Tycho Brahe at the University of Copenhagen, 1559-1562

at Knutstorp, which still stands in the old Danish province of Scania.1 He was raised in the household of his paternal uncle, J0rgen Brahe, royal governor of the diocese of Fyn, and learned his Latin and catechism from a tutor, beginning at the age of seven.2 At twelve, Tycho Brahe was ready to enter the University of Copenhagen. He came to town on 19 April 1559.3 No realm in Christendom, said Philip Melanchthon, outshone Denmark in learned men at that time.4 Fifteen of the most learned were the professors in the University of Copenhagen, who made up the four faculties of theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. Since their university existed mainly to produce a learned Lutheran clergy, the theologians were most distinguished and the philosophers most numerous. They all followed Melanchthon in his adherence to Aristotle and the Scholastic method, and the leading men also leaned toward Phillipism in their theology. Thus the university was Aristotelean and conservative, if not downright benighted, in its approach to the natural and mathematical sciences, though its theologians