška and Jan Dolan, Beautiful Stories of Golden Prague (Prague: Martin, 1995), pp. 5–7.
2. Ferguson, Kitty, Tycho and Kepler (New York: Walker, 2002), p. 267.
3. Letter to Mästlin, December 16, 1600, GW xiv, nr. 180:6f, in Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. and ed. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Dover, 1993), p. 118.
4. Letter to Mästlin, December 20, 1601, GW xiv, nr. 203:24–26, in Caspar, Kepler.
5. Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia, 10:3/Rosen, 312, 313. Quoted in Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler, p. 283. After Tycho’s funeral, the talk on the streets in Prague proposed that he had been poisoned. This was not entirely unreasonable, since some of his symptoms could have been caused by an overdose of heavy metals. Certainly, Tycho had his enemies at the court, since many feared that as a Lutheran he had far too much influence over the unfortunate Rudolf. The Catholic council was not above a bit of murder, to be sure. However, the most likely case is that Tycho, who practiced homeopathic medicine, which was considered part of an astrologer’s overall function, overdosed on some of his own medicine. Many of the remedies he concocted were high in mercury, and if his bladder infection proved stubborn against his cures, he may have simply kept taking them in larger doses until he poisoned himself.
Forensic studies of Tycho’s DNA, found in a small box containing bits of Tycho’s beard and a small piece of his shroud, were done in 1991. Any heavy metals in the body would be present in the hair strands, and because hair grows at a regular rate, concentrations could be graphed over time by taking different points on the strand of hair as time points. Tycho’s beard showed a high concentration of lead, which meant he could have died from lead poisoning, but that by itself was not all that conclusive, because many people who lived in cities at the time may well have had high lead concentrations for environmental reasons, most notably the use of lead in plumbing. There was a little arsenic in the hair, but there was a much larger than normal concentration of mercury. Also uremia may be caused by mercury poisoning.
In 1996 another test was conducted, using the PIXW (Particle Induced X-ray Emission) method on a piece of Tycho’s beard that included some of the root. This test showed that mercury had been ingested shortly before Tycho’s death, which meant that he probably died of a mercury overdose. More than likely Tycho did this to himself in an attempt to cure the urinary disorder, perhaps prostatic hypertrophy (or possibly bladder stones), that had been troubling him. It was this failed cure that caused the uremia that killed him. See Aase R. Jacobsen, Planetarium 30 (December 2001):4.
CHAPTER 9
1. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, July 12, 1600, GW xiv, nr. 168:102–4.
2. Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. and ed. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Dover, 1993), p. 182.
3. Angelo Maria Ripellino, Magic Prague, ed. Michael Henry Heim, trans. David Newton Marinelli (New York: Picador, 1995), p. 93.
4. Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), p. 198.
5. Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold, p. 198.
6. Caspar, Kepler, pp. 154–56.
7. Ripellino, Magic Prague, p. 131.
CHAPTER 10
1. Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), pp. 220–23.
2. Johannes Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, GW iv, 281–311.
3. Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. and ed. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Dover, 1993), p. 200.
4. Caspar, Kepler, p. 201.
5. This little bit can be found in a note in Dava Sobel’s wonderful biography of Galileo, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 39.
6. Caspar, Kepler, p. 201.
7. Letter from Kepler to Tobias Scultetus, from Prague, April 13, 1612, in Justus Schmidt, Johann Kepler: Sein Leben in Bildern und eigenen Berichten (Linz: Rudolf Trauner, 1970), p. 245.
8. Caspar, Kepler, p. 207.
CHAPTER 11
1. A wonderful account of early modern witchcraft is Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin, 1996).
2. J. Widdowson, “The Witch as a Frightening and Threatening Figure,” in V. Newall, ed., The Witch Figure (London, 1973), p. 208. Quoted in Briggs, Witches and Neighbors.
3. Kepler to an unknown member of the nobility, October 23, 1613, GW xvii, nr. 669:84–88.
4. Letter of Kepler to Hoffmann, April 26, 1612, GW xvii, nr. 715:8–9.
5. Kepler, Glaubensbekenntnis, GW xii, 28:44–47.
6. Kepler, Glaubensbekenntnis, GW xii, 28:3–5.
7. Kepler to Hafenreffer, November 28, 1618, GW xvii, nr. 808:55–56.
8. Kepler, Glaubensbekenntnis, GW xii, 28:17–21.
9. Kepler to Mästlin, December 12/22, 1616, GW xvii, nr. 750:260–66.
10. Letter from Kepler to an anonymous nobleman, October 23, 1613, GW xvii, nr. 669:6–7.
11. Letter from Kepler to an anonymous nobleman, October 23, 1613, in Justus Schmidt, Johann Kepler: Sein Leben in Bildern und eigenen Berichten (Linz: Rudolf Trauner, 1970), pp. 246–47.
12. Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, pp. 246–47.
13. Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, pp. 246–47.
14. Letter, October 23, 16
13, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, pp. 246–47.
15. Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, pp. 246–47.
16. Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt, Johann Kepler, pp. 246–47.
CHAPTER 12
1. Berthold Sutter, Der Hexenprozess gegen Katharina Kepler, 2d rev. ed. (Weil der Stadt: Kepler Gesellschaft, Heimatverein Weil der Stadt, 1984), p. 21.
2. In Germany, Hexenschuss is still a popular term for lumbago.
CHAPTER 13
1. My original term for “religious concessions” was “religious liberty,” which, on reflection, was anachronistic. Religious liberty was hard to come by at the time. Religious groups, Catholic to Protestant, Protestant to Catholic, Protestant to Protestant, that wanted liberty for themselves rarely offered it to others. Religious toleration was yet an undiscovered idea and was problematic for that time. One historical prejudice that has come down to us is that intolerance was a Catholic practice and tolerance was Protestant, but the historical record does not bear that out. In the seventeenth century, religious intolerance was the game everywhere.
2. William P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years’ War: From White Mountain to Nordlingen (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), p. 48.
3. Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), pp. 224–26.
4. There are several possibilities for the death of Frau Meyer. The potion that Katharina Kepler gave to her may well have been tainted not on purpose, but out of mishandling. Perhaps she died of botulism toxin. Or possibly she died of one of the numerous pestilences that swept through the region, and the two illnesses, hers and Beutelsbacher’s, were not connected. Katharina Kepler told the jury that Beutelsbacher tried to jump over a ditch that day and possibly broke his leg, and that was why he went lame. Why an old school chum of Johannes’s would want to accuse his mother of witchcraft is lost to us. He may have resented Johannes’s success or may have actually connected his illness with the death of Bastian Meyer’s wife. He may also have been lying.
5. According to Max Caspar, the butcher’s name was Christoph Frick, not Stoffer.
6. This may have been a cocky answer under interrogation, possibly indicating some hostility toward Einhorn.
7. Admittedly, I am going out on a limb speculating about this. It is unlikely that Hafenreffer played a direct part in the trial of Katharina Kepler, and unlikely that he did much more than cluck over these terrible accusations from a distance, but his actions and the actions of the consistory certainly gave Einhorn power that he would not have had otherwise.
8. Rolbert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974), p. 49.
9. The German term Wassersuppe implies a not very nourishing soup and is often used metaphorically to represent “poor man’s food.” It is a soup made from water rather than more nourishing ingredients like meat, milk, or wine.
10. Michael Kerrigan, The Instruments of Torture (New York: Lyons Press, 2001), p. 81.
11. Kerrigan, Instruments of Torture, p. 89.
CHAPTER 14
1. William P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years’ War: From White Mountain to Nordlingen (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), p. 64.
2. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years’ War, pp. 59–60.
3. Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), p. 227.
4. Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold, p. 228.
5. Kepler to Wackher von Wackenfels, GW xvii, nr. 783:46–48.
6. Grüninger to Osiander, July 1, 1619, GW xvii, nr. 843:10–19.
7. Kepler to Hafenreffer, November 28, 1618, GW xvii, nr. 808:65–67.
8. Calendar for 1619, Frisch, Opera Omnia, i, 486–87.
9. Harmonice Mundi, GW vi, 289:35–39.
10. GW vi, 480. No citation given by Caspar. Kepler’s third law of planetary motion is best expressed in modern notation as:
p2/a3 = k
or, the period (p) of a planet’s orbit, that is, the time it takes to make one revolution, squared, i.e., multiplied by itself, divided by the mean distance (a) that the planet is from the sun, cubed, i.e., multiplied by itself two times, is equal to a constant (k). This means that the relationship between (p2) and (a3) remains constant throughout the motion of the planet in its orbit. This is Kepler’s harmonic law because as Kepler saw it, this relationship possessed the same kind of harmony that one could find in musical chords or in colors that work together. This harmony is innate in the human soul, placed there by God as a key to understanding God’s mind.
