Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/37

Rh, as was then customary. He probably hoped that, when removed from his friends at Copenhagen, the young worshipper of Urania might be induced to give up his scientific inclinations and devote himself more to studies which would in after years enable him to take the place in his native land to which his birth entitled him. The university he selected for his nephew was that of Leipzig. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Danish students had followed the universal custom of the age and repaired to the University of Paris, where several of them had risen to great distinction, and even occupied the rectorial chair; but gradually as the German universities improved they became more frequented by Danes than Paris. To accompany Tycho as tutor, Jörgen Brahe chose a young man of great promise, who, although only four years older than his pupil, was known to be steady enough to be intrusted with this responsible office. Anders Sörensen Vedel, son of a respected citizen of Veile, in Jutland, had been less than a year at the University, where he attended lectures on divinity, and at the same time devoted himself to the study of history. He became afterwards Royal Historiographer, and is particularly known by his translation of the Latin Chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, an important source of Danish history from the end of the twelfth century, and also by his edition of the ancient national ballads or Kjæmpeviser. Vedel was only too happy to accept the proposal of accompanying the young nobleman abroad, as there was at that time no Professor of History