The Galileo Affair
William Shea
Galileo Chair of History of Science, University of
Padua, Italy
Mariano Artigas
Chair of Philosophy of Science, University of Navarra,
Pamplona, Spain
January 2006
Unpublished text.
Contents
- 1. First Trip
(1587) - JOB HUNTING
- 2. Second Trip (29
March 1611 – 4 June 1611) - ROMAN TRIUMPH
- 3. Third Trip (10
December 1615 - 4 June 1616) - ROMAN CLOUDS
- 4. Fourth Trip (22
April 1624 - 16 June 1624) - ROMAN SUNSHINE
- 5. Fifth Trip (3
May 1630 - 26 June 1630) - STAR-CROSSED HEAVENS
- 6. Sixth Trip (13
February 1633 - 6 July 1633) - FOUL WEATHER IN
ROME
- Notes
Summary
The authors have published Galileo in Rome. The
Rise and Fall of an Uneasy Genius (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003), where they tell the story of the
Galileo Affair following Galileo’s six trips to
Rome. Here they follow the same scheme. They stick to the
well documented facts, and they also provide
illustrations. (Footnotes to the text are indicated with
superindex, illustrations with bracketed numbers.)
Galileo is known as the father of modern science and
his clash with the ecclesiastical authorities of his day
is perhaps the most dramatic incident in the history of
the relationship between science and religion.1
Galileo was condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1633
for teaching that the Earth moves, and to the present day
it is something of a puzzle why he was treated so harshly
by the Roman Church. We shall try to see why in the light
of documents that are now fully available since the
complete opening of the Vatican Archives a few years
ago.
Galileo was anxious to win approval in Rome where he
went six times to meet the reigning Popes, and become
acquainted with high-ranking cardinals and the leading
figures of the literary and the scientific
establishments. We shall use these six trips to structure
our account.
(2)
1.
 First Trip (1587)
JOB HUNTING
(3)
Galileo left the University of Pisa in 1585 at the age
of twenty-one, without any immediate prospect of a job.
With a growing family and moderate means, his father
expected him to earn his living. Galileo agreed, and he
began giving private lessons in mathematics to students
in Florence and Siena. He realized, however, that this
would not get him far. What he needed was a permanent job
and, in mathematics, this meant a position in a
university. He decided to apply for the next vacancy that
occurred, and in the meantime he knew what he had to do.
First, produce an original piece of work and, second, get
good references. The first was a condition for the
second, and Galileo set to work on a paper on the centre
of gravity of solids, a topic that was fashionable at the
time. It was not published in a journal, because such
means of communication did not exist as yet, but he sent
copies to prominent mathematicians in Italy and abroad.
One of these was Christopher Clavius
(4), the Jesuit professor of mathematics at the Roman
College
(5), the foremost institution of higher learning in
Catholic Europe. A letter of recommendation from Clavius
would be worth its weight in gold and Galileo decided to
go to Rome to meet him.
When Galileo arrived in the autumn of 1587 he
discovered that urban renewal was under way, a process
that had unexpectedly been set in motion a couple of
years earlier when a mild-mannered and soft-spoken
Franciscan friar became Pope Sixtus V
(6). At 64, and with a reputation for indifferent
health, Sixtus V has been elected as a
“transitional” pontiff who would not upset
anyone and would not live long. Events were to show
otherwise. During the five years of his pontificate,
Sixtus was more active than any pope had been within
living memory. He was convinced that a shabby Rome was a
disgrace to Christendom, and indignant that Rome’s
140,000 inhabitants should live huddled close to the
Tiber, which often flooded and caused severe hardship and
disease. Sixtus asked the simple question, Why should
they not live on higher ground? The Roman hills of the
Quirinal, the Esquiline, and the Viminal had been settled
in ancient times, and Sixtus V made this possible again,
laying out new streets and constructing a major aqueduct
to solve the city’s recurrent shortage of drinking
water
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10). He also rendered the streets of Rome safer than
they had been for decades. He remodelled the Lateran and
the Vatican palaces, and completed the dome of St.
Peter’s. Under his pontificate, Rome began to look
like the one we admire today
(11)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15).
Galileo, like other visitors at the time, was struck
by the fact that the papacy had been able to rescue Rome
from its squalor and turn it into a dynamic capital. Rome
had become important once more, and Galileo took this
lesson to heart. Roman approval might prove crucial, and
he was to return to the new city on five more occasions
with this conviction in mind: in 1611, to have his
telescopic discoveries approved; in 1615-1616, to promote
Copernicanism; in 1624, to find out whether he could
write a book on the motion of the Earth; in 1630, to
secure permission to publish that book; and in 1633, to
face the wrath of the Inquisition.
In this first trip in 1587, Galileo was made welcome
by Clavius, who was favourably impressed by his work on
the centre of gravity of solids, and the two
mathematicians later carried on a friendly correspondence
(16). More important still, Clavius promised to write
a letter of recommendation whenever Galileo applied for a
position at the University. The Jesuit was as good as his
word, and in 1589, he helped Galileo get the Chair of
Mathematics at the University of Pisa and, in 1592, the
more prestigious one at the University of Padua.
