Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother

by Connor, James A.

• ISBN13: 9780060750497
• ISBN10: 0060750499
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-20
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Set against the backdrop of the witchcraft trial of his mother, this lively biography of Johannes Kepler - 'the Protestant Galileo' and 16th century mathematician and astronomer - reveals the surprisingly spiritual nature of the quest of early modern science. In the style of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter , Connor's book brings to life the tidal forces of Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and social upheaval. Johannes Kepler, who discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, was persecuted for his support of the Copernican system. After a neighbour accused his mother of witchcraft, Kepler quit his post as the Imperial mathematician to defend her. James Connor tells Kepler's story as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey into the modern world through war and disease and terrible injustice, a journey reflected in the evolution of Kepler's geometrical model of the cosmos into a musical model, harmony into greater harmony. The leitmotif of the witch trial adds a third dimension to Kepler's biography by setting his personal life within his own times. The acts of this trial, including Kepler's letters and the accounts of the witnesses, although published in their original German dialects, had never before been translated into English. Echoing some of Dava Sobel's work for Galileo's Daughter , Connor has translated the witch trial documents into English. With a great respect for the history of these times and the life of this man, Connor's accessible story illuminates the life of Kepler, the man of science, but also Kepler, a man of uncommon faith and vision.

Author Biography

James A. Connor is a former Jesuit priest who is now professor of English at Kean University in Union, New Jersey

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
With Thanks	xiii
Introduction: So Why Kepler?	1	(6)
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO THE SENATE OF LEONBERG, JANUARY 1, 1616	7	(6)
I With Unspeakable Sadness	13	(10)
Where Kepler's mother, Katharina, is accused of witchcraft by a former friend, which the gossip of the townspeople whips into a fury against her.
TESTIMONY OF DONATUS GÜLTLINGER, CITIZEN OF LEONBERG, GIVEN TO LUTHER EINHORN, MAGISTRATE OF LEONBERG, 1620	19	(1)
TESTIMONY OF BENEDICT BEUTELSBACHER, GERMAN SCHOOLMASTER OF LEONBERG, 1620	20	(3)
II Appeired a Terrible Comet	23	(12)
Where Kepler is born in Weil der Stadt, near Leonberg, including a description of the town, the Kepler family, and Johannes's early childhood.
KEPLER'S HOROSCOPE FOR HIMSELF, NOVEMBER 1597	31	(4)
III Born with a Destiny	35	(14)
Where Kepler receives his education as a scholarship student under the care of the Duke of Wurttemberg.
FROM KEPLER'S ASTRONOMIA NOVA, 1609	47	(2)
IV Taken by a Forceful Passion	49	(22)
Where Kepler enters Tübingen University and prepares for his calling as a priest of the Book of Nature.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO THE THEOLOGY FACULTY AT TÜBINGEN, FEBRUARY 28, 1594	69	(2)
V In Many Respects So Honorable	71	(16)
Where a position as a mathematics teacher opens at the Lutheran school in Graz, and Kepler takes the position with some fear.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO MICHAEL MÄSTLIN, FEBRUARY 10, 1597	85	(2)
VI Married under Pernicious Skies	87	(20)
Where Kepler publishes the Mysterium Cosmographicum, and in the following year marries Barbara Müller von Muhleck, a widow twice over with one daughter, which marriage is complicated.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO MICHAEL MÄSTLIN, JUNE 11, 1598	101	(1)
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO HERWART VON HOHENBERG, DECEMBER 9, 1598	102	(5)
VII An Archimedean Calculation of Motion	107	(38)
Where the Lutheran community of Graz is persecuted, then banished, and where Kepler, who must choose between his faith and his position, is finally banished with them.
FROM KEPLER'S EULOGY ON THE DEATH OF TYCHO BRAHE, OCTOBER 24, 1601	141	(4)
VIII When in Heaven the Flock of Secret Movers	145	(24)
Where Kepler takes employment with Tycho Brahe and moves his entire family to Prague.
LETTERS FROM KEPLER TO JOHANN GEORG BRENGGER, OCTOBER 4, 1607, NOVEMBER 30, 1607	167	(2)
IX Living Creatures on the Stars	169	(24)
Where Kepler writes the Astronomia Nova in Prague, a city full of magic and political intrigue.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO TOBIAS SCULTETUS, APRIL 13, 1612	189	(4)
X Who with Tender Fragrance	193	(38)
Where Kepler's marriage is troubled, Rudolf II dies, and the Counter-Reformation comes to Prague in force.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO AN UNKNOWN NOBLEMAN OCTOBER 23, 1613	227	(2)
FROM KEPLER'S JOURNAL, 1614	229	(2)
XI To Quiet the Gossip	231	(28)
Where Kepler, after moving to Linz, Austria, must come forth to defend his mother on charges of witchcraft.
LETTER FROM LUTHER EINHORN, MAGISTRATE OF LEONBERG, TO THE DUKE OF WÜRTTEMBERG, OCTOBER 22, 1616	255	(4)
XII If One Practiced the Fiend's, Trade	259	(16)
Where Katharina's trial begins, and she is horribly mistreated, and where Johannes must leave the emperor's service for a time to come to her aid.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO HERZOG JOHANN FRIEDRICH VON WÜRTTEMBERG, NOVEMBER 1620	271	(4)
XIII With Present Maladies of Body and Soul	275	(36)
Where the Thirty Years' War begins with the Second Defenestration of Prague, and where Katharina Kepler is tried and convicted of witchcraft.
FROM KEPLER'S HARMONICE MUNDI, BOOK V, 1619	307	(4)
XIV To Examine the Secrets of Nature	311	(30)
Where Kepler writes his Harmony of the World as the Thirty Years' War heats up, and where he is finally chased out of Linz, his home for fourteen years.
LETTER FROM KEPLER TO JOHANN MATTHIAS BERNEGGER, FEBRUARY 15, 1621 FROM KEPLER'S JOURNAL, 1623	339	(2)
XV My Duty under Danger	341	(24)
Where Kepler seeks a home for his last few years after fleeing Linz, argues with the Jesuits, finds patronage with Wallenstein, and dies in Regensburg
Notes	365	(12)
Kepler Time Line	377	(4)
Source Readings	381	(4)
Index	385

