bidden by the mayor, Carsten Rytter, to make chemical experiments in his own house, and Gassendi adds that he and his clergyman were subjected to personal annoyance, and that he was not able to obtain legal reparation; but this doubtless refers to the troubles at Hveen, and not to anything which happened at Copenhagen.[1] But an event which at first sight looks even more strange took place soon after. On the 2nd June, Thomas Fincke, Professor of Mathematics (afterwards of Medicine), and Iver Stub, Professor of Hebrew, were ordered to proceed to Hveen, as the king had learned that the peasants had damaged the instruments; they were to examine into this matter and report on it.[2] Their report is not known, and this expedition is not mentioned in any of Tycho's accounts of his expatriation, except in his poem Elegia ad Daniam (which will be mentioned farther on), and a garbled account of it may have reached him after his departure from Denmark. According to Gassendi, the two professors declared that the instruments were not only useless, but even noxious curiosities,[3] which probably only referred to the chemical apparatus. Fincke had in 1583, at Basle, published a Geometria Rotundi, in the preface to which he had addressed some highly
- ↑ Tycho says (Barrettus, p. 802): "Taceo nunc, quæ circa reprobos istos Insulares et Parochum in odium mei evenerunt" (compare footnote 3 on page 237). In a letter to Paschalius Mulæus (Claus Mule, one of his pupils), of unknown date, but found among the MSS. of Longomontanus, Tycho says (after describing how he had lost his endowments and had been forbidden by the mayor to carry on his exercitia): "I shall also pass over what happened to my clergyman from hatred to me, also the insolence shown to me by those who were instigated to it, also that I was forbidden to take legal proceedings against them" (Bang's Samlinger, ii. p. 493; Weistritz, i. p. 155). Gassendi, p. 140, uses almost the same words, and has them probably from the same source.
- ↑ Friis, T. Brahe, p. 234, quoting from the original document in the archives at Copenhagen.
- ↑ Gassendi (p. 140) evidently knows very little beyond the allusion to the trip in the Elegy; he only knows the name of one of the emissaries, and misspells it Feuchius. He does not mention that any damage had been done to the instruments.
