Within the panel Revisiting Rudolf II, convened by Erika Honisch and Christian Thomas Leitmeir, the following papers were presented: Jan Baa: Between Court and
Rudolphine Musicians within Prague Congregations ca.
Weigel's calculations were based on the
Rudolphine Tables, an early ephemeris calculated by Johannes Kepler, who applied his discovery of elliptical planetary orbits to Tycho Brahe's extensive observations of planetary motions.
The accompanying picture of him forms part of the frontispiece of his
Rudolphine Tables, published in 1627, from a copy at SAAO.
In the Improved or New calendar, Easter was calculated according to Kepler's
Rudolphine tables according to a resolution passed on January 10,1700; however, it soon became clear that his tables were astronomically inaccurate.
Among them: her vivid placing of the angel conversations within the world of
Rudolphine Prague (where King Stephen of Poland and Count Laski took part in the questioning of the angels, where papal representatives wrote anxiously about the impropriety of angels appearing to a married man, and where Rudolph stole Dee's skryer because of Kelly's expertise in matters alchemical); her discovery of the long-lost, if ultimately disappointing, Book of Soyga; her explanations of the "divine language," of "Adam's true names," and of "the cabala of nature," all so laboriously taught Dee by the angels, but hitherto dismissed "as a hodgepodge of unutterable sounds and a strange assortment of names and phrases" (182).
The Tabulae Rudolphinae (
Rudolphine Astronomical Tables), Kepler's last major work, appeared three years before his death.
In 1627 they were published as the
Rudolphine Tables, in memory of Rudolf II (1552-1612), who had become Holy Roman Emperor in 1576 and who had supported Kepler.
Within the collections library resides a first edition of Johann Kepler's
Rudolphine Tables, named for Kepler's benefactor, Emperor Rudolph 11 of Prague.
Art in the
Rudolphine precinct has a Rosicrucian complexity of secret meanings within secret meanings.
In 1627, in his last major work, The
Rudolphine Tables, Johannes Kepler made a startling prediction: on November 7, 1631, Mercury would pass directly in front of the Sun, and one month later, on December 6th, Venus would do the same.