2.
Second Trip (29 March
1611 – 4 June 1611)
ROMAN TRIUMPH
(17)
In 1587, Galileo had been an impecunious 23-year-old,
part-time teacher looking for a job. When he returned for
the second time in 1611, he had become, at forty-seven, a
famous professor. His telescopic discoveries had revealed
that the surface of the Moon is covered with mountains
and craters, that the stars are more numerous than anyone
had imagined, that Jupiter has satellites, and that Venus
has phases similar to those of the Moon
(18)
(19). This had sent shockwaves throughout Europe. The
imagination of Galileo’s contemporaries had been
fired, and the Granduke of Tuscany had named him his
personal mathematician and philosopher. This meant that
Galileo had been freed from the constraints of teaching
and the drudgery of administration, but he now depended
entirely on the goodwill of his young patron, Cosimo II
(20), to whom he had taught mathematics. Cosimo was
fond of his former teacher, but the radical distinction
between ruler and subject was never questioned by either
of them. Neither was it ambiguous. When Galileo went to
Rome in 1611 he was expected to ask the Granduke’s
permission, and he had no hesitation in doing so.
Galileo had published his celestial discoveries in a
slim Latin booklet entitled Sidereus Nuncius that
can be rendered as Sidereal Message or Sidereal
Messenger
(21). It became an instant bestseller, and everyone
wanted to take a peep through the telescope
(22). Galileo had intimated that the Earth moves
around the Sun, but he had carefully avoided making this
an issue. A Florentine philosopher by the name of
Ludovico delle Colombe was the first to make a fuss about
the motion of the Earth in a paper in which he claimed
that it was contrary to Scripture. Delle Colombe had
little to go by, beyond such verses as the one in
Ecclesiastes, book 1, where we read, “The
Sun rises, and sets, and returns to its place”.
There was one text, however, that could be turned into
real dynamite. This is the passage in Josuah where
the prophet is said to have arrested the motion of the
Sun in order to provide more time for the Israelites to
defeat their enemies. Clearly, if Josuah stopped the Sun
in its tracks, it had to be in motion.
Galileo was reluctant to enter the theological arena.
All he wanted was to have his discoveries recognised as
genuine. Hence his desire to travel to the Eternal City
and convince churchmen and scientists that his telescope
spoke the truth. On 23 March 1611, he set off for Rome in
style, in a litter provided by the Granduke and with two
servants to attend to his needs. Six days later, on Holy
Tuesday, he entered Rome as the guest of the Florentine
Ambassador, Giovanni Niccolini, who gave him a set of
rooms in the embassy that was located in the Palazzo
Firenze near the Piazza Navona
(23)
(24)
(25). Galileo lost no time and sprung into action. On
the very day of his arrival he rushed to see Cardinal del
Monte. The next day, 30 March, he went to the Roman
College
(26)
(27) to meet Fr. Clavius and two younger Jesuits, Fr.
Christopher Grienberger and Fr. Odo Maelcote. On 2 April,
the eve of Easter, Galileo called on Cardinal Maffeo
Barberini, a Florentine like himself, and the man who was
later to become Pope Urban VIII.
On 13 May, the Jesuits of the Roman College gave him
the equivalent of a modern honorary doctorate in a lavish
ceremony that was attended by several cardinals. He was
lionised by Roman society and asked to give lectures in
the numerous salons that acted as informal academies. He
was also invited to display his instrument at the home of
notables, often in the setting of an evening meal and to
the accompaniment of music. One such banquet, at which he
was the guest of honour, was to have lasting
consequences. It was organised by Prince Federico Cesi
(28), the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei
(Academy of the Lynxes)
(29). Galileo had brought his instrument, which was
used in broad daylight to examine features of buildings
that were invisible to the naked eye
(30)
(31)
(32) and, after the meal when it became dark, at the
night sky. It is on this occasion that the new device,
which Galileo had called perspicillum (lens) in
Latin and occhiale (spyglass) in Italian, was
given the name telescope (from the Greek for
“seeing-afar”) by the Greek scholar Giovanni
Demesiani or perhaps by Cesi himself. A few days later,
Galileo was made a member of the Accademia dei Lincei
(33), a privilege that had only been conferred upon
four other persons since its foundation in 1603. A
reliable patron, Cesi was to finance the publication of
Galileo’s Letters on the Sunspots in 1613
and his Assayer in 1623. He fully intended to
publish Galileo’s masterpiece, the Dialogue on
the Two Chief World Systems, but he died before the
work had run the gauntlet of censorship and was licensed
for print. Had Cesi been alive in 1632 when the book
finally appeared it might have sailed past the shoals of
the Inquisition.
On 22 April, Galileo was granted an audience with the
Pope, Paul V
(34). On the very same day, he reported to his
friend, Filippo Salviati: “This morning I went to
pay my respects to his Holiness, and I was introduced by
his Excellency, our illustrious Ambassador, who told me
that I had been treated with exceptional favour because
his Holiness would not let me say a word kneeling (as
protocol required) but immediately told me to
rise.”2 Paul V was a canon lawyer by training,
and he did not brook any behaviour that appeared to
challenge the legal authority of the Church. Not
particularly gifted in diplomacy, his treatment of
Galileo seems to have been a gesture of unusual courtesy.
