also wrote to Mästlin (to whom he had ten years previously sent his book on the comet of 1577 without hearing from Mästlin since then), and repeated some of the doubts he had already expressed to Kepler.[1] The latter was, however, not discouraged by these doubts, and wrote to Mästlin that he could in no way accept the Tychonic system, and that Tycho had abundance of riches which he did not use properly, as was generally the way with rich people, and it would be well to extort his riches from him by getting him to publish all his observations.[2] To Tycho himself Kepler addressed a letter in which he, with manly and unaffected eloquence, protested against the crafty use which Reymers had made of his complimentary letter, which he had written simply because he had read Reymers' Fundamentum astronomicum with much profit, had been advised by some Styrian noblemen to make a friend of this man on account of his influential position (though they called him a new Diogenes), and had felt a desire of communing with a mathematician, since there were none in his own neighbourhood.[3] The whole letter evidently made a good impression on Tycho, as Kepler's open and noble mind is reflected in every line, and Tycho wrote in reply that he had not required so elaborate an apology.
The literary intercourse which had thus been opened between Tycho Brahe and Kepler was soon to become a personal one. The very numerous Protestants in Styria had hitherto been perfectly unmolested by their Catholic rulers, but during a pilgrimage to Loretto which Archduke Ferdinand (afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand II.) undertook in 1598, he vowed to root out the heretics from his dominions, and on the 28th September all preachers and the teachers at the Gymnasium of Gratz were ordered to leave
