To Kepler, Tycho was coming to resemble the dragon nesting on a hoard of gold, not able to put it to use in a meaningful way himself, not even recognizing its true value, but too fearful of thieves to allow anyone else to glimpse it. Kepler was not above putting his mind to scheming. There must be other ways to get at this hoard than “by begging the decision to publish.”
16
PRAGUE OPENS HER ARMS
July 1599–February 1600
TYCHO BRAHE’S RECEPTION in Prague quickly allayed all fears that his journey might have been in vain. Johannes Barvitius, the emperor’s private secretary and one of the triumvirate who had brokered Tycho’s relationship with the imperial court, met him in a garden near Rudolph’s palace. Tycho showed him the three books he had brought for Rudolph and the letters of introduction. Barvitius said he would find out in what way and from whom Rudolph wished to receive them. The answer Tycho hoped for came a day later: The emperor wanted to receive them from Tycho himself, and he would be summoned into Rudolph’s presence shortly.
Meanwhile other high-ranking officials at the imperial court welcomed Tycho warmly and expressed their outrage that King Christian had so sadly undervalued his achievements. Tycho replied diplomatically by defending the Danish king and praising his talents. When the discussion turned to the ignorance and villainy of others at the Danish court, Tycho was only slightly more willing to agree but quickly turned the conversation by commenting that “perhaps God has acted by some special providence in order that the astronomical investigations with which I have been so long and so thoroughly occupied should now come elsewhere and redound to the credit of the emperor himself.”
Barvitius drove Tycho in his carriage to “a splendid1 and magnificent palace in the Italian style, with beautiful private grounds,” situated on the pinnacle of the same hill on which Rudolph’s glorious, sprawling complex stood. Barvitius pointed out the advantages of the mansion, including a tower that might serve for astronomy, and told Tycho that if he liked it, the emperor was willing to purchase it for him.
While they toured the house and grounds, Tycho found subtle ways of letting Barvitius know “from what I said2 and did not say” that the tower was inadequate to hold even one of his instruments and that he was not overjoyed with the house. The emperor had foreseen this possibility, and Barvitius was immediately able to mention several castles outside Prague, reachable within a day or two, where there would be fewer disruptions, fewer envious eyes, and a situation nearer to what Tycho had enjoyed at Uraniborg. Barvitius also informed Tycho that Rudolph was prepared to give him an annual stipend, which Tycho would hear more about when he had his audience.
When the summons came, Tycho had the rare honor of entering Rudolph’s audience chamber alone. “I saw [the emperor]3 sitting in the room on a bench with his back against a table, completely alone in the whole chamber without even an attending page. After the customary gestures of civility, he immediately called me over to him with a nod, and when I approached, graciously held out his hand to me. I then drew back a bit and gave a little speech in Latin.” Rudolph replied with equal grace, “saying, among other things, how agreeable my arrival was and that he promised to support me and my research, all the while smiling in the most kindly way so that his whole face beamed with benevolence. I could not take in everything he said because he by nature speaks very softly.” Tycho thanked the emperor and excused himself to fetch the three presentation copies of his books that he had left with his son Tycho in the antechamber. Rudolph “took them and laid them out on the table. I reviewed the contents of each briefly. Then he again responded with a splendid speech, saying most graciously that they would please him greatly. I then removed myself according to the proper courtesies.”
Rudolph called Barvitius into the audience chamber. Barvitius emerged again almost immediately to tell Tycho that Rudolph had been watching from his window as Tycho arrived and had noticed a mechanical device on Tycho’s carriage. He now wished to have it shown to him. The device was Tycho’s odometer.4 Tycho ordered his son to fetch it and gave it to Barvitius with a quick explanation of its construction and operation. Barvitius soon came back out of the audience chamber to report that the emperor did not want to accept Tycho’s odometer but would have one made for himself according to its pattern. This was Tycho’s first experience of one of the emperor’s eccentricities. Rudolph was a fanatical collector of curiosities and was far happier among these objects than among people.