Following in the footsteps of Sixtus V, Paul V was bent
on modernising Rome. He set himself the immense task of
completing St. Peter’s, and when Galileo arrived in
Rome the imposing façade by Carlo Maderna was
nearing completion, although the huge inscription that
runs across the front, PAULUS V BORGHESIUS ROMANUS, was
something he was only to see on his next trip in 1615
(35)
(36).
When Galileo left Rome on Saturday, 4 June 1611, he
was happy with the result of his trip. He could also look
forward to the Granduke’s pleasure when he would
read the glowing report that Cardinal Francesco del Monte
had prepared for him: “During his stay in Rome,
Galileo has given great pleasure and, I believe, received
as much. He showed off his discoveries so well that those
who are competent here all agreed that they were not only
true and well founded but simply marvellous. Were we
still living in the ancient Roman Republic, I am certain
that a statue would be erected in his honour on the
Capitol.”3
This was no light praise. The only other equestrian
statue on the Capitol is that of the emperor Marcus
Aurelius!
3.
Third Trip (10
December 1615 - 4 June 1616)
ROMAN CLOUDS
(37)
Galileo was paid on the budget of the University of
Pisa, but he had no intention of lecturing and considered
himself a research professor. He engineered an
appointment for his favourite student, the Benedictine
priest, Benedetto Castelli, and had him teach the usual
undergraduate courses
(38). When Castelli arrived in Pisa in the autumn of
1613, the Overseer of the University, told him that he
was under no circumstances to discuss the motion of the
Earth in his lectures. Castelli replied that he had no
such intention, wisely adding that his own teacher in
Padua, Galileo, had never done so.
Shortly thereafter, the Tuscan court arrived in Pisa
for their annual visit, and Cosimo II invited Castelli to
his table. When he arrived on Thursday, 12 December 1613,
Castelli found the Granduke’s mother, Christina of
Lorraine, the Granduke’s wife, Maria Maddalena, and
several other guests including Prof. Cosimo Boscaglia, a
colleague from the University of Pisa. Here is
Castelli’s account of the conversation as he
communicated it to Galileo a couple of days later:
“Thursday morning I was at table with our Patrons
and when asked by the Granduke about the University, I
gave him a detailed account of everything, with which he
showed himself much pleased. He asked me if I had a
telescope. I said yes, and I began to tell about an
observation of the Medicean planets I had made the night
before. Madama Christina wanted to know their position,
whereupon the talk turned to the reasons for their being
real objects and not illusions produced by the
telescope”.
Professor Boscaglia agreed that they were indeed real,
and Castelli proceeded to tell them about Galileo’s
determination of the orbits of the satellites of Jupiter.
The meal ended pleasantly, and Castelli took his leave,
but “hardly had I come out of the palace,”
the letter continues, “when I was overtaken by the
porter of Madama Christina, who called me back. But
before I tell you what followed, you must first know that
while we were at table Doctor Boscaglia had had
Madama’s ear for a while, and while conceding as
real all the things you have discovered in the sky, he
added that the motion of the Earth was somehow
incredible, and could not take place mainly because it
went against Holy Scripture.”
Madama Christina was a devout Catholic who listened to
her confessor and was devoted to the Pope even when His
Holiness’ interests might be at variance with those
of the Tuscan government
(39). She also knew her Bible and could refer to the
Book of Josuah where the Sun, not the Earth, is ordered
to stop in its tracks. Upon re-entering the Palace,
Castelli found that some of the guests were still there
including Professor Boscaglia, Paolo Giordano Orsini, a
cousin of the Grand Duke, and Antonio de Medici, an
adopted son of the Duke’s grandfather, Cosimo I.
“The Grand Duchess,” Castelli went on,
“began to argue Holy Scripture against me.
Thereupon, having made suitable disclaimers, I began to
play the theologian with such assurance and dignity that
it would have done you good to hear me. Don Antonio
assisted me, giving me such heart that instead of being
dismayed by the majesty of Their Highnesses I carried
things off like a paladin. I quite won over the Granduke
and his Archduchess, while Don Paolo came to my
assistance with a very apt quotation from Scripture. Only
Madama Christina remained against me, but from her manner
1 judged that she did this only to hear my replies.
Professor Boscaglia never said a word.”4
Although he was not displeased with Castelli’s
answers, Galileo’s mind was not completely at rest,
and he saw that he must intervene. Within a week he put
down his own ideas on paper in the form of a long
Letter to Castelli, which could be shown to
friends. This was to be his first but not his last
incursion into theology. Galileo expanded his letter to
Castelli into a small treatise that he addressed to the
Granduchess, and which became known as the Letter to
Christina of Lorraine. It was only published in 1635,
in Strasbourg, along with a Latin translation by a
Protestant scholar.