11. Harmonice Mundi, GW vi, 215:30–33.
12. Harmonice Mundi, GW vi, 223:26–35.
13. I refer the reader to Edwin A. Abbott’s wonderful little science fiction book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (New York: Penguin, 1998), in which different shapes are given different personalities and the sharper the points that a polygon has in two dimensions, the nastier its disposition.
14. Harmonice Mundi, GW vi, 16:35–38.
15. Mysterium Cosmographicum, GW viii, 33–35.
16. Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, GW vii, 9:10–12.
17. Around that time, the authorities in Graz publicly burned Kepler’s astrological calendar for 1624, his last ever, even though it had been dedicated to the representatives of Styria. One of Kepler’s friends asked him if his calendar had offended the religious sensibilities of the people there, for it predicted that forcing the people to attend “hated divine services” would lead to great hardship, so “that the ordinary people would be willing to bargain a golden cup for a simple slice of bread.” Kepler knew better, however, and informed his friend of the true reason. Apparently, the people in Graz did not like the fact that Kepler gave Styria second billing under that other province—Austria above the Enns. Local pride trumps religious sensibilities any day.
CHAPTER 15
1. Kepler to Schickard, April 19, 1627, GW xviii, nr. 1042:42–48.
2. Kepler to Schickard, February 10, 1627, GW xviii, nr. 1037:60–62.
3. Kepler to Guldin, February 24, 1628, GW xviii, nr. 1072:41–44.
4. Kepler to Guldin, February 24, 1628, GW xviii, nr. 1072:45–49.
5. Kepler to Guldin, Spring 1628, GW xviii, nr. 1083:85–86.
6. Kepler to Guldin, February 24, 1628, GW xviii, nr. 1072:104–10.
7. Kepler to Guldin, February 24, 1628, GW xviii, nr. 1072:114–33.
8. Frisch, Opera Omnia, viii, 348.
9. Gerhard von Taxis to Kepler, December 14, 1625, GW xvii, nr. 704.
10. Frisch, Opera Omnia, viii, 351–52.
11. Gerhard von Taxis to Kepler, September 25, 1625, GW xviii, nr. 1016:18–20.
12. The “White Rose” was a student-based, anti-Nazi movement that suffered terrible martyrdom in the 1930s.
Kepler Time Line
1527
Sack of Rome; end of the Renaissance; beginning of the Counter-Reformation.
1571
Johannes Kepler born in Weil der Stadt on December 27.
1573
Brother Heinrich born.
1575
Kepler family moves to Leonberg.
1577
Kepler’s parents attain citizenship; Kepler becomes “Burgerssohn of Löwenberg.”
Kepler sees the great comet with his mother.
1577–83
Kepler attends school in Leonberg (with interruptions).
1578–79
Kepler attends the Latin school.
1579
At year end, Kepler’s education interrupted due to family move to Ellmendingen, near Pforzheim.
1580–82
In Ellmendingen, “heavily burdened by farming chores.”
1582–83
During the winter Kepler back at Latin school in Leonberg; probably lived with the Guldenmann grandparents in Etlingen.
1584
Family returns to Leonberg
.
Sister Margaretha born on June 26.
Kepler attends lower cloister school of Adelberg.
1586
Kepler promoted to upper cloister school in Maulbronn.
1587
Brother Christoph is born on March 5.
Kepler matriculates at Tübingen University.
1589
Father Heinrich leaves family for good on January 5.
Sixteen-year-old Heinrich runs away from home.
1591
Kepler receives baccalaureate degree and begins theological studies.
1596
Mysterium Cosmographicum printed in Tübingen.
1597
Marriage to Barbara Müller von Mühleck on April 27.
1598
Due to Counter-Reformation measures, exiled from Graz for a short time.
1600
First meeting with Tycho Brahe in Prague at Benatky Castle.
Final exile from Graz on August 7.
Arrival in Prague as a refugee on October 19.
1601
Death of Tycho Brahe; Kepler appointed imperial mathematician.
1604
Astronomiae Pars Optica published.
1605
At Easter time, Kepler discovers that the orbit of Mars is elliptical.
1609
Astronomia Nova published.
1611
Death of wife, Barbara Kepler nee Müller.
1612
Excluded from Communion by Pastor Hitzler and the Württemberg consistory.
Death of Rudolf II; ascension of Matthias to imperial throne.
1613
Marriage to Susanna Reuttinger on October 30.
Kepler's Witch Page 40