Kepler's Witch (45 page)
Authors: James A. Connor
5.
J. Hübner,
Die Theologie Johannes Keplers,
pp. 165â75. In Charlotte Methuen,
Kepler's Tübingen
(Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 205â6.
6.
Kepler,
Mysterium Cosmographicum, GW
viii, 9â20. In Caspar,
Kepler,
p. 63.
7.
Quoted in Michael Walter Burke-Gaffney, S.J.,
Kepler and the Jesuits
(Milwaukee: Bruce, 1944), pp. 3â4.
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. 6â9. 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.
C
HAPTER
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. 153â62.
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. 99:379â82. 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. 99â360f. 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. 81â82.
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. 80â81.
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. 117:174â79.
20.
GW
iv, 308:9â10.
21.
Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, August 6, 1599,
GW
xiv, nr. 130â226f.
22.
Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, July 12, 1600,
GW
xiv, nr. 168:109â11. In Caspar,
Kepler,
pp. 102â3.
23.
Letter to Mästlin, September 9, 1600,
GW
xiv, nr. 175:52â56.
C
HAPTER
8
1.
Eduard Petiška and Jan Dolan,
Beautiful Stories of Golden Prague
(Prague: Martin, 1995), pp. 5â7.
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. 203:24â26, 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.
C
HAPTER
9
1.
Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg, July 12, 1600,
GW
xiv, nr. 168:102â4.
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. 154â56.
7.
Ripellino,
Magic Prague,
p. 131.
C
HAPTER
10
1.
Peter Demetz,
Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), pp. 220â23.
2.
Johannes Kepler,
Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, GW
iv, 281â311.
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.
C
HAPTER
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. 669:84â88.
4.
Letter of Kepler to Hoffmann, April 26, 1612,
GW
xvii, nr. 715:8â9.
5.
Kepler,
Glaubensbekenntnis, GW
xii, 28:44â47.
6.
Kepler,
Glaubensbekenntnis, GW
xii, 28:3â5.
7.
Kepler to Hafenreffer, November 28, 1618,
GW
xvii, nr. 808:55â56.
8.
Kepler,
Glaubensbekenntnis, GW
xii, 28:17â21.
9.
Kepler to Mästlin, December 12/22, 1616,
GW
xvii, nr. 750:260â66.
10.
Letter from Kepler to an anonymous nobleman, October 23, 1613,
GW
xvii, nr. 669:6â7.
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. 246â47.
12.
Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt,
Johann Kepler,
pp. 246â47.
13.
Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt,
Johann Kepler,
pp. 246â47.
14.
Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt,
Johann Kepler,
pp. 246â47.
15.
Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt,
Johann Kepler,
pp. 246â47.
16.
Letter, October 23, 1613, in Schmidt,
Johann Kepler,
pp. 246â47.
C
HAPTER
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.
C
HAPTER
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. 224â26.
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.