Galileo saw no conflict between science and religion,
and he was anxious that no line of battle should be drawn
between the two. He readily admitted that Scripture
cannot err, but this did not imply that its interpreters
were always right. This was particularly the case when
they insisted on the literal meaning. For in this way, we
would have to say that God has hands and feet and eyes,
and human emotions such as anger, regret, hatred, and
sometimes forgetfulness of the past and ignorance of the
future. Galileo argued that this way of speaking had been
introduced into the Bible for the sake of the masses, and
only to help them in matters concerning salvation.
“Sacred Scripture and nature,” he declared,
“both proceed alike from the Divine Word, the
former as a dictate of the Holy Spirit and the latter as
the obedient executrix of God’s
commands.”5 No truth discovered in nature can
contradict the Bible. Indeed Copernican astronomy even
makes the miracle of Josuah arresting the Sun easier to
understand, according to Galileo, because if the Sun was
seen to stop, this indicated that the Earth no longer
revolved and, therefore, that the day had been
automatically prolonged. This explanation of the miracle
of Josuah, however ingenious, was highly speculative, and
it cast Galileo in the dangerous role of telling
theologians how to interpret Scripture.
On 7 February 1615, Niccolò Lorini, a
Florentine Dominican friar, sent a copy of the Letter
to Castelli to cardinal Paolo Camillo Sfondrati,
Prefect of the Congregation of the Index in Rome, and an
enquiry was opened in the Inquisition, but the issue was
left pending
(40)
(41)
(42)
(43)
(44)
(45). Nonetheless, rumours began to fly, and Galileo
thought that it would be wise to go personally to Rome to
silence his critics. He now believed that he had a valid
physical proof for the motion of the Earth, an argument
from the tides to which we shall come in a moment.
Meanwhile someone else threw his hat in the ring. Paolo
Antonio Foscarini, an otherwise unknown friar from
southern Italy, wrote an essay on the compatibility of
Copernicanism with Scripture and sent a complimentary
copy to an influential member of the Inquisition,
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine
(46). The remarkable thing is that the Cardinal took
time off from a very busy schedule to write, in his own
hand, a thoughtful and considerate reply on 12 April
1615.
Assuming, like most of his contemporaries, that
Copernicus had put forward his system merely as a
calculating device to determine the position of the
planets, Bellarmine began by commending the prudence that
Foscarini and Galileo had displayed “in speaking
only hypothetically, as I have always believed Copernicus
did.” For good measure the Cardinal added that the
Council of Trent ruled out interpretations of Scripture
that were contrary to the consensus of the Church
Fathers, all of whom took the passages about the
Sun’s motion literally.
Because of its great importance in the subsequent
debate, Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter deserves to be
quoted extensively: “The words, the Sun also
rises and the Sun goes down and hasten to its place where
he arose, etc. were those of Salomon, who not only
spoke by divine inspiration but was a man wise above all
others and most learned in the human sciences and in the
knowledge of all created things. His wisdom was from God,
and it is not likely that he would affirm something that
went against a truth that was already demonstrated, or
likely to be. Now if you tell me that Solomon spoke only
according to appearances, and that it seems to us that
the Sun goes around when actually it is the Earth that
moves, as it seems to one on a ship that the shore moves
away from the ship, I shall answer that though it may
appear to a voyager as if the shore were receding from
the vessel on which he stands rather than the vessel from
the shore, yet he knows this to be an illusion and is
able to correct it because he sees clearly that it is the
ship and not the shore that is moving. But as to the Sun
and the Earth, a wise man has no need to correct his
judgement, for his experience tells him plainly that the
Earth is standing still and that his eyes are not
deceived when they report that the Sun, the Moon and the
stars are in motion.”6
Bellarmine did not consider whether biblical
statements about the motion of the Sun were just an
unexamined assumption, but immediately expressed his own
theological conviction that there can be no errors in
Holy Writ. For him it was no answer to say that the
motion of the Earth is not a matter of faith because what
is at stake is nor the subject matter but the veracity of
its source, namely the Holy Spirit. On Bellarmine's view,
it is just as heretical to deny that Abraham had two sons
and Jacob twelve as to deny that Christ was born of a
virgin
(47). Furthermore, Bellarmine stressed the logical
point that although Copernicanism might work as an
astronomical system, this did not imply that it was
physically true. In case of doubt it would not be
reasonable to ask the Church to dismiss the common
interpretation of Scripture. If there was a proof of the
motion of the Earth, then the Cardinal agreed that we
would have to carefully examine the scriptural passages
that seem contrary and confess that we do not understand
them rather than say that something that has been proved
is false. But he had, as yet, seen no such proof.
