Trial by Gender His Mother’S Plight, Asking Whether She Had Brought Her Misfortune on Herself

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS to win patronage required “not only a power- ful intellect and vision, but also books, ink, SPL piety, and perfect manners”. Having mas- tered these resources in his precarious career as mathematician to three emperors, Kepler now deployed them on behalf of his family. After all, he had achieved fame promoting a controversial position, Copernicanism, for which standards of proof were considerably higher than those required to burn a witch. Rublack shows how Kepler bent his experience towards deconstructing faulty arguments and marshalling evidence for Katharina’s defence. The legal system pro- vided checks and balances, for example by requiring multiple witnesses, but in practice short cuts were taken. The case against Katha- rina was assembled by administrators sym- pathetic to her accusers, and witnesses gave conflicting evidence or described events from their childhoods. To this might be added, at any time, a ‘confession’ under torture. Con- victed witches were usually burned alive. In this fraught environment, Kepler repeat- Katharina Kepler depicted here being threatened with torture. edly revised his Harmony of the World (1619): a five-part magnum opus that included his HISTORY OF SCIENCE third law of planetary motion and his views on topics as diverse as musical theory and astrology. In a chapter on psychology, Kepler betrayed his own ambiguous feelings on Trial by gender his mother’s plight, asking whether she had brought her misfortune on herself. Yet, by the Jennifer Rampling applauds an account of how Johannes time he prepared her final defence two years Kepler saved his mother from being burned as a witch. later, the astronomer had devised a new nar- rative: one that granted old women such as Katharina a role as knowledge-makers. n the cover of The Astronomer and plants added to the duchess’s standing as a Rublack argues that Kepler justified his the Witch is a portrait of Johannes patroness of the poor and sick. Katharina, mother’s medical practice by drawing a par- Kepler: confident, well dressed, half- tired and short-tempered, did not enjoy the allel with privileged women such as Sibylle. Osmiling. This is the image that the imperial same indulgence. Her use of herbal remedies, He claimed that women’s experience and mathematician projected to his peers and common enough at the time, raised suspicion observation, gained (often painfully) over patrons. But it is not the Kepler whom we after a local woman blamed her illness on a long periods of time, “constituted a basis for meet in Ulinka Rublack’s enthralling book “witches’ brew” served by Katharina. After reputable and probable, if not certain knowl- — anxious, harassed by financial and family more allegations, and many delays, in 1619 edge”. Kepler defended his mother by using problems, and not even the main character. Katharina was formally accused of witchcraft. Sibylle as an unimpeachable role model of a Rublack’s protagonist is the great astrono- What distinguishes Katharina’s case from pious woman dispensing medical care. mer’s mother, the unfairly accused “witch” thousands like it is the involvement of her Kepler wins the day, for although Katha- of the title. In placing Katharina centre stage, famous son — the reason that the trial records rina spoke in her own defence, it is her son’s Rublack tells a new story, one that is as much have been preserved. Sifting through these, arguments that are preserved verbatim in the social history as it is scientific revolution. Rublack reconstructs trial documents, commenting on and judg- As women in early modern Europe aged an atmosphere of ing women’s behaviour. Chained in her cell and their fertility declined, so did their sta- anxiety and suspicion at the centre of the controversy, Katharina’s tus. In a small town such as Leonberg in the as Württemberg slid own voice is harder to hear. Rublack calls out duchy of Württemberg, part of present-day into the Thirty Years’ Kepler’s past biographers for dismissing his Germany, even a respectable property owner War. Accusations of mother as quarrelsome, difficult, “witch-like”. like Katharina Kepler could not escape the witchcraft threw whole If I have one criticism of the book, it is that its stigma of age. Yet women did not all face this families under suspi- title plays to that stereotype, rather than to the challenge equally. Rublack juxtaposes Katha- cion, and the taint of nuanced characterization that the author has rina’s hard life with the luxurious retirement religious unorthodoxy drawn. Rublack’s vigorous, early modern anti- of Sibylle, widowed duchess of Württemberg, The Astronomer could damage careers, heroine was, surely, entitled to her anger. ■ on whom, in a way, her fate came to depend. and the Witch: as Johannes Kepler dis- While Katharina struggled to work her Johannes Kepler’s covered when his Cal- Jennifer Rampling is assistant professor Fight for his land and raise children, often without their Mother vinist leanings blocked of history at Princeton University in New father, the rough ground behind Leonberg ULINKA RUBLACK him from a post at the Jersey, where she teaches the history of early Castle was cleared to provide Sibylle with Oxford University University of Tübin- modern science. spectacular gardens. Investing in medicinal Press: 2015. gen. As Rublack notes, e-mail: [email protected] 164 | NATURE | VOL 527 | 12 NOVEMBER 2015 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

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