Tycho and Kepler

by Kitty Ferguson

  The explanation for the contradictory claimsfn1 almost certainly had to do with Bär. Six months after Tycho published the book with the chapter about the Tychonic system in April 1588, Bär also published a book entitled Fundaments of Astronomy. In it he laid out a system he claimed was his own invention. Except for some details, it was identical to Tycho’s system. Tycho’s nightmare had come true. It was of utmost importance to establish priority, and to make it indisputably clear that Bär had learned of the system from Tycho, not Tycho from Bär. One way to accomplish this was to prove that not only the idea of the system, but observations to demonstrate its superiority, predated Bär’s visit to Hven. Certainly this provided ample motivation for letters to other scholars in which Tycho made claims about the 1582 observations. In fact, the date itself was far more important than the findings, and that was fortunate.

  In the autumn of 1589, after he had written to Hagecius, Tycho almost immediately turned his attention again to the problem of refraction. He did so with considerable trepidation. He had complete confidence in his Mars observations of 1587, but he knew he did not have as much evidence to support the use of his table of solar refraction, the table he had used in 1587 when correcting the positions of Mars to take refraction into account.

  The result of Tycho’s new study of refraction was heartbreaking. He found that his solar refraction table was badly flawed. He had, in fact, found no parallax for Mars in 1587. Tycho never again claimed he had discovered a parallax for Mars, nor did he make any more serious attempts to find it. The oppositions of Mars in 1591 and 1593 took place in summer, when the nights were too short to try to measure a parallax.

  WHILE TYCHO UNDOUBTEDLY MADE some of his problems worse by mishandling, in other cases he acted with extreme patience and care for his family. The sad love story of his sister Sophie was one of the latter.

  Twelve years younger than Tycho, Sophie had always been a favorite. When she was a child, he had taught her some astronomy, and, when she was fourteen, she had assisted him in the observation of a lunar eclipse at Herrevad. Since then Sophie had married a rich nobleman, borne a son, and lived in splendor at his Eriksholm Castle.

  In 1588, Sophie’s husband died, and with her own family inheritance as well as her husband’s she was left a wealthy young widow. Sophie was a frequent visitor to Uraniborg in the autumn and winter of 1589, and it was there that she met Erik Lange, the well-educated, well-traveled young gallant who had first brought Bär to Hven as part of his retinue in the autumn of 1584.

  Sophie fell in love with Lange, an exceedingly foolish choice for a wealthy widow, for Lange’s own considerable fortune was rapidly vanishing, squandered to support his obsession with a futile branch of alchemy devoted to trying to turn base metal into gold. In 1590, the same year he and Sophie Brahe were betrothed, over the objections of all Sophie’s siblings except Tycho, Lange had been forced to sign over his estate of Engelsholm to make good his debts, and even that had not been enough to cover them. He was placed under house arrest. Though creditors could not touch the substantial part of Sophie’s deceased husband’s estate that was held in wardship for their son, soon after the betrothal they began closing in on her personal fortune.

  In 1592 Sophie’s and Lange’s problems became, more than ever, Tycho’s when Lange fled in secret to Hven, and Tycho helped him escape from Denmark and his creditors. Lange’s addiction to the dream of turning base metal into gold was beyond control, and he continued to run up enormous debts, dodging from place to place in Europe. Sophie, distraught and besieged by his creditors at her home at Eriksholm Castle, often sought refuge at Uraniborg. In spite of having followed her heart where no sensible person should have allowed it to lead, Sophie was a strong, quick-witted, self-confident woman, involved in numerous intellectual pursuits and highly respected by many people, not least Tycho. He considered her one of the most intelligent and learned women he knew and he enjoyed her company. Nevertheless, her problems and Lange’s continuing disastrous foolishness were a drain on his patience and energies.

