Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/219

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
FURTHER WORK ON THE STAR OF 1572.
195

creation of the world.[1] The first cycle ended at the time of Enoch, the second at the deluge, the third at the exodus from Egypt, the fourth at the time of the kings of Israel, the fifth at the time of Christ when the Roman empire was at its height, the sixth when the empire arose in the western world under Charlemagne, and the seventh and sabbath-like one was now coming. And as the first, third, and fifth "restitution" had been salutary to the world, the seventh, which had a particularly uneven number, will inaugurate a very happy state of things, a peaceful and quiet age such as that foretold by the prophets Isaiah (ch. xi.) and Micah (ch. iv.), when the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, &c. As to the place on the earth from which this change will arise, it will be the one in the Zenith of which the star was at its first appearance, which Tycho assumes to have been at the time of the New Moon previous to the 11th November, when he noticed the star.[2] The star was then on the meridian of places about 16° east of Uraniborg and in the Zenith of a place with north latitude 613/4. This fixes the ominous spot "in Russia or Moschovia where it joins the north-east part of Finland." Having devoted so much space to this matter, I must pass over the way in which Tycho finds Moschovia pointed out in the Prophets, the Revelation, and a certain ancient prophecy of Sibylla Tiburtina, found in 1520 in Switzerland.

That Tycho when writing of the religion distinguished by pomp and splendour which was soon to disappear was thinking of the Roman Catholic persuasion is beyond a

  1. "Septima hæc est trigonorum in integrum ab Orbe condito restitutio." About the trigoni see above, p. 49, footnote. The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Sagittarius in December 1603 commenced a new cycle with a fiery trigon.
  2. See above, p. 50. Tycho now (Progym., p. 809) gives the time of New Moon as 7h. 312/3m. p.m.