FREE THE ASTRONOMER AND THE WITCH: JOHANNES KEPLERS FIGHT FOR HIS MOTHER PDF Ulinka Rublack | 400 pages | 22 Dec 2015 | Oxford University Press | 9780198736776 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom The Astronomer & the Witch: Johannes Kepler's Fight for His Mother - Ulinka Rublack - Google книги In her recent book, The Astronomer and the WitchUlinka Rublack reveals how Kepler saved his mother from being burned as a witch. Some 73, people were tried for witchcraft and 40—50, executed in Europe between and More than half of all victims, around 22, were executed in the German lands from and three of every four witches executed during the height of European persecutions spoke some dialect of German. More than 75 per cent of those accused were women. These are remarkable figures. To compare, the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman Inquisitions, with their highly centralised bureaucracies, are estimated to have carried outtrials against all kinds of heresy during the entire period of their activity, and to have executed around 13, victims. This means that far more people were killed in Germany as witches than lost their lives at the hands of these Inquisitions. One of these women was Katharina Kepler, the year-old illiterate mother of the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler, who was accused in the south-west German town of Leonberg in She vehemently denied the charge, and her family were equally outraged. Yet it took six years for the elderly woman to be acquitted, by which time she was so frail that she died within months. Reading the records gave me a sense of the vulnerability of an elderly women at this point in time and what was required to save her. The Keplers suddenly found themselves fighting to save their mother from a trial, torture, and the likelihood of being burnt to death. I encountered a family under intense emotional strain. Johannes was at the height of his career during these years. Creation to Kepler was about more than the laws of planetary motion he famously defined. From the very beginning his tone was highly emotive as he set out to defend his own reputation at all costs. This was in part because the accusation implicitly raised the question of whether Johannes had been brought up to worship God or the Devil. His mother was not as remote from his world as we might now imagine. As he recalled, Katharina had once taken the six-year-old Johannes up a slope to watch a spectacular comet in the sky — clearly showing interest in cosmic change. At the heart of the trial for Johannes Kepler thus lay an uncomfortable question he addressed in his most important book, The Harmony of the World : To what extent was he like his mother? In Book Four, chapter seven, Kepler set out how different they were, despite the fact that they had been born under an almost identical astrological constellation and shared the same physical constitution. Kepler explained that Katharina had not had the opportunity to receive any The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother education. A brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb. Kepler clearly felt resentful of his mother. Yet he did his utmost to defend her and it is unlikely that she would have survived had it not been for him. A schoolmaster reported that Katharina had been constantly pestering him to read out letters from or send greetings to Johannes. He claimed that one day she had by magic entered his house through locked doors as he and his wife were having dinner and had demanded that, there and then, that he should write a letter to be sent off to Linz, though he no longer remembered its contents. Similarly, 10 years earlier, Katharina had asked the schoolmaster to come to her house and read several letters out to her. It The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother a Sunday, and he had wanted to go to church. Yet Katharina had detained him, pressing him to drink some of the good wine she had in her cellar to thank him. As he was not thirsty he had only sipped from the pewter mug, but Katharina kept prevailing upon him to drink more. Another woman joined them, swallowed most of her wine and had become so ill that she later died. The schoolmaster began to feel pain in his thighs the following day; next, he could only walk holding on to The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother. Now he was almost lame. A woman named Dorothea Klebl also appeared a perfectly trustworthy witness. Born and raised in Leonberg, she was married to the local marksman. She knew that her age was roughly 33 people at this time often did not know their exact age and carefully replied to questions. Her answers revealed surprising as well as legally damning information. Five years ago, she said, she had employed a young local seamstress to carry out some needlework. Just before this time, this girl had worked for Katharina, who had once urged her to stay overnight. Deeply disturbed by the events that had followed, the girl confided in her new employer. On 7 AugustKatharina was first imprisoned in Stuttgart and then led to Leonberg for the beginning of a formal criminal trial. Her youngest son, Christoph, a local The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother, was horrified. He put his entire life on hold and packed up his household, his books and scientific instruments in Linz. He took his family with him to a halfway point by boat, where they stayed in Regensburg on the Danube. Kepler then rented a horse to ride alone on to Ulm and travelled up north to Stuttgart. Johannes put his life and work on hold to defend his mother. He arrived by the end of September. Governor Aulber read out the charges and confirmed his intention to conduct the trial quickly. The Keplers repeated their arguments questioning the legitimacy of a criminal trial. Then, Katharina was led back to her room and chained to the floor. This was how she would spend Christmas — imprisoned in a strange town. There was a strong legal requirement that a bad reputation needed to be well established before an accusation could be made. To establish factual evidence for his defence from superior male witnesses [males were more highly trusted], Kepler had read the depositions closely and now referred to testimony from old Hans Beitelsbacher and the saddler Michael Stahl, both of whom had been reputable members of the court and old enough to have known Katharina for most of her life. They had never thought of her as a bad woman. Quiz: would you have been accused of witchcraft? Any association between these two would make any old, garrulous and frequently disliked woman vulnerable to this far-fetched accusation. Indeed, women considered to be behaving strangely should not automatically be suspected of sorcery, he said. Kepler next set out why it was paramount to distinguish between natural and unnatural illnesses, and went into considerable medical detail to make his statement as authoritative as possible. Its ingenious noting of details that could then be conclusively dismissed [such as inconsistencies in dates or the partiality of witnesses] made this a rhetorical masterpiece. All these magical mystery diseases, Johannes argued, could be explained through medical knowledge and common sense. Johannes did not rule out that sorcery might inflict harm, but said that in these cases the pain was immediate and severe from the start, rather than increasing gradually. Kepler did indeed believe in magic, yet he tried to use his superior analytical skills to unpick the accusations against his mother. When his mother was finally acquitted he was utterly exhausted and did not correspond with even his closest friends for months. Kepler never published his defence, nor did he try to defend any The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother woman charged with witchcraft. In a society in which reputation mattered so much, each accusation implicated those the woman was related to and had raised. Children The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother respond with loyalty and love or hatred, repudiation, insecurity or guilt, and these feelings were likely to be mixed and change as cases evolved. Indeed, every member of the Kepler family, including two further siblings, reacted differently to their mother and to the strain of the charges against her. These were experiences shared by hundreds of thousands of Europeans during the witch craze. The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Keplers Fight for His Mother find out more, click here. Your guide to the Roman empire: when it was formed, why it split and how it failed, plus its most colourful emperors. More on: Culture. You may like. A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb. The war on witches. History explorer: the Pendle witches. The Astronomer and the Witch - Hardcover - Ulinka Rublack - Oxford University Press Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Johannes Kepler was one of the most admired astronomers who ever lived and a key figure in the scientific revolution. Perhaps less well known is that inwhen Kepler was at the height of his career, his wido Johannes Kepler was one of the most admired astronomers who ever lived and a key figure in the scientific revolution.