Kepler rescued his mother from being burned as a witch. He used his position as Imperial Mathematician to petition the Duke of Wurtemberg in the fifth year of litigation to the effect that this seventy-three-year-old woman, twenty-eight years widowed, penniless and friendless, weak in body and in spirit, was harmless. He pledged his entire property and requested that she be permitted to leave prison and live with him. This was granted and she died outside prison. It would seem that it was not a very safe world for a weak old woman who was garrulous and quarrelsome.