Barvitius reported that “the emperor was very favorably5 disposed toward [Tycho] and that after he referred the case to his council, in a short time, he would settle the matter of an annual grant and suitable quarters.” Tycho was encouraged to summon his family to join him, and the “emperor himself would do everything necessary to make sure that we lacked for nothing needed to live comfortably.” Tycho sent his son to bring Kirsten and the others from Dresden. They all arrived eight days later.
It was urgent that Tycho have an estate that he could begin turning into a new Uraniborg, and, true to his word, Rudolph gave Tycho a choice among three estates some distance from the city, including his own favorite hunting lodge, Brandeis—a huge, magnificent establishment. Perhaps thinking of what a sacrifice the emperor would be making if he accepted it, Tycho chose another castle farther along the same road, a six-hour ride from Prague. Handsomely positioned on a bluff sixty meters above the flood plain of the river Jizerou, this was the castle Benatky, the Czech name for Venice, because when the area flooded, the promontory where the castle stood was surrounded by water. The mansion, like Uraniborg, was not ancient and had never been intended to serve as a fortress. Also like Uraniborg, it boasted an indoor water system, probably the first in Bohemia. Tycho was taken by the beauty of the surroundings and by Benatky’s uninterrupted view of the horizon in all directions, and he even noted with approval that there was, nearby, a small village of Protestants with Calvinist leanings.
By late August Tycho and his family had explored the bright, spacious rooms of the castle and were deciding how they should be allotted and where the furniture should go. The indoor space was larger than Uraniborg, with three floors of nearly 5,380 square feet each. Though none of this space was well suited for astronomy, Tycho was setting up his instruments. Rudolph had by now had time to peruse the pictures in Tycho’s Mechanica, and he was eager to see Benatky become even greater than Uraniborg.
Tycho began the transformation of the castle by making repairs, but it was not long before he was modifying the floor plan and windows and designing additional buildings to house the instruments and alchemical laboratories. He took observations to calculate the exact geographical position and orientation of his new home, and he marked the meridian with a line on the floor near a window. Benatky wasn’t oriented along north-south, east-west lines, as Uraniborg had been, but then it had not been designed by an astronomer.
Tycho’s annual grant took longer than expected to pass the council. The outlay for Tycho was to be higher than the salaries of many counts and barons in the emperor’s service. Eventually Rudolph even ordered that Tycho’s salary be retroactive from the time his patronage in Denmark had ended, and Tycho was to have a hereditary fief as soon as one became available. However, shortly after Tycho began his remodeling, the administrator of the estate, Caspar von Mühlstein, began complaining to Barvitius about the mounting costs. By late November, Tycho’s renovation estimates had doubled, and Mühlstein had also learned that the salary the emperor had promised Tycho was much greater than the income from the Benatky estate. Mühlstein refused to authorize any more expenditure without an official order backed up with money from the treasury. He knew, as Tycho would soon discover for himself, that much of Rudolph’s munificence was, in fact, financial make-believe. Unlike in Denmark, where the king’s word was his bond and bound everyone else as well, in the imperial court promises often rested on nothing but good intentions, orders on the royal treasury would fail to produce payment, and there might not even be suff
icient money in the treasury to make good on Rudolph’s pledges.
Tycho soon found that in other respects as well the emperor’s favor did not make all things possible. The promised hereditary fief could not be Tycho’s until he had applied for and obtained citizenship, a slow bureaucratic process. His friends warned him that envy and slander were as much a part of court life here as they had been in Denmark, and there were opportunists eager to bring him down. Powerful men who had not been part of Tycho’s network were not pleased to be shouldered aside by a foreigner.
However, it also was not long before officials and administrators such as Mühlstein began to realize the seriousness of Rudolph’s intentions to underwrite Tycho’s work. The court had again left Prague for fear of plague, taking with them some of Tycho’s medicines, but letters passed frequently between Tycho and the emperor. Tycho’s messages went straight to Rudolph without perusal by the Imperial Council. With the emperor giving him this much priority, Tycho felt so confident that he threatened the foot-dragging Mühlstein with Rudolph’s displeasure and hinted that if the expenditures were not authorized he might “leave Bohemia6 and tell the world why.” The Chamber of Deputies informed Mühlstein that, awaiting Rudolph’s clarification, he should continue construction at Benatky as cheaply as possible.