Lest we misunderstand the historical situation, we
must bear in mind that Galileo, whom we celebrate as the
Father of the scientific revolution had already entered
his fifty-third year without having published the great
Copernican book that he had advertised as forthcoming in
1610. His reputation rested on his telescopic
discoveries, admittedly brilliant but due in large part
to the availability of good lenses in the Venetian
Republic. He had seen new things sooner and perhaps a
little better than others, but this was due to an optical
tube rather than any mastery of optics, about which he
knew little. He was undoubtedly a versatile writer and an
entertaining speaker, but professionals considered him a
gifted amateur when it came to philosophy. There was no
indication that he was a particularly good teacher, and
he never lectured at the University of Pisa, where his
colleagues complained that he was overpaid. Furthermore,
he had no training whatsoever in theology. He had been
asked, very politely, to prove that the Earth really
moved before demanding that the Church reinterpret the
Scriptures. Instead of making a gesture to comply, he had
become increasingly annoyed at what seemed to him the
pig-headedness of the academic world. Galileo was getting
restive and felt that he could carry the day if he were
allowed to use his tongue instead of his pen. This is why
he had to go to Rome. He felt this was the only
honourable course, and he believed that it was also in
the best interest of the Church. Cardinals Robert
Bellarmine and Maffeo Barberini declared that Copernicus
had proposed his theory as pure speculation. But they
were wrong, as Galileo was anxious to let them know
(48).
Galileo arrived in Rome on 10 December 1615, and
immediately took up the cudgels as we know from a letter
of Monsignor Querengo to Cardinal d’Este:
“You would be delighted to hear Galileo argue, as
he often does, in the midst of some fifteen or twenty
persons who attack him vigorously, now in one house, now
in another. But he is so well buttressed that he laughs
them off; and although the novelty of his opinion leaves
people unpersuaded, yet he shows that most of the
arguments, with which his opponents try to overthrow him,
are spurious. Monday in particular, in the house of
Federico Ghislieri, he performed marvellous feats. What I
liked most was that, before answering objections, he
improved on them and added even better ones, so that,
when he demolished them, his opponents looked all the
more ridiculous.”7
Galileo’s eloquence and his brilliant repartees
made for great sport in the literary circles to which he
was repeatedly invited, but the applause that he won had
little to do with a genuine understanding of the nature
of the argument. Most people enjoyed the liveliness of
the discussion but treated the whole matter as a suitable
topic for a debating society rather than a serious
scientific enquiry.
The melancholy outcome of Galileo’s campaign in
favour of Copernicanism was that the Holy Office took an
interest. On Thursday, 19 February, the Holy Office
decided to submit to a panel of eleven experts the
following propositions: “The Sun is at the centre
of the world and hence immovable of local motion. The
Earth is not the centre of the world, nor immovable, but
moves according to the whole of itself, also with a
diurnal motion.” The consultants met on Wednesday,
24 February, and made the following recommendations: (1)
the notion that the Sun is at the centre of the world and
at rest is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and
formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts
the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both
in their literal meaning and according to the general
interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors”; (2) the
statement that that the Earth moves, “deserves the
same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological
truth, is at least erroneous in faith.”8
(49) The experts could only advise; all decisions
rested with the Pope and the cardinal inquisitors. The
very next day, on Thursday, 25 February 1616 the
following course of action was decided upon: Bellarmine
was to summon Galileo and enjoin him to abandon
Copernicanism. According to an unsigned memorandum, on 26
February 1616 Galileo was called in by Cardinal
Bellarmine in the presence of the Commissioner of the
Holy Office and two guests, and informed, on behalf of
His Holiness the Pope and the Congregation of the Holy
Office, to relinquish altogether the theory that the Sun
is at the centre of the world and at rest and that the
Earth moves; nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it
in any way verbally or in writing. Otherwise proceedings
would be taken against him by the Holy Office. Galileo
acquiesced and promised to obey. This minute was probably
penned by some zealous official (who speaks in the first
person) who wanted to record that the Commissioner had
actually stepped in to give Galileo a strict injunction
to relinquish Copernicanism altogether.
We now move from the Holy Office to the Congregation
of the Index, where five Cardinals, including Maffeo
Barberini, met in Bellarmine’s office on Tuesday, 1
March 1616. After discussion, they recommended: that the
works they had been asked to judge be censured, but not
exactly in the terms that had been proposed by the
experts. At Cardinal Barberini’s request,
Copernicanism was not described as
“heretical,” but as false and contrary to the
Scriptures. Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus
was taken out of circulation until corrections were made.
Galileo was not mentioned.
Transparency is a great virtue. Things that are done
in the open are less likely to be distorted or used in
ways that were not intended. But privacy is also an
important aspect of social life, and the most liberal
citizen will value confidentiality when his purse or his
life is at stake. Galileo had not been asked to defend
himself before the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and the
admonition that he received from Cardinal Bellarmine was
given in private, and he could rely on the discretion of
those who had communicated it. If the did not tell
anyone, it would never be bruited. Galileo chose, wisely,
to keep mum. On 6 March, he wrote to Curzio Picchena, the
Tuscan Secretary of State, to say that he had not written
the week before because nothing had happened. But one of
the most important events in his life had taken place: he
had been admonished by Cardinal Bellarmine to abandon
Copernicanism! But this was a personal matter and Galileo
prayed to heaven that it would stay so. Yet Romans could
put two and two together: Galileo had been campaigning
vigorously for Copernicanism, which had now been
officially decried as false and contrary to Scripture.
