Kepler's Witch Read Online Free Page B

that year—what had once been a vague anxiety over the spirits of darkness had boiled up into a national mania. Not that he would have disagreed with the idea that there were witches. No one would have. It was just that he was certain his mother was not one of them. Admittedly, the times were uncertain, the forces of darkness on the move. Germany was at the crumbling edge of the Thirty Years’ War—Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists rampaged through the countryside onone wave or another of Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Jesuits were everywhere, whispering into the ears of kings. And, admittedly, Johannes Kepler had tried to bring the warring factions together, and for his pains was excommunicated by his own Lutheran church. Is it surprising then that, caught in these tidal forces and shackled by her neighbors’ petty fears, Katharina Kepler ended up in prison for over a year, sometimes in chains, sometimes tortured, and almost lost her life on the gallows or at the stake?
    Katharina’s fate had finally been decided, not in Leonberg or Güglingen, but in Tübingen, at the famous university there, decided by the law faculty, who reviewed the court case and determined the sentence. This was Kepler’s old university, where he had studied, but that had not made him their favorite. In fact, quite the opposite.
    The year of Katharina Kepler’s trial, the summer heat had not yet completely dissipated; the fall colors were appearing as the professors at Tübingen, meeting in solemn conclave, decided that the evidence against the Kepler woman was mostly circumstantial, and that they could not in good conscience condemn her to death or even actually torture her, though the law permitted them to do so. However, since she had been convicted and sentenced to the territio by the Duke of Württemberg himself, they could not in good conscience set a convicted witch free without punishment, even after the duke had, in his own uncertainty, asked them to review the case. Meanwhile, Kepler was writing letters and sending petitions to nearly everyone, trying to head off that dreadful day. Still, he failed.
    But Katharina would not bend. Even after the executioner had done his worst, after he had shouted and commanded and adjured himself hoarse, after he had shown her all his tools and explained each one’s purpose and had described how she would suffer most horribly under them if she did not confess her evil and renounce her lord, the devil, Katharina, unbowed, said: “Do what you want to me. Even if you were to pull one vein after another out of my body, I would have nothing to admit.” Then she dropped to her knees and prayed a fervent Pater Noster. God, she said, would bring the truth to light, and after her death he would reveal the terrible violence that had been done to her. She knew that God would not call his Holy Ghost from her nor would he abandon her in her suffering.
    T ESTIMONY OF D ONATUS G ÜLTLINGER , C ITIZEN OF L EONBERG , G IVEN TO L UTHER E INHORN , M AGISTRATE OF L EONBERG 1620
    Article 6:
    The witness heard the same story (about the potion) from the accuser herself, because he had once been sick and stayed in the same hospital as she did. There, the accuser, Ursula Reinbold, asked him how he got well.
    The witness did not respond to any of the interrogational questions, except to say that after the glazier’s wife had told him how she had received a potion from the Kepler woman and had tasted it, she said immediately, “Good Devil, what is this? 1 What did you give me to drink? It is as bitter as gall!” The witness did not respond to what Ursula said about this drink the Kepler woman had given her, because she should have known what kind of a woman Katharina was. The Kepler woman later found out what the witness was saying about her and sent Michel to him to ask why he had bad-mouthed her, which the witness, however, did not admit. Instead, he asked Michel