CHAPTER XI.
TYCHO BRAHE IN BOHEMIA—HIS DEATH.[1]
The German Emperor, Rudolph the Second, whose service Tycho Brahe was now about to enter, was a man deeply interested in science and art, personally of a most amiable disposition, but most singularly unfit for the exalted and difficult position he had to fill. Totally devoid of energy and taking no interest in political matters, he let public affairs drift in whatever direction they liked, ignorant or careless of the fact that his apathy was hastening the catastrophe which a few years after his death plunged Central Europe into the war which turned Germany into a desert and almost annihilated the Imperial power. The times were certainly most serious, and the difficulty of settling the religious question almost overwhelming, but a monarch of spirit and determination might have done much to counteract the intrigues of the Spanish and Jesuitical party, who blindly pursued their narrow-minded policy, and finally brought on the Thirty Years' War. But, regardless of the duties imposed on him by his station, the Emperor reluctantly devoted a moment to business of any kind, while he willingly gave his time and the limited pecuniary means of his impoverished dominions to collecting art treasures and promoting science—the real science represented by Tycho and Kepler, as well as the imaginary ones
- ↑ In addition to Gassendi and Tycho's letters to Vedel and Longomontanus, the sources for this period are: Frisch's Vita Kepleri, in vol. viii. of Joh. Kepleri Opera Omnia, and Joseph v. Hasner, Tycho Brahe und J. Kepler in Prag. Eine Studie, Prag, 1872.
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