Even Monsignor Querengo joked about it in a letter to
Cardinal d’Este: “Galileo’s arguments
have vanished into alchemical smoke, for the Holy Office
has declared that to maintain this opinion is to dissent
manifestly from the infallible dogmas of the Church. We
now know that, instead of imagining that we are spinning
in outer space, we are at rest at our proper pace, and do
not have to fly off with the Earth like so many ants
crawling around a balloon.”9
The puff of smoke, the ants, and the balloon are quite
ingenious, but Querengo knew better than to speak of the
immobility of the Earth as an infallible dogma. The
decree that proscribed Copernicus and other works that
taught heliocentrism did not involve the infallibility of
the Church, the pope or anyone else
(50). It was, in the eyes of those who prepared and
approved it, a prudential decision to remove from public
circulation works that might lead unwary readers to
misunderstand the nature of science and the role of
Scripture. The Counter Reformation did not encourage
discussion or debates about doctrinal matters. The
theological pendulum that the reformers had pushed too
far in one direction was now made to swing to the other
extreme, but even the most conservative cardinals would
not have considered a decree of the Congregation of the
Index as offering a definitive statement of the Catholic
faith.
(51)
Before leaving Rome, Galileo was granted and audience
by Pope Paul V on 11 March. The next day he proudly
reported that he had been allowed to accompany the Pope
for a stroll in the gardens for three-quarters of an
hour, and that the Pope had assured him that he
“could feel safe” as long as he was
alive.10 Meanwhile rumours were flying all
over Italy that he had been summoned to Rome and charged
with heresy. On 20 April, Castelli wrote from Pisa to
report that it was said that he had secretly abjured his
errors before Cardinal Bellarmine. Three days later, his
friend Giovanfrancesco Sagredo confirmed that the same
gossip had rumbled through Venice.
Only one course was open to Galileo. He had to appeal
to Cardinal Bellarmine himself. He was given a friendly
reception, and the cardinal even provided him with a
certificate that exonerated him completely. The document
began, “We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, having
heard that it is calumniously reported that Signor
Galileo Galilei has in our hand abjured and has also been
punished with salutary penance, and being requested to
state the truth as to this, declare that the said Galileo
has not abjured, either in our hand, or the hand of any
other person here in Rome, or anywhere else so far as we
know, any opinion or doctrine held by him. Neither has
any salutary penance been imposed on him; but that only
the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by
the Sacred Congregation of the Index was notified to him,
which says that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus
that the Earth moves around the Sun and that the Sun is
stationary at the centre of the world and does not move
from east to west, is contrary to the Holy Scriptures,
and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness
whereof we have written and subscribed the present
document with our own hand this twenty-sixth day of May
1616.”11
With this certificate in his pocket, Galileo felt that
he could continue to publicly consider heliocentrism as a
convenient, albeit arbitrary, mathematical tool and, in
the secret of his heart, hope that the decree might one
day be revoked.
4.
Fourth Trip (22 April
1624 - 16 June 1624)
ROMAN SUNSHINE
(52)
After his return to Florence, Galileo was not unhappy
to be distracted from his woes by the sudden and
unexpected appearance of three comets in 1618. When
Orazio Grassi, a Jesuit professor at the Roman College,
claimed that they were located between the Sun and the
Moon
(53), Galileo published a critical review in which he
disagreed with the Jesuit that the comets were proof that
real change occurs in the heavens
(54). Rather, Galileo defended the old Aristotelian
position that comets were just a case of refraction of
sunlight bouncing off high-altitude vapours rising from
the surface of the Earth. Anyone who failed to see this,
he sneered, was not fit to do science, let alone teach
it. Grassi vindicated his position in a book entitled,
An Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, and he
sent a copy to Galileo, who was not amused
(55). He penned a witty and scathing rejoinder,
The Assayer (meaning a finer balance), in which he
not only took the Jesuit to task but ridiculed him
(56). This was discourteous; worse still, it lost him
the support of the Jesuits who had helped him in the past
and might have been able to lend a hand in the future
(57)
(58). But in the summer of 1623, when The
Assayer was about to be sent to the printer, Galileo
had no time for diplomacy. He had just been elated by the
good news that Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a fellow
Florentine and a man who called himself his friend, had
been elected Pope and taken with the name of Urban VIII
(59).
Galileo had tutored the Pope’s nephew,
Francesco, who at the young age of 27 was created
Cardinal by his uncle. Galileo would have liked to rush
to Rome but he was in poor health during the latter half
of 1623 and he did not set out before the spring of the
following year, arriving in Rome on Easter Monday 1624.
On the very next morning he was received by the Pope, who
granted him six interviews during the seven weeks he
spent in the Eternal City
(60). Urban VIII promised a pension for
Galileo’s son, Vincenzio, and for his daughter,
Sister Maria Celeste, who was a nun, he was given the
assurance that her convent would be provided with a
better chaplain. At the leave-taking audience, the Pope
presented him with a painting (which Galileo describes as
fine but without mentioning the subject matter), two
medals, one of gold, the other of silver, and several
Agnus Dei, as were called cakes of wax stamped
with the figure of a lamb bearing a cross or a flag.
There is no indication that the motion of the Earth
was so much as broached. All Galileo knew about Urban
VIII’s views was what a German Cardinal, Frederic
Eutel von Hohenzollern (called also Zollern) told him.
