Tycho and Kepler (11 page)

When summer ended and before the snows closed the passes
through the Alps, Tycho journeyed north again to Innsbruck and then to Augsburg, where he had previously spent such enjoyable and profitable months. At Regensburg, not far downriver from Augsburg, he attended the coronation of Rudolph of Hapsburg, a ruler destined to play a significant role in his future. Rudolph was being crowned “King of the Romans,” which made him heir apparent to the Holy Roman
Empire.

Having considered numerous possibilities during his journey,
Tycho
decided he would
⁸
emigrate from Denmark and settle in Basel. On the way home to put his plan in motion, Tycho’s final stop on the Continent was in Wittenberg. There he found university and city astir with news of a religious conflict, an early eruption of a division among Protestants that would later cause great unhappiness
for Johannes Kepler and make working for Tycho Brahe his only option.

Twenty years earlier, the 1555 Peace of Augsburg had ended a period of widespread religious and political upheaval—or at least much of Europe had hoped it would. According to the treaty, only Catholicism and Lutheranism would be tolerated within the Holy Roman Empire. The present trouble had begun when Augustus, elector
of Saxony, discovered that many theologians at Wittenberg were secret followers of another Protestant reformer, John Calvin. Augustus took strong measures. He imprisoned the errant theologians, including Melanchthon’s son-in-law. When Tycho reached Wittenberg, they were still in prison, and friction had developed between Augustus and King Frederick of Denmark.

Denmark had not been party to
the religious articles of the Peace of Augsburg, and Niels Hemmingsen, the elder scholar who had tipped his hat at Tycho’s lecture, had been instrumental in achieving a consensus in Denmark that made no sharp distinction between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Hemmingsen also had published a work that gave a Calvinist interpretation to the Eucharist, and a similar work had appeared anonymously in Wittenberg.
Worse for Denmark, all the imprisoned theologians in Wittenberg admitted that they had obtained their Calvinist ideas from Hemmingsen while attending the festivities surrounding King Frederick’s wedding in 1572. Hemmingsen appears to have been an exceedingly busy and effective proselytizer who did not pause for royal holidays.

Since the trail of clues led directly to Copenhagen, Elector Augustus
sent a complaint to King Frederick, who immediately summoned to his castle all Copenhagen pastors, all endowed professors of the University of Copenhagen (including Hemmingsen and Pratensis),
and
the bishop of Roskilde to answer the elector’s charges. Peder Oxe was one of the three commissioners who examined them. Hemmingsen presented an eloquent defense of the peace and unity of belief and religious
practice of the Danish church, describing German theologians as leaping about like cooks trying to please the palate of whatever noble they served. If Denmark paid attention to them, the result would be similar confusion. The difficulty was not immediately settled, but Peder Oxe told Hemmingsen privately not to worry, and matters quieted down.

By the end of December 1575, Tycho had returned
to Denmark and was preparing to liquidate his assets for the move to Basel. The court had moved to Sorø Abbey for Christmas. King Frederick relished the rich food, mead, Rhenish wine, and ale of the abbot of Sorø, as well as the learned, amusing conversation around the abbot’s table. Tycho went there to pay his respects to the king, report on his journey, and visit his aunt and foster mother Inger
Oxe, who was at this time the noblewoman in charge of Queen Sophie’s chamber.

Tycho had just turned twenty-nine and was an experienced courtier, polished by his travels and attendance at many courts. Garbed appropriately with flowing cape, feathered hat, and sword, he was an imposing figure, barrel-chested, elegant, and of distinctly noble bearing. His eyes were light-colored, and his hair,
beard, and substantial mustache were reddish blond. In portraits, his false nose looks a fairly successful imitation, close to flesh-colored—though an astute portrait painter would have made it so in any case.

Tycho told the king about his visit to Wilhelm IV in Kassel and glowingly described this ruler who surrounded himself with scholars and artists. For work on Frederick’s Elsinore building
project, Tycho recommended the landgrave’s former hydraulics expert, a portrait painter from Augsburg, and a sculptor trained in Italy, all of whom were willing to work in Denmark. He also reported on Rudolph of Hapsburg’s coronation. He did not mention any intention of emigrating.

