Calgary, March 2025
You might remember the old movie Císařův pekař – Pekařův císař, with Jan Werich playing the Emperor and the Baker. The movie is a nice, pleasant comedy about Rudolf II and his alchemists during the emperor’s stay in Prague (1583 – 1612). The films portray him as somewhat silly and his alchemists as crooks, but there are always two sides to every story. It is true that a lot of the alchemists were crooks, but it is also true that alchemy was an ancient branch of natural philosophy practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. The main goals of alchemy were to convert base metals to gold, to develop an Elixir of Life, and to create the Philosopher's Stone. Now we know this is impossible, and we might laugh at the naivety of those who believed it, but in the 16th century, this didn't look impossible at all. The scholars of that time believed that God was pushing nature towards perfection. For example, a simple seed can develop into a beautiful rose. Common metals rust, but gold doesn't. A paint at the pallet of a painter turns into a beautiful painting. But unfortunately, things decay. The rose withers, metals rust, paintings lose colours, and people die. Why? Perfect things like gold don't decay. Therefore, if we can produce something perfect, it will last forever. Why not then to try to create perfection? Why not convert imperfect metal into perfect gold? Why not convert an imperfect human who dies into a perfect one who lives forever? But to do that, the alchemists needed a substance, a "Philosopher's Stone", which would allow them to create that perfection. In the minds of many people, there was nothing wrong with that logic.
But Rudolf II didn't employ only alchemists. In his court, there were also true artists like painters Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Bartholomeus Spranger, an English mathematician and alchemist John Dee, and the two most important astronomers of that time, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. The astronomy of Rudolf II was particularly important because the astronomers were allowed to do their research and were protected from the wrath of the Catholic church, which didn't like their Helio-centric ideas. The artists and scientists of Rudolf II made Prague the center of culture, and an island of religious tolerance. There was a reason why Prague was called "golden".
Probably the most important work which came out of the court of Rudolf II was a book called Astronomia Nova, written by Johannes Kepler and published in 1609. It provided convincing proof that the Sun, not Earth, is the centre of our planetary system. That proof directly contradicted the Catholic dogma, and it was in Prague, the island of religious tolerance, where the book was allowed to be published. The history of this book is interesting. In November 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) observed what he thought was a new star. This contradicted the accepted theory that stars were permanent and unchanging. The same theory also claimed that Earth is the center of our planetary system, but the observations of Tycho Brahe and others contradicted it. Astronomy was at a dead end, and there was a need for someone to explain those contradictions. That someone was Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630). He was a brilliant mathematician, and after graduation from the University of Tübingen, Germany, Kepler was teaching mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz. At that time Tycho Brahe was living in Prague, was working as Imperial Court Astronomer for the court of Rudolf II, and in 1600 invited Kepler to be his assistant.
Tycho Brahe was a great astronomer, but not a nice person. He kept all his observations secret, preventing others from using them. He was also alcoholic and when he died in 1601, Kepler was invited to replace him. That gave Kepler the access to Tycho Brahe’s observations, and with his mathematical talent, he derived the laws of planetary motions which we are still using now. All the space flights of today are based on those laws.
There were other remarkable people in the court of Rudolf II: Painter Hans von Aachen reflected Rudolf’s desire for sensuality, with paintings of nude women, arranged in elegant poses. Netherland sculptor Adriaen de Vries excelled in the refined modelling of bronze casting and became the most famous European sculptor of his generation. Carolus Clusius, a doctor and pioneering botanist, was perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists. John Dee was a brilliant English mathematician, antiquary and astrologer. Those people made the court of the emperor Rudolf II more than just a bunch of cheating alchemists.
Is Prague still golden? I can name few people who kept alive that adjective for Prague: writers Franz Kafka, Karel Čapek, Milan Kundera, Vaclav Havel; poet and Nobel prize winner Jaroslav Seifert; painters Jan Zrzavý and Josef Lada; scientist and Nobel prize winner Jaroslav Heyrovský. They kept Prague golden, and I hope that others will continue doing so.