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132 than a third of a degree. Tycho also told Hagecius of the corrections to the elements of the solar orbit of Copernicus, which his own observations indicated; but neither to the Bohemian physician nor to his other correspondents did he allude to the new system of the world which he had constructed, possibly because (as he wrote to Hagecius) Wittich's conduct had given him a lesson which he should not forget. As Tycho had understood from Wittich that Hagecius had lost his post in the Emperor's household, he invited him to come to Denmark, where he might be sure of being well remunerated by the king and the nobility for his services as a physician; but Hagecius declined to leave Prague, as he had not lost his post, and found it too risky for a man who was no longer young and had a family to settle abroad. With Johannes Major, Tycho corresponded about the Gregorian reform of the calendar, which was promulgated in 1582, and ordered to be adopted by the Catholic world under threat of excommunication. In consequence of this, Protestants refused to make any alteration in the calendar. At Augsburg several members of the civic council had voted against the adoption of the new calendar for theological reasons, and when the mayor, in consequence, tried to arrest and carry off the principal theologian of Augsburg, the population rose in arms and set him free. When asked for his opinion, Tycho very sensibly remarks that if the Pope at the time of Regiomontanus (i.e., before the Reformation) had improved the calendar, Luther would most assuredly not have wished to interfere with it, as this matter had nothing to do with religious doctrines; and why should not the new calendar, approved of by the Emperor, be accepted, as the Nicean calendar-rules were still accepted even by Protestants? Of Tycho's letters to his old fellow-student at