Rudolph’s response on December 10 set matters straight: Tycho was to have his wooden outbuildings and “little rooms,” bays along the cliff for the instruments. Tycho’s salary also was to be paid, in part out of rents from Brandeis.
By late autumn so much remodeling was going on at Tycho’s castle that there was less living and working space than there had been to start. Also, the plague had come nearer, and two thousand had died in the district. Tycho moved his family to another castle twenty miles downriver because “the women were frightened,”7 as he reported it.
All this activity had not made Tycho forget about Ursus. In September he had begun investigating the man’s whereabouts and learned of his flight from Prague. Tycho secretly consulted the official censor. Because Ursus had published his book without first submitting it to censorship, it was within the censor’s power to summon him and assign punishment. But with the imperial court absent from the city, there was no court before which Ursus could be summoned. Tycho had to wait, but he reaffirmed his intention to track “the beast” down and drag him out of hiding.
THAT AUTUMN, Johannes Kepler and his family faced an increasingly ominous situation in Graz. Kepler could no longer escape into mathematical and philosophical speculation and ignore the threat hanging over him. There were rumors that soon any Lutheran moving away from Graz might not be allowed to take away his possessions or trade or sell them, confirming the fear that had earlier made the Keplers decide to try to weather the storm rather than relocate elsewhere. The loss of Barbara’s substantial inheritance and all her possessions would have been catastrophic.
Nevertheless, to stay was becoming untenable. Oppressive ordinances touched the family directly, and forced conversions to Catholicism were surely not far away. Riots broke out continually in the city and nearby countryside. “No matter what fate8 might await me if I move elsewhere,” wrote Kepler, “I know for certain that it will not be worse than that which threatens us here so long as the present government continues.”
He did not have many options. Returning to Württemberg to take up a clerical position, the ambition he had painfully relinquished when posted to Graz, was out of the question, because his disagreement with Tübingen orthodoxy, begun as a student, was now stronger than ever. “I could never torture myself9 with greater unrest and anxiety than if I now, in my present state of conscience, should be enclosed in that sphere of activity,” he wrote.
One possibility was a university professorship in philosophy or even in medicine. Kepler appealed to Mästlin, asking whether there might be a position like that available at Tübingen or whether he should look elsewhere. He inquired about the cost of living in Tübingen—the price of bread, wine, and rent. Mästlin replied that, sadly, he had no advice to offer and lamented that Kepler had not sought the counsel of a wiser man with more political experience, “for in these matters10 I am as innocent as a child.” He reported the prices of grain and wine but advised Kepler not to hope for a future in Tübingen. Kepler also wrote to Herwart von Hohenburg, who had been such a helpful friend in the past. Von Hohenburg failed Kepler this time. His own position was insecure, and he needed to be exceedingly discreet.
With each failure, Kepler’s thoughts returned to Tycho Brahe, whose success in Prague had been reported to him by von Hohenburg. Prague was not, after all, so far away. Tycho had mentioned the possibility that Kepler might like to use his observations. The idea that that suggestion could possibly be construed as an invitation or even as a job offer seemed tempting but outrageous. Kepler would have to leave his family behind in Graz, for the letter had said nothing of them, and he would have to put his own mind and talents at the disposal of another man, rumored by some to be a tyrant. He had already offended that man, and Tycho’s forgiveness had been gracious but condescending.
With the new year, 1600, and a new century, came the invitation from Johann Friedrich Hoffmann, baron of Grünbüchel and Strechau, member of the diet of Styria and councillor to Emperor Rudolph. Hoffmann offered Kepler not only a way to get from Graz to Prague, but an introduction to Tycho Brahe. Kepler’s wavering ended.
Kepler would have begun the journey in Hoffmann’s carriage with much more confidence had he known about a letter from Tycho that arrived shortly after his departure. Tycho had repeated his invitation—and this time it clearly was an invitation, insisting that Kepler must come to Prague, not because he was “being forced out of Graz” but of his own free will and because he “desired joint11 studies” with Tycho. If he chose to come, Tycho was prepared to help and advise him and his family.
