Kepler to Seussius, 15 July 1622

Many greetings.

The Ides of July here brought me a most welcome gift, on a welcome subject, by a carrier of most welcome memory, from the most welcome of all the boon companions I have ever known; and for it I could do no less, my dearest Seussius, than return you a slight answer, and send it back by the same road. O the charming wit of our Müller, his keen judgement, his provident and circumspect caution, all of it excellent and beyond complaint! Did it ever happen that two people thought exactly the same about the same thing? Yet I think the same to a hair, except that I should never have summoned up so much patience, whether driven by requests or by any commands whatever, as to stir up this CamarinaProverbial: the Sicilian town of Camarina drained its marsh against an oracle's advice and fell to its enemies through the dry ground. To move Camarina is to stir up trouble better left alone. under my own name. I did indeed publish something of the kind at Ulm in 1620, against the Bohemian Felgenhauer and the Saxon Tilner, heralds of the last day, by working out the chronological reckoning; but I was ashamed of the work, and put on it the name Kleopas Herennius, in the dedication Helenor Kapuensis, and in the conclusion Raspinus Enkeleo [margin:] (Anagrams of the name Kepler.), to which the overseer of the printing, Hebenstreit, rector of the school at Ulm (an insect of the same sort as Faulhaber, an adversary of the usual misfortune) [margin:] (Who, that is, has touched pitch.), added two more, Phalaris von Neesek and Noe alcuin praeses. As a bonus I added, drawn from the same store, the title of the work, Kanones puerilesAlso an anagram of Ioannes Keplerus.. But among my reasons for hiding my name was the fear that I should not win the tribe of theologians’ approval for every part of the little book. I lacked, that is, our Müller’s discretion (or find a more Latin word for it in Cicero). Indeed, I had good cause lately to rise up against this dreaming philosophy, when Robert Fludd,Robert Fludd, whose attack on the appendix to Kepler's Harmonices mundi (1619) Kepler answered in his Pro suo opere Harmonices mundi apologia (1622). a notable teller of marvels, published an invective against the appendix to my work on Harmony, which I answered in print. But though that writer had provoked my patience on every line into his pseudo-Hermetic dreams, I kept to my purpose. In one single place, forgetting myself, I knocked at the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, whom he keeps prattling about, with the lightest reproach for shunning the light. I touched the mountains:Psalm 104:32: “he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.” it is monstrous how they smoked, in his reply this year. How he threatens me, how the crow on the left foretells me ill!

I do not mean to keep pulling on this rope any longer. The man’s speech is like the philosophy he professes: you would call it the story of a dream, made of ill-connected parts, or a string of tales from the Metamorphoses. He shuts his own audience out; this writing will do me no harm, even if I ignore it. I truly regretted the promise I had given the printer, last August, when I was busy writing out my answer; so unworthy of an answer did the very form and style of the invective seem. But to our Müller!

In Thesis XXV he cites, approvingly, the image of the Cross that I brought into Cygnus. But let him know that this act of mine greatly displeased the Emperor Rudolf. Tycho himself, too, out of some superstitious hatred of superstitions, complains somewhere in the Progymnasmata of some writer or other who, horrible to say, crucifies Christ anew among the stars. Yet he himself paints the Roman See in the star of Cassiopeia.

In Thesis XLVI he wins every vote,Horace, Ars poetica 343: “he has won every vote who has mixed the useful with the sweet.” since he both teaches others and delights me, when I consider how carefully he has guarded me, who, on the new star, defend a tacit συνθήκη, or condescension (I am forgetting my Latin), of God to the opinions of men: in the book on comets I sketch the Roman Empire in the Plough, that is, at the time the comet occupied it. If, however, he does not mean to guard me here, he will not have to drag me to confess it against my will [margin:] (For I rely on condescension alone); nor is there any pain in it, since I have a companion in punishment in Ambrosius Rhodius, who has built a remarkably ample and magnificent stage in the Altar and the Censer. I wish you would rouse Müller to talk with me by letter [margin:] (The post is not to be burdened: lately the couriers demanded a florin for bringing your poems.), and to let me have his judgement on the last chapters of my book on the new star, which I value very highly, as purified and dried out by the fire of reason. If that does not appeal to him (though I beg him), he has rich material in my Harmony and in book IV of the Epitome, and in book I too [margin:] (Which he praises tacitly in Thesis LVIII.).

In Thesis LIV I recognise Arndt,Johann Arndt (1555–1621), Lutheran author of the devotional True Christianity, attacked by orthodox theologians as a mystic. and perhaps the groans of Müller himself, grieving that this holy soul, and his meditations, as necessary as they are neglected, should be mixed up, I say, with fanatics. That is, of course, to exterminate Christianity itself along with the Manichees and Gnostics, and the reformed religion itself along with the Anabaptists.

But I close my letter with Müller’s epiphonema:

All things are full of evils, the FASTI, and the bold CATHEDRA.

I thank you too for yourself, and repay you in turn with myself; but you must ask for me at Strasbourg, from Professor Bernegger, and a big-headed meEvidently an engraved portrait of Kepler, to be had from Bernegger at Strasbourg, with an epigram by Thomas Lansius beneath. at that; but Lansius cleverly excuses the fault in the epigram beneath.

Farewell, dear heart. The Ides of July 1622.15 July 1622. Von Dyck's list of the collection gives 1 July.

Your Excellency’s
friend,
Mathematician to the Emperor Ferdinand II
and to the Estates of Upper Austria,
J. Kepler.

P. S.

It is incredible to tell with what torments my poor reputation has been racked during my year’s absence in Württemberg,From 1620 to 1621 Kepler was in Württemberg defending his mother, Katharina, against a charge of witchcraft. with my family at Regensburg. I beg you, friend, to tell me what has reached your ears, and so open the door for me to wipe away the stains, if any has stuck.

I wrote to you in August 1620, after Upper Austria had already surrendered; please tell me whether you received it, for it matters to me to know.

To the noble and most excellent Mr
Jo. Seussius, Ecclesiastical Secretary
to the Most Serene Elector of Saxony,
my dearest kinsman and brother,
Dresden.

To be handed in at Prague, at the apothecary’s in the Sporrergasse, to be sent on.

Received 28 July 1622.