had continued to correspond, and he had even a more influential ally in the Imperial Vice-Chancellor, Jacob Curtz of Senftenau, with whom he had also exchanged letters, and who in 1590 had sent him the privilege for his writings which Hagecius had some years before promised to get for him, together with a description of a method of subdividing arcs designed by Clavius, which is based on the same principle as that afterwards, in a more practical form, proposed by Vernier.[1] According to Gassendi, Curtz went to Denmark not long before his death (which took place in 1594), on the pretence of coming on the Emperor's business, and offered Tycho to intercede with the Emperor to procure an invitation to Bohemia in case he should wish to leave Denmark; he is even said to have offered Tycho his own house at Prague, and to have left, a plan of it with Tycho in case he might wish to have any alterations made in it.[2] After Curtz's death, Hagecius is said to have assured Tycho that the new Vice-Chancellor, Rudolph Corraduc, would not fail to befriend him.
It was perhaps with a view to the probability that he might soon wish to leave Denmark that Tycho disposed of his portion of the family property of Knudstrup, which, since the death of his father, he had possessed jointly with his brother Steen, and which his sons, as born of a "bondwoman," could not have inherited. The date of this sale is not known, but it must have been previous to the 10th August 1594, on which day he signed a document by which he reserved to himself the right to continue to call himself "of Knudstrup," without any injury to the rights of his brother or his brother's heirs.[3]
- ↑ Astr. inst. Mechanica, fol. G. 6; Delambre, Astr. moderne, i. p. 253.
- ↑ Gassendi, p. 131. I have not succeeded in finding Gassendi's authority for this. Curtius is not mentioned in the Meteorological Diary, so he can hardly have been at Hveen.
- ↑ Danske Magazin, 4th Series, ii. p. 325. It is characteristic of the careless