  WHILE TYCHO WAS RISKING loss of respect from his peers over the Pedersen affair and breaking the law to help his brother-in-law, he was treading even more perilously in another respect. The estate attached to the Chapel of the Magi at Roskilde was extensive and provided Tycho with a large annual income. Nevertheless, he had neglected his responsibilities and allowed the chapel to fall into disrepair. Since 1591 he had received repeated requests from the boy-king Christian to repair the leaking roof. Tycho ignored him. There seemed little to fear. Christian had not yet reached majority, and his limited powers allowed him to do little more than play at being king. Furthermore, the Regency Council that ruled during his minority was packed with Tycho’s friends and relatives. Christian’s father Frederick had been so enthusiastic and supportive of Tycho that Tycho had forgotten that kings needed extremely sensitive treatment and could not safely be regarded as familiar equals or, if they were still minors, as irritating nephews.

  Tycho had every reason to expect Christian to be as supportive as his father had been. Christian made a royal visit to Hven in July 1592. Not only was the weather beautiful and the banquet, wines, music, conversation, and the humor of Tycho’s jester all very much to the king’s liking, but he was fascinated with Tycho’s instruments and the many treasures of Uraniborg.

  Though Christian’s memories of Hven would in fact remain fresh with him all his life, in the summer of 1593, a year after his day on the island, Christian visited Roskilde Cathedral, and his attitude toward Tycho Brahe changed catastrophically. Christian found the roof of the Chapel of the Magi in such a state of near collapse as to threaten the alabaster and marble sepulchers of his father and grandfather. The young monarch dictated an angry message demanding that Tycho begin repairs. If he failed to do so, Christian himself would hire a builder and have the work done at Tycho’s expense. The message commanded a reply by return courier.

  Tycho must indeed have been distracted by other matters to have ignored this ultimatum. By the following autumn, 1594, there had still been no repairs, and Tycho received another angry complaint ordering him to have the work completed by Christmas or forfeit the fief with its incomes. This message succeeded in getting Tycho’s attention, but, still seemingly unaware of the dangerous path he was treading in his cavalier treatment of Christian, Tycho had the roof rebuilt as a flat one with wooden beams rather than restore the original vaulting.

  The problem that seemed much more urgent and troubling to Tycho in the autumn of 1594 was the arrangement of a marriage4 for his eldest daughter. Plans had begun happily the year before. Tycho’s four daughters—Magdalene, nineteen, Sophie, fourteen, Elisabeth, thirteen, and Cecilie, twelve—were wealthy, accomplished young women. Because their mother was a commoner, they could not marry into the nobility, but Tycho had every reason to believe that he could arrange matches so that their standard of living would be equal to what it had been at Uraniborg. Among the academic elite there were young professors and physicians of high social status who were as well versed in late Renaissance culture as noblemen, often more so. Clearly, Tycho Brahe’s daughters were enormously good catches for any of these.

  In May and June of 1593, a young man named Gellius Sascerides became a prime candidate for Magdalene’s hand. Gellius came from a prominent academic family. His father, though Dutch, was a distinguished professor in Copenhagen, and the family and Gellius himself had a wide circle of important friends there. Gellius and his brother David had both been assistants at Uraniborg, Gellius for five years when he was in his early twenties. He had been one of Tycho’s most promising young disciples. Tycho’s daughters had been children then. Magdalene was only about eight when he arrived and thirteen when he departed in the midsummer of 1588, but they must have met at the dinner table. Gellius had continued to serve as Tycho’s representative to foreign courts and universities. Now he was back, thirty-one years old—well traveled, brimming with confidence, with a medical degree and a reputation a
s a rising star among the young scholars of Europe. There could not have been a more appropriate suitor for Tycho Brahe’s eldest daughter.

  According to the courtship and marriage customs5 of late-sixteenth-century Denmark,fn2 the procedure did not begin with the couple themselves but with tentative, informal feelers among friends, relatives, and the broader network these could provide. If a situation looked encouraging, a young man asked trusted friends to act on his behalf and present his proposal to the prospective bride’s immediate family. Gellius chose his friend Mogens Bertelsen Dallin as his emissary. After preliminary discussions with Tycho, Dallin and Gellius went to Hven with a formal proposal on September 19.