Kepler and Hoffmann’s ten-day journey from Graz to Prague passed through rolling countryside studded with promontories, many of which were crowned by castles. Prague itself was situated around such a promontory, with an enormous castle complex that even included a cathedral. This complex, a great city within a city, was the seat of the Holy Roman Emperor. Renaissance mansions of some of Europe’s most powerful aristocrats lined the higher parts of the steep streets that climbed the hill from the river called the Vltava by the local population and the Moldau or Moldova by their rulers. Farther down, nearer the river, were the homes of courtiers and craftsmen, and there was much more of the city at the other end of a long, stone, towered bridge that spanned the river.
Kepler, still unaware of Tycho’s second invitation, stayed for a few days as guest of Baron Hoffmann. Cosmopolitan Prague was a different world from the Graz Kepler had left. Bustling, exhilarating, a mixture of narrow, malodorous streets, wider avenues, and broad marketplaces, it was alive with many ethnic groups and languages. The court attracted a diverse community of noblemen and ambassadors from all over Europe, as well as opportunists and hangers-on, and this community in turn provided a living for hundreds of tradesmen, craftsmen, scholars, and artists.
It was some days before Kepler was able to get word to Tycho that he was in the city. However, “as soon as I arrived,”12 Kepler reported, he had an unpleasant encounter with Ursus, who had not fled far after all. At first Kepler kept his identity a secret from Ursus, “lest he intensify the situation to a brawl,” but he spoke to the older man sharply about how little he liked Ursus’s recent book. As the incident continued, Kepler let Ursus know who he was and told him that “since he decided to drag me, who had written as a pupil, unwillingly into the judge’s chair, he should therefore permit me to discard a pupil’s modesty and assume a judge’s authority in this literary contest and in my turn decide publicly what seems to be the mathematical issue.”
By January 26 Tycho, back from his brief flight from the plague, had heard of Kepler’s arrival. He wrote to Kepler again with extreme cordiality: “You will come13 not so much as guest but as very we
lcome friend and highly desirable participant and companion in our observations of the heavens.” He sent his son Tycho and Tengnagel in his own carriage to Prague with instructions to bring Johannes Kepler back with them. Kepler had every reason to anticipate from Tycho as warm and accommodating a welcome as Tycho had received six months earlier from Emperor Rudolph.
17
A DYSFUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION
1600
THE CARRIAGE IN which Kepler rode must have creaked, shifted on its axles, and tilted as the horses began the steep pull up the road to the top of the bluff where Benatky Castle stood. Kepler’s mood cannot have been other than one of excitement and exhilaration, with most qualms about the impending meeting overridden by anticipation that Tycho Brahe, better than any other man alive, would be able to understand and value his ideas. The intellectual relationship and the access, at last, to Tycho’s observational data that Kepler looked forward to, and that Tycho had promised in his letters, must surely have made the future appear as rich, fertile, and limitless as the plains and skies that opened to view as the road climbed.
Tycho’s arrangement for Kepler to ride from Prague in the carriage with his eldest son had been flattering and consistent with the tone of his most recent correspondence, and Kepler’s welcome at Benatky was no disappointment. The venerable astronomer granted him a cordial initial interview. Tycho Brahe’s mystique was as powerful as any monarch’s, and to Kepler he probably seemed like a character from legend who had turned out to be real. Kepler reported that Tycho offered to reimburse his travel expenses, and he “saw immediately”1 that there was “no fear that I would regret the trip.”
Alas, it was not long before Kepler’s mood deteriorated to bleak disillusionment, homesickness, and panic about the future. The promise of that welcome turned out to have been a cruel mirage. In the days that followed his arrival, Benatky’s harried lord turned to other matters. The bustle and confusion of a castle under reconstruction went on around a bewildered Kepler as though he were not there. Perhaps he should not have been surprised. Only recently he had visited the court in Württemberg and barely been allowed to sit at the Trippeltisch. Tycho’s households at Uraniborg and Benatky, though they in some ways resembled the establishment of a university professor, still had much in common with the court of a feudal ruler, where a man of lower status rarely had contact with that ruler except for the sight of him at the dining table.
Tycho and Kepler Page 24