Zollern had told the Pope about the difficulties he had
in converting German noblemen who had been shocked by the
prohibition of Copernicus’ book in 1616. The Pope
had been sympathetic, and had replied that the Church had
only condemned the doctrine of Copernicus as
“rash,” not as heretical. Nonetheless, he
made it clear that, on his own view, there was no chance
that it would ever be proved true, a position that he had
expressed on other occasions, and that he was never to
abandon
(61).
Galileo also had conversations with Father Niccolo
Riccardi, the influential Dominican who had licensed
The Assayer, and Gaspar Schopp, a Lutheran who had
converted to Catholicism. “They might not be as
versed in astronomy as one might wish,” Galileo
wrote to his friend Cesi, “but they are nonetheless
firmly of the opinion that this is not a matter of Faith
and that Scripture should not be brought in. As far as
truth or falsehood is concerned, Father Monster [as
Riccardi was nicknamed because of his enormous girth] is
neither for Ptolemy nor for Copernicus, but rests content
with his own convenient way of having the heavenly bodies
moved, without the slightest difficulty, by
angels.”12
Whether Father Monster really believed that angels
have such kinetic power is open to doubt, but he was
clearly sceptical about the possibility of finding the
physical cause of planetary motion. Like Urban VIII, he
was happy to let astronomers play around with planetary
models, even if they rushed where angels fear to thread.
The Sun-centred universe was an unproven idea without any
prospect of confirmation in the future. The Pope and
almost all his consultants believed that we can devise
mathematical games about the cosmos, but we can never
know what the building blocks really are.
The Pope’s position was neither new nor
outlandish, and it could be found in the preface that
Andreas Osiander had added to Copernicus’s De
Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium. Astronomical
hypotheses are calculating devices; they have nothing to
do with questions of truth or falsity. Urban VIII added a
theological consideration: God is all-powerful and can
create in a variety of ways what we know to be possible
in one way only, for what is beyond our senses is beyond
our ken. We look up to heaven to pray; the rest is mere
speculation
(62)
(63).
Galileo left Rome with an ornate Latin letter of Urban
VIII to the Granduke, in which he is called “my
beloved son who has entered the aetherial spaces, cast
light on unknown stars, and plunged into the inner
recesses of the planets.”13 The text goes on
in this way for several lines and, lest we attach too
much importance to its glowing prose, it must be added
that it was neither written nor signed by the Pope but by
Giovanni Ciampoli, the secretary for official
correspondence, and Galileo’s friend of long
standing.
But all was not to be plain sailing. Several months
earlier, the Assayer had been denounced to the
Holy Office. Historians had generally assumed that this
was because Galileo spoke favourably of the Copernican
theory, but since the discovery, in 1981, of an anonymous
document in the archives of the Holy Office, we know that
Galileo was accused of something very different and much
more serious, namely endangering the Catholic doctrine of
the Eucharist. By endorsing the atomic theory of matter
Galileo had rendered himself suspect of denying the
concept of transubstantiation.
(64)
(65)
(66)
(67)
To understand the background to this charge, we have
to recall that Catholic thought was dominated since 1564
(the year of Galileo’s birth) by the Decrees of the
Council of Trent (1545-1563), which were promulgated that
year. The Protestant Reformers had tended to emphasize
the spiritual, and downplay the literal, meaning of
Christ’s words at the Last Supper, “This is
my body; This is my blood.” The Catholic bishops
present at Trent stressed that these words meant that
Christ was really present. They did not intend to explain
away the mystery of the Eucharist but to offer an
interpretation of the presence of Christ that was not
merely symbolic, and this was conveyed by saying that the
substance of the bread and wine became the substance of
the body and blood of Christ (what they termed
“transubstantiation”). What is left of the
bread and wine after the consecration are only their
appearances, such as their colour, taste, odour, and so
on.
A philosophical school to which Galileo was close
believed that matter is made up of invisible particles or
atoms. On this view, “primary qualities,”
namely size, shape, and motion are really in the things
themselves, whereas “secondary qualities,”
such as colours, tastes, and sounds, are not in the
objects but in the organs that are stimulated by the
“primary qualities” and, in this sense, they
are subjective. In the Assayer, Galileo had given
an atomistic interpretation of the nature of heat, which
he described as caused by matter in motion. This clashed
with the common-sense belief that heat is an intrinsic
property of bodies.
Now the theological problem arises as follows: if
colour, taste, and other “secondary
qualities” are pronounced subjective, might this
not imperil the teaching of the Council of Trent on the
objective distinction between the real substance of
Christ’s body and blood and the equally real
properties of bread and wine? A sensitive soul, or
perhaps a malevolent colleague, had written to the Holy
Office to draw attention to this latent danger.
Fortunately for Galileo, Cardinal Francesco Barberini,
who was a member of the Holy Office, offered to
investigate the matter. He entrusted the task to his
personal theologian, Giovanni di Guevara, who read
Galileo’s work and saw no reason to pursue the
matter. So things calmed down, but it was only the lull
before the storm.
