Kepler's Witch by James A. Connor

Author:James A. Connor [James A. Connor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061737428
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

While this was still going on, back in 1609, Kepler was in the midst of the last touches on his Astronomia Nova. Rudolf was still alive, and the Passau invasion had not yet happened. After all his struggles at the Frankfurt book fair, he had finally negotiated its publication with Tengnagel and a publisher in Frankfurt, and after a swing through his native Swabia, including Tübingen, he returned to Prague and presented his work to the imperial council. For himself, Kepler was overjoyed by the emperor’s decrees of toleration. Protestants could now practice freely across much of Germany and Austria, that is, if Rudolf kept his word, which, unknown to Kepler, he had no intention of doing. But Kepler was no fool and, despite the general elation among the Protestants, he could see that the emperor’s power had been severely weakened and that this would not necessarily lead to peace and freedom for the Protestants. The more enmity there was between the denominations, the worse it was for everyone. The more each creed circled the wagons by defining all other creeds as the enemy, the more inevitable war became. When that war would happen in Bohemia, Kepler was not certain, but it would happen, and it would happen soon.

Meanwhile, in order to keep his family safe and to please his ailing wife, Kepler decided to look for a new position, somewhere outside Prague, somewhere in a town similar to Graz, where Barbara had been happy. But because Kepler had been a stipend student in the duchy of Württemberg and had received his education as part of the duke’s educational program, he was sworn to the duke’s service, even after all those years away. If he were going to seek a new position somewhere, he would need the duke’s permission to work for another ruler outside the duchy. Kepler was quite faithful to this. Perhaps he still yearned after a professorship in Tübingen, but the one that was most suitable for him was still held by Michael Mästlin. Still, Kepler longed for his homeland and would have flown there like a cannonball had they offered him even a meager position somewhat worthy of his reputation as imperial mathematician.

While Prague was between battles, Kepler traveled to Stuttgart in May 1609 and petitioned the duke in person to consider the troubles that he was undergoing in Prague, without hope of finding sanctuary in his own homeland. Once again, he asked the duke for permission to work for another ruler, which the duke’s councilors granted with the stipulation that, should the duke need his services, he would drop everything and enter the duke’s service.

But once again, he stuck his foot in it. In a second letter to the duke, he promised that he would be willing to sign the Formula of Concord, but only conditionally. He would not struggle against it or speak out in any way, and he would seek to find some kind of unity between himself and the strictest members of his own church.

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