King Frederick regarded the impressive young astronomer with heightened interest. An emissary from the astronomy-loving
landgrave had already informed him of Wilhelm’s high regard for Tycho and recommendation that Frederick encourage him, and Frederick could read between the lines that if he did not, Wilhelm would. Perhaps there were rumors at court that Tycho had plans to move abroad. In any case, Frederick received Tycho with extraordinary graciousness and offered him not just one but a choice among four
fiefs. Two were castles on Baltic islands, rather far from Copenhagen but of great strategic importance. The others were Helsingborg, which Tycho’s father had commanded, and Landskrona, both of which guarded the Øresund, the sound that led to the Baltic. At any of these castles Tycho would have power over hundreds of peasants and villagers, with servants, knights, troops, and courtiers to serve
him.

But Tycho surprised the king by accepting none of these castles
and
major royal fiefs. Instead, he politely insisted that he needed time to think about them. Frederick had nothing better to offer. Nor was this a matter that he could simply let drop. He had no wish to lose Tycho to a foreign ruler or university. Moreover, it was a matter of honor that he show some form of substantial recognition
for this young member of one of Denmark’s most powerful families.

However, while the king was pondering the problem, Tycho wrote to Pratensis, “I did not want to take
⁹
possession of any of the castles our good king so graciously offered me. I am displeased with society here, customary forms and the whole rubbish. . . . Among people of my own class . . . I waste much time.”

In the two months
following the king’s offer, Tycho went ahead with preparations for his departure, but he was still somewhat ambivalent about it. To maintain an aristocratic lifestyle in Basel, he would have to purchase an estate, and the only way to afford that was to sell his portion of Knutstorp. That was a complicated undertaking, because he shared ownership with his brother Steen, his mother held a lifetime
interest in the estate, and both lived there. Furthermore, refusing the king’s magnanimous offer was sure to shed a bad light on the entire extended family. On the other hand, if his decision was going to be swayed by consideration for others, he should consider Kirsten first. There were heavy social duties connected with being lord and lady of a castle. Kirsten was as ill equipped as he was
unwilling to perform these duties.

Tycho’s uncle Steen, of Herrevad, not pleased at the prospect of seeing his favorite nephew disappear over the European horizon, took matters in hand himself. Steen found a roundabout way to let the king know that Tycho was considering emigration and what the reason was: The royal fiefs the king had offered involved duties that would distract Tycho from his
work. As the king later told Tycho, it was at this point in the conversation that he recalled Steen mentioning, a year earlier, that there was an island in the Øresund that had a special appeal for Tycho. Frederick’s next offer was designed to be one Tycho could not refuse.

The king had a flair for the dramatic. Tycho described his summons in an excited letter to Pratensis:

Hear now
¹⁰
what has happened these last few days . . . and hear it alone—do not reveal it to a soul, except our friend Dançey, when you two are alone. As I lay awake in bed, early on the morning of February 11, restlessly considering to myself the journey to Germany time and again from all sides and figuring out how I should be able to disappear without arousing the attention of my kinsfolk, when lo!—it was
announced quite unexpectedly that a royal page had arrived here at Knutstorp, who had hastened the whole night through in order to bring me a letter from the king without delay (it was still dark of night, towards the break of dawn, and the sun did not rise for another two hours). Therefore I bade the page, a nobleman and a kinsman, to step up to the bed. He straightaway produced a letter and said
that he had been commissioned by his king to ride night and day without rest, seek me out wheresoever I might be found . . . personally deliver the letter to me, and return immediately. . . . I broke open the letter and found that the king had commanded me to come to him without delay. This I did obediently without wasting a moment so that I presented myself before the king at the [royal hunting
lodge of Ibstrup, in the forest about a mile from Copenhagen] that same day before sundown. Through his chamberlain, Niels Parsberg, he let me be called to him in private.