  Custom required the suitor’s spokesman to deliver a long, elegant speech, climaxing in the formal proposal of marriage. The suitor and his party then took seats, and the bride’s family replied. Tycho’s sister Sophie probably was the spokesperson for the Brahes when this ceremony took place at Uraniborg, for it was she who went on to negotiate on their behalf. Her speech would not have answered yes or no: At this point the suitor was committed, but the bride’s family was not.

  After that, the negotiations began, and almost immediately there were difficulties. Although Magdalene was not of the nobility, she had been raised as a noblewoman, and her immediate family was far wealthier than Gellius’s. Gellius had no substantial fortune and no permanent position providing him an income, only his prospects as a brilliant young scholar. There was a huge discrepancy between Tycho’s and Gellius’s expectations of what the wedding and the couple’s living style would be like.

  Magdalene’s family was of course well able to supply a suitable dowry, including not only money but such necessities as enough fine gowns to last a lifetime, jewelry and embroidered caps, table and bed linens, kettles and cooking pots and pans, tapestries, a bed and all its hangings, duvets, bolsters, and pillows. All of this was laid out in the marriage contract. By custom a young woman entered marriage supplied for life, leaving her husband responsible only for day-to-day needs.

  Nevertheless, Gellius must soon have realized that he was out of his depth. Even if he had anticipated Tycho’s plans that the marriage take place on the scale of a noble alliance, he had no experience of how costly that would be. The wedding itself, although most of the cost fell to the bride’s family, would be staggeringly expensive for him. A nobleman’s wedding lasted five to nine days, and the groom needed new, sumptuous clothing every day. Gellius’s entire inheritance, and then some, could easily have been eaten up in supplying a betrothal gift—customarily a number of small silver items and a massive gold chain that ensured his wife could support herself for life merely by pawning it—and a “morning gift,” which might be anything from valuable jewelry to the hereditary rights to landed estates. Clearly it was the duty of Dallin, Gellius’s spokesman, to scale down these expectations as he negotiated the contract.

  When it came to a way for Gellius to support his bride, Tycho proposed that Gellius reenter his service at Uraniborg, no longer as an assistant but as a son-in-law, subordinate only to Tycho himself. This arrangement had been part of the nuptial contract agreed on at Uraniborg in late September. Tycho may well have been considering Gellius as a prime candidate to succeed him either as director of Uraniborg or as codirector with one of Tycho’s sons.

  Thus matters stood when Tycho received his ultimatum from Christian about the Chapel of the Magi and went to Roskilde, taking Steenwinkel and another builder with him. He was away again for a short period in late October, and when he returned to the island there was a letter waiting for him from Sophie Brahe in Copenhagen. Gellius had requested an amendment to the contract so as to have only a small wedding with a banquet for a limited number of guests, not a celebration lasting for days, and he would agree to remain in Tycho’s service only until the following Easter, no longer—which seemed astoundingly unappreciative of what had struck Tycho as an extraordinary offer to the young man. It is testimony to Tycho’s concern for Magdalene that he swallowed his annoyance and sent word to Sophie that he would accept Gellius’s amendments but hoped he would not go on changing his mind.

  However, for reasons that still remain mysterious, Gellius had grown extremely skittish about an alliance with Tycho Brahe’s family. He continued to raise fresh objections and make new demands. The renegotiations continued, then floundered and fell apart entirely in late November, with Gellius frustrating every effort at reconciliation. Ominously, his remarks about the Brahes in public and among his close friends seemed contrived to bring an irreversible end to the marriage arrangements.

  On December 12 Tycho formally declared the wedding contract canceled. A devastated Magdalene wrote a statement describing her mistreatment in this matter by Gellius. The breakdown at this point in marriage negotiations, when the man and woman as a formally betrothed couple could by custom already have slept together, was like a death knell for her. No man would ever marry her. At the age of twenty, having had every prospect of happiness and family before her, Magdalene knew that her erstwhile friend and suitor Gellius had condemned her to spinsterdom.