Excerpts

Kepler's Witch
An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother

Chapter One

With Unspeakable Sadness

Where Kepler's mother, Katharina, is accused of
witchcraft by a former friend, which the gossip of
the townspeople whips into a fury against her.

On September 28, 1620, the Feast of St. Wenceslas, the executionershowed Katharina Kepler the instruments of torture, the pricking needles,the rack, the branding irons. Her son Johannes Kepler was nearby, fuming,praying for it to be over. He was forty-nine and, with Galileo Galilei,one of the greatest astronomers of the age -- the emperor's mathematician,the genius who had calculated the true orbits of the planets and revealedthe laws of optics to the world. Dukes listened to him. Barons asked hisadvice. And yet when the town gossips of Leonberg set their will againsthim, determined to take the life of his mother on trumped-up charges ofwitchcraft, he could not stop them. Still, he never gave up trying, and inthat he was a good deal like his mother.

It was five years into the trial, and the difficult old woman would notbend -- she admitted nothing. Not surprising, for if truth be told, KatharinaKepler was a stubborn, cranky, hickory stick of a woman who sufferedfrom insomnia, had an excess of curiosity, and simply couldn't keep her nose out of other people's business. She was known to be zänkisch -- quarrelsome-- and nearly everyone said she had a wicked tongue. Perhaps thatwas why her old friends and neighbors were so willing to accuse her ofwitchcraft, why five years before they had forced her at sword point to performan illegal magical ritual just to gather evidence that she was indeed awitch, and why they eventually handed her over to the magistrate for trial.

The ordeal consisted of two years of accusations and five years of courtaction, from 1613, when the accusations of handing out poison potionswere first made, to 1620, when they convicted Katharina and sentencedher to the territio verbalis, the terrorization by word, despite all Johannescould do. There were tidal forces at work in this little town. The eventsaround the duchy of Württemberg would gather into themselves all the violentchanges of the day, for by their conviction of Katharina, the consistory(the duke's council), the magistrates, and the Lutheran churchauthorities had bundled together their fear of Copernicus and their angeragainst Johannes, a man they had already convicted of heresy. The Reformation,like an earthquake, had cracked Western Christianity, stable sincethe fifth century, into Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants intoLutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anglicans, and Anabaptists, with themany camps drifting apart like tectonic plates. Even the heavens hadbegun changing, and Kepler had been a part of that change. Copernicus,an obscure Polish priest, had published his On the Revolutions of theHeavenly Spheres, which had dethroned the earth from its place at theuniverse center and sent it spinning through the heavens like a top revolvingaround the sun. Fear ruled Europe -- fear of difference, fear of change.And there, in one corner of Swabia in southern Germany, the mother of afamous man, a mathematician and scientist, a respected, pious Lutheran,nearly paid with her life.

Like his mother, Johannes was willing to fight. He had taken a hand inher defense, writing much of the brief himself. He was not present at thesentencing, though, for he would not have been permitted to accompanyher to the territio. But only a few days before, Kepler had petitioned theVogt, the magistrate, of Güglingen, the town where the trial had taken place, to get on with it, so when it was over old Katharina could finallyhave some peace.

Early that morning, she was led to the torturer by Aulber, the bailiff ofGüglingen, who was accompanied by a scribe for recording her confession,and three court representatives. The torturer, with the bailiff standingto one side, then shouted at her for a long time, commanding her torepent and tell the truth and threatening her if she didn't. He showed hereach instrument and described in detail all that it would do to her body -- the prickers, the long needles for picking at the flesh; the hot irons forbranding; the pincers for pulling and tearing at the body; the rack; thegarrote; and the gallows for hanging, drawing, and quartering. He adjuredher to repent, to confess her crimes, so that even if she would notsurvive in this world, she could at least go to God with a clear conscience.

Meanwhile Johannes, almost insane with rage and fear, waited in townfor the ordeal to be over. Kepler was a slight man with a jaunty goateeand a dark suit with a starched ruff collar; he was slightly stooped frombending over his calculations and he squinted from bad eyesight, a partingshot from a childhood bout with smallpox. His hands were gnarled andugly, again a result of the pox. Perhaps he paced as he waited for news,shook his fists at the empty room. Essentially a peaceful man, he wasgiven to rages when he knew an injustice was being done. After all, thesewere his neighbors, his childhood friends, not strangers, who had forcedthis trial. The accusation, the trial, the conviction, and the sentence wereall the work of hateful people, people who had wanted some pettyvengeance, people who had seen their chance to get their hands on hismother's small estate. It was the work of a fraudulent magistrate, a goodfriend of the accusers, and of a judicial system gone mad.

Being imperial mathematician meant that the courts in Leonberg couldn'ttouch him, but they could do as they liked with his mother. Imperial protectionswent only so far. In the end, no mere scientist could expect thatmuch security. Thirteen years later, the other great astronomer, Galileo,would face charges of heresy before the Inquisition in Rome ...

Kepler's Witch
An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother. Copyright © by James Connor. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother by James A. Connor
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