Bartsch to Müller, 3 January 1631
Jacob Bartsch, “Bartsch to Müller, 3 January 1631,” Nova Kepleriana 4, January 3, 1631, 99–100, transcribed in Plain Old Text, https://sources.vjbe.net/stable/dgpk8.
Nova Kepleriana 4 3 Jan, 1631, p. 99–100 Summary
Part of Die Keplerbriefe auf der Nationalbibliothek und auf der Sternwarte in Paris
Bartsch laments Kepler's death at Regensburg, 'the sun of all astronomers', and tells of a fruitless fortnight at Gitschin trying to get Wallenstein to pay Kepler's salary and keep the press going.
Source: Jacob Bartsch's letter to Philipp Müller written at Sagan on 3 January 1631, after the news of Kepler's death at Regensburg, and after a fruitless journey to Wallenstein at Gitschin to secure support for Kepler's widow and children and the press. The original is in the Bibliothèque de l'Observatoire, Paris (B, 1, 9; 89, 10. F. 7). Printed in extracts in Nova Kepleriana 4, ed. Walther von Dyck and Max Caspar, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math.-naturw. Abteilung 31, no. 1 (Munich, 1927), 99–100.
English translation of the Latin extracts printed in Nova Kepleriana 4 (1927), made for Plain Old Text. Each paragraph translates the corresponding extract of the original; the omission marks (…) are the 1927 editors’.
Many greetings and my services, with every good omen for this year.
If anything in my life ever struck the soul of my life, of my studies, of my joys, best of men and greatest of patrons, it is surely the very thing Your Excellency wrote to me in your last two letters, and which I am forced to repeat in this letter of mine, to be marked with a black stone!The Romans marked unlucky days with a black stone and lucky ones with a white. Indeed I can hardly speak of it, let alone write it, without the saddest tears of eyes and heart! Yet since God so willed, and our prayers do not change what is done, so it is: alas! on a journey; alas! with his affairs in the greatest disorder; alas! Yours, mine, Ours, the Sun of all astronomers has set, and left his own in a darkness of cares, griefs and troubles. Ah, Kepler left Sagan, beyond all expectation, never to return: his widow, his children and his friends here with me met his last day sooner than his homecoming. Ah, Kepler (and how great a man!) has died, and to behold the heaven of the blessed has fallen asleep, peacefully and blessedly, in his astronomical dream.A play on Kepler's Somnium, his dream of a journey to the moon, which was then being printed. O blessed soul! O happy shade! O eternal fame of Kepler! But unhappy the widow, the children, the son-in-law and the lovers of the stars, whom he has left, so soon and so unexpectedly, bereft of needful help, welcome counsel and useful writings. But lest I heap my laments on your cares, or rather speak against divine providence, I break off this dear thread and tell you briefly how our affairs now stand.
When, a month ago, the messenger sent from Regensburg brought us this saddest news, it is easy to guess into what turmoil and anxiety so unexpected a death of husband, father and father-in-law threw us all. By the same messenger we have already written back to various people at Regensburg, Linz and Vienna, and at this fair we expect their answers, with the papers he left behind. I should have written to Leipzig by him too, had he gone that way. If anything is left at Your Excellency’s house there, and some carriage is asked for it, please pay it and send it on to us by my brother.
A few days later, when a convenient chance of going to GitschinJičín in Bohemia, the seat of Kepler's patron Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland. offered itself, I neither could nor should let it pass, so that we might learn the Prince’s will, and know what the widow and children might expect in this state of things, and what I should do with his printing press. But at Gitschin, beyond all expectation, I had to stay more than 14 days, and achieved nothing I had hoped for. He refused the costs of printing in future; the arrears of the annual salary I could not obtain from the treasury; what shall I say? With Kepler dead, all the rest seems to have died at once too. Still, we hope for some favour from the Prince yet.
So about the Christmas holidays I came back to Lauban, where I found two letters of yours and one of Eggenbrecht’s awaiting my return, and learned from them, with fresh grief, that this mournful news had reached you at about the same time. From this Your Excellency will learn why I did not answer either in due time; and now you will forgive me this too, that I answer nothing in them. For in my haste to get back to Sagan, in that grief or confusion, I left them there without thinking, and now, writing in haste as usually happens, I cannot faithfully remember all they contained. But once I have them back I shall make up for each point. Meanwhile put this lapse down to the distractions of my mind.
As for me, I grieve that my labours and my calculations have been not a little disturbed by it; and had my Manual of Logarithmic Tables not been begun already, so that I should not have spent the money in vain, I would now give it up altogether, for many private reasons, and put it off to a better time. …
Whatever else Your Excellency heard from my father-in-law in person that could be of use to me, you will not keep from me. I earnestly beg Your Excellency for some funeral piece in his memory, in the form of a letter or a short funeral oration, to be printed here. Do not, I beg you, refuse Your Excellency’s counsel and help when I ask for it hereafter in other matters. I now commend you to God’s protection, and myself and my studies to your old favour.
Given at Sagan, among cares, grieving in mind, hurrying with the pen.
3 January 1631.
Your Excellency’s
ever devoted
Jac. Bartsch, D.