  The matter had by now become more than a private concern and threatened the Brahe family with public disgrace. Professors at the university mediated a new marriage contract in January in which Gellius would not reenter the service of Tycho at all. To enable him to afford the obligations of married life, he was to be appointed provincial physician of Skåne, on petition of the nobility of that province, many of whom were Tycho’s kinsmen. Gellius reneged once again, and this time he judged it prudent to shift the blame by openly spreading malicious rumors about Magdalene and her family and attempting to sow dissension among Tycho’s relatives. The final breakdown of all negotiations occurred before the next autumn, 1595.

  The gossip surrounding this affair was catastrophic for Tycho. He watched helplessly as the high esteem in which he had thought Danish society held him evaporated like a mirage and he became a laughingstock. Gellius had found that preemptive slander was a very effective way to defend his own reputation, and he used that weapon on every possible occasion. From the court in Copenhagen and all parts of the kingdom, Tycho heard reports of people sniggering at him, exchanging ribald jokes about the daughter he loved, sneering at Kirsten’s common origins, blaming Tycho and Sophie for failing to negotiate in good faith, dragging all their names through the mud. Ill will in the university, kept under wraps while Tycho appeared impregnable, emerged to add new voices to the din of calumny.

  By October 1595, when Mars was once again in opposition at a more favorable time of year to attempt the parallax observation, Tycho barely noticed, leaving the work to Longomontanus and others on his staff. They obtained both morning and evening observations only once, on October 27, and none of the observations are written down in Tycho’s hand.

  In January 1596 Tycho took the only step that could restore his family’s reputation. Though he had decided repeatedly not to do so for fear of adding to their grief, he at last brought suit against Gellius for breach of contract. Hearings took place in Lund and then in Copenhagen. From there the case was referred to the diet of the Danish nobility and then reassigned by the crown a year later to a special court of nobles. The specific outcome of the trial is unknown, except that Gellius seems not to have suffered by it. He was soon granted a living of one canonry and two vicariates in Lund Cathedral and later became a professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen.

  Tycho was fearful that the loss of esteem caused by the failed betrothal would trigger similar humiliation for him in scholarly circles even beyond the borders of Denmark. He decided it would be a wise move to enhance his reputation as an astronomer and deter his rivals by publishing an anthology of his correspondence having to do with astronomy. Epistolae Astronomicae6 (Astronomic Letters), which he printed in his new paper mill, clearly revealed his belief that Bär had plagiarized his planetary system. He included the letter he had written to Rothmann about the success of the observations of 1582. Wh
ether or not those observations showed a parallax for Mars, they proved that he had worked on the problem of Mars and on developing his planetary system long before Bär came to Hven.

  In the dedication carved on the cornerstone of the paper mill, Tycho’s words indicate how stubbornly independent he was feeling:

  This dam and paper-mill7 with all their accessories and the fish ponds above them have been built on the order of Tycho Brahe on a site where nothing of the kind existed previously, by his own design, under his own supervision, and at his own expense for the benefit of his country, himself and his heirs. Let us do good while we have the time.

  Even while he thus reminded Denmark that his work had been for his country as well as for himself, Tycho was becoming increasingly resigned to leaving. Early in May 1596 he ordered that his pilot-boat be refitted so that it could serve as a cargo boat. Clearly, he was thinking of transporting unusually heavy items either to or from Hven.

  fn1 Gingerich and Voelkel point out the mysterious contradictory sequence of letters and explain how they have arrived at this explanation in “Tycho Brahe’s Copernican Campaign.”

  fn2 The description of these customs comes from social historian Troels Frederik Troels-Lund, as redescribed in English by John Christianson.

  12

  GEOMETRY’S UNIVERSE

  1594–1597

  IN GRAZ, WHERE Kepler reluctantly began his teaching job in 1594, he found a much less stable religious climate than in solidly Lutheran Tübingen. Here and in the rest of Styria, Protestants and Catholics lived side by side in nominal peace, but only thinly disguised their hostility. The rulers of Styria were members of the royal Hapsburg family and staunch Catholics. Under the Peace of Augsburg they had the right to declare that everyone in Styria must be Catholic. However, nearly all the most powerful landholders were Lutheran, and the Hapsburgs had found it advisable to allow Protestant nobles in the countryside and Protestant citizens in Graz and other cities to practice their faith openly.