Frederick received Tycho with the news that his plans to leave Denmark were no longer a secret. The king said he also knew, and sympathized with, the reasons Tycho had not accepted his offers. He, too, was concerned that
political and social duties should not interfere with Tycho’s research. Frederick described a recent visit to Elsinore, where he had been overseeing the progress of the new castle: As he surveyed the seascape from one of the windows, his eyes
happened
to fall on the little island of Hven, on the distant horizon to the southeast—a beautiful, isolated place, not held by any noble in fief, carrying
with it only minimal administrative obligations. Were Frederick to pay, out of the royal coffers, all expenses for building a suitable residence there and for founding and maintaining a research establishment, there was surely nothing abroad that could possibly lure Tycho away. His work at Hven would redound to his own credit and that of his king and his country. Tycho should not answer immediately,
Frederick insisted, but consider the matter and reply as to whether he would accept this new offer.

Tycho returned to Knutstorp the next day, stunned by the proposal but still undecided. Another day passed before he wrote the letter to Pratensis asking for his and Dançey’s advice. Both responded enthusiastically on the same day that Tycho’s letter arrived. They emphasized, among other things,
that the king’s generosity was a powerful vindication for Tycho over those relatives and fellow nobles who disapproved of his straying from their own career paths and who had predicted a dismal future for him.

Frederick’s new offer implied endorsement not only of Tycho’s unorthodox career choice but also of his alliance with Kirsten. One of Tycho’s later students reported that the king’s “intervention”
put to rest hard feelings toward Tycho among relatives who suffered diminished social esteem because of Kirsten’s low birth. The gift of Hven was a clear indication of Frederick’s favor and also (though the intention remained unspoken) a provision from the royal coffers of a haven for Kirsten and their young family.

By February 18, six days after Frederick made the offer, though Tycho had
not yet decided whether to accept Hven as his fiefdom, he had made up his mind to stay in Denmark. He pledged his fealty to the Danish crown in the same words Brahes, Billes, and Oxes had uttered for generations as they began their service to the kings of Denmark. His royal pension began, nearly doubling his yearly income.

5

T
HE
I
SLE OF
H
VEN

1576–1577

FOUR DAYS LATER
Tycho rode from Knutstorp to the harbor at Landskrona, on the eastern shore of the Øresund, and set sail across the icy sound to the island of Hven.
¹
The crossing took two hours. Cliffs on all sides of the island made the top in many places unreachable from the rock-strewn beaches. From Tycho’s small boat these cliffs would have loomed
tall as he drew near, and as he wrote in a letter to Pratensis, “Since the waves of the sea surround [Hven] on all sides, it has difficult, often quite dangerous landing places.” Nevertheless, the boat managed to land on the north shore of the island, where there was a break in the cliffs and it was possible to get to the top.

It was a stiff climb, as well as cold, for this was late February,
when the short winter days begin to lengthen at this latitude but bitterly sharp winds blow across the island. Tycho soon arrived at the only settlement, the village of Tuna. The cottagers there, ignorant of the future and the havoc he would wreak in their placid lives, very likely welcomed this aristocratic stranger with a warm fire. Tycho probably went beyond the village across the level top
of the island to its center. From there, the promontory where King Frederick was constructing
his
new castle was visible on the distant horizon across the water. Tycho must have thought on that first day that this center point of Hven would be a splendid place to erect his own palace. He spent that night on the island and observed a conjunction of the Moon and Mars in the foot of Orion—his first
recorded observation from Hven, February 22, 1576.

Tycho followed the king’s suggestion that he take his time deciding whether to accept Hven or choose another fiefdom. He spent much of the next three months there, studying the conditions, weighing advantages and disadvantages. He measured the island by striding along the perimeter at the clifftops, counting 8,160 strides. For a man who had
been considering emigrating to a warmer part of Europe, the climate was not enticing, but Tycho was a Dane by birth and breeding and accustomed to enduring cold and wet for much of the year. A more serious problem was that at Hven’s latitude he would see less than he wished of those parts of the sky most interesting to an astronomer. The planet Mercury would frequently be out of sight below the
southern horizon. Nevertheless, as spring damp and mists gave way to the promise of a hot, idyllic summer, Tycho was falling in love with Hven.