soon to come to Wittenberg at his expense, and offering to get him the professorship at Prague now held by Reymers Bär, who would doubtless soon make himself invisible; or if Longomontanus would prefer a post at Wittenberg, Tycho would see that a professor there, who was not disinclined to go to Prague, was appointed to Reymers' post, and Longomontanus might then get the post vacated at Wittenberg. None of these proposals were, however, accepted, and Longomontanus did not join his old master until the latter had been at Prague for some time.[1]
It was not difficult for Tycho to foresee that Reymers would not care to await his arrival at Prague. When the former swineherd saw the expressions which Tycho and Rothmann had used about him in their letters, and which were made public by the printing of these, he naturally became furious, and in 1597 he published at Prague, where he had in the meantime become Professor of Mathematics, a book De astronomicis hypothesibus, in which he gave his fury full play.[2] The title-page shows the motto (in Greek), "I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps" (Hosea xiii.), and indeed the language of the author is bear-like enough. First he tells how he discovered the Tychonic system on the 1st October 1585, and explained it to the Landgrave on the 1st May 1586, after which a brass model of it was made by Bürgi, and he suggests that Tycho may have heard of it through Rothmann (or, as he calls him throughout the book, Rotzmann, i.e., Snivelman). After-
- ↑ Gassendi, pp. 158, 159.
- ↑ "Nicolai Raimari Vrsi Dithmarsi S. Cæs. Maj. Mathematici de astronomicis hypothesibus seu systemate mundano tractatus astronomicus et cosmographicus scitu cum iucundus tum vtilissimus. Item astronomicarum hypothesium a se inuentarum, oblatarum et editarum contra quosdam eas sibi temerario vel potius nefario ausu arrogantes, vendicatio et defensio. … Pragæ Bohemorum apud auctorem. Absque omni priuilegio. Anno 1597." 78 pp., 4to. Kästner, iii. p. 469. Delambre, Astr. mod., i. p. 294. I have not seen this book myself.