Galileo had returned to Florence in the summer of 1624
with the conviction that he was now free to write his
Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems on the
motion of the Earth as long as he avoided stating that it
was physically true. The work is presented as the record
of a discussion spread over four days, like a play in
four acts, among three friends who meet in a palace in
Venice. Galileo, who was now over sixty, welcomed the
opportunity to bring back to life two of his best
friends. The first is the Florentine Filippo Salviati,
who speaks on Galileo’s behalf and makes a
brilliant case for Copernicanism. The second is the
Venetian patrician Giovanfrancesco Sagredo, in whose
palace the meeting is held. He is presented as
open-minded and unprejudiced, but he is already converted
to Copernicanism and plays second fiddle to Salviati. The
third participant, an Aristotelian professor called
Simplicio, is a fictional character, but Simplicius was
the name of a sixth-century Greek philosopher who was
famous for a commentary on Aristotle. In Italian,
Simplicio also sounds like simpleton, and Galileo may
have intended the pun
(68).
5.
Fifth Trip (3 May
1630 - 26 June 1630)
STAR-CROSSED HEAVENS
(69)
Galileo had hoped that his book, like his previous
one, would be published in Rome at the expense of Prince
Cesi, and in 1630 he decided to go once more to Rome to
discuss practical matters and have a word with the
censors
(70). Galileo was travelling in an official capacity,
but things had been arranged pretty much at the last
moment, and the Florentine ambassador, Francesco
Niccolini, was surprised to see him arrive in Rome,
unannounced and unexpected, on the evening of Friday, 3
May. He nonetheless made him welcome and with his wife,
Caterina Riccardi, a cousin of the Master of the Sacred
Palace, saw to his comfort and welfare.
Galileo does not seem to have kept a dose eye on
politics, but he could not have failed to notice that
things had changed in Rome since 1624, when he had been
able to see the new pope, Urban VIII, six times in seven
weeks. This was no longer possible in the tense political
climate of 1630. The Thirty Years’ War, which had
begun as a clash between German Catholic and Protestant
princes had spiralled out of control to involve many
other countries including Italy, France, Spain, Portugal,
Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Transylvania, and Turkey. By
1630, only a few of the various causes that fuelled the
conflict still pertained to genuinely religious issues.
Particularly worrisome was the struggle between the
Catholic monarchs of France and Spain for control of the
Holy Roman Empire. As the leader of Christendom, the pope
might have been expected to try to reconcile the French
Bourbons and the Spanish Habsburg, but his overt sympathy
for King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu irked the
Spanish cardinals, who began to denounce his policy. In
return Urban VIII grew suspicious of officials who had
close ties with Spanish prelates. Unfortunately for
Galileo, Ciampoli was eventually found to be a part of
this group.
These worries made the pontiff so restless that he
ordered all the birds in his garden killed because they
disrupted his sleep with their nocturnal calls. The Pope
had become enmeshed in the war of the Mantuan Succession,
in which French and Spanish interests were again at
stake. To cover the high cost of equipping 7,000
infantrymen and 800 cavalry, Urban VIII had to raise
taxes in the Pontifical States, thereby undermining his
popularity. The war of the Mantuan Succession had an even
more unfortunate consequence: The Austrian Habsburg
troops that crossed the Alps left the plague in their
wake in 1629, and the disease spread like wildfire.
Discontent with the Pope’s external policy was
fuelled by resentment against the promotions and pensions
that he showered on members of his family. Nepotism was a
way of insuring that higher officials remained loyal, but
it was often used to accumulate wealth at the expense of
more worthy causes. Shortly after his election in 1623,
Urban VIII had made his brother, Antonio and a nephew,
Francesco, cardinals. In 1628, he added his youngest
nephew, also called Antonio, who was barely 19.
Meanwhile, he had chosen the middle child among his three
nephews, Taddeo, to perpetuate the Barberini name and had
married him to the daughter of a titled Roman family
(71).
Urban VIII had always been proud of his gifts as a
versifier, and he was only too ready to accept the
adulation of courtiers who called him the greatest poet
of his age. When he reformed the breviary, the handbook
of prayers to be recited each day by persons in holy
orders, he did not hesitate to add his own original
hymnal compositions in honour of the saints that he
canonized. He even undertook a lasting memorial to his
name in the basilica of St. Peter by ordering the great
architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini to erect a monumental
canopy or baldacchino over the tomb of the first of the
apostles
(72). When Galileo returned to Rome in 1630 the huge
bronze baldacchino was rising from four marble plinths,
each emblazoned on two sides with the Barberini three-bee
coat of arms. Four support pillars spiralled upward 29
meters toward the canopy, which was still under
construction. The enormous quantity of bronze required
for this gigantic structure had been plundered from the
Pantheon, which even the barbarians had left intact. The
punning gibe, “What the barbarians did not do, the
Barberinis did,” was soon in the mouth of every
Roman
(73)
(74)
(75)
(76)
(77)
(78). The growing dissatisfaction with the Barberinis
found expression in a way that was characteristic of the
age: astrological forecasts prophesying the early demise
of the pontiff began to appear, and Galileo’s name
was to be associated with these ill-advised
horoscopes.
When Galileo arrived in Rome Urban VIII was staying at
Castel Gandolfo, some thirty kilometres away, