102. The expenses of the establishment must have been enormous,
particularly as Tycho lived in magnificent style and probably paid
little attention to economy. His income was derived from various
sources, and fluctuated from time to time, as the King did not merely
make him a fixed annual payment, but added also temporary grants of
lands or money. Amongst other benefactions he received in 1579 one of
the canonries of the cathedral of Roskilde, the endowments of which
had been practically secularised at the Reformation. Unfortunately
most of his property was held on tenures which involved corresponding
obligations, and as he combined the irritability of a genius with
the haughtiness of a mediaeval nobleman, continual quarrels were the
result. Very soon after his arrival at Hveen his tenants complained
of work which he illegally forced from them; chapel services which his
canonry required him to keep up were neglected, and he entirely refused
to make certain recognised payments to the widow of the previous canon.
Further difficulties arose out of a lighthouse, the maintenance of
which was a duty attached to one of his estates, but was regularly
neglected. Nothing shews the King’s good feeling towards Tycho more
than the trouble which he took to settle these quarrels, often ending
by paying the sum of money under dispute. Tycho was moreover extremely
jealous of his scientific reputation, and on more than one occasion
broke out into violent abuse of some assistant or visitor whom he
accused of stealing his ideas and publishing them elsewhere.
In addition to the time thus spent in quarrelling, a good deal must
have been occupied in entertaining the numerous visitors whom his
fame attracted, and who included, in addition to astronomers, persons
of rank such as several of the Danish royal family and James VI. of
Scotland (afterwards James I. of England).
Notwithstanding these distractions, astronomical work made steady
progress, and during the 21 years that Tycho spent at Hveen he
accumulated, with the help of pupils and assistants, a magnificent
series of observations, far transcending in accuracy and extent
anything that had been accomplished by his predecessors. A good deal of
attention was also given to alchemy, and some to medicine. He seems to
have been much impressed with the idea of the unity of Nature, and to
have been continually looking out for analogies or actual connection
between the different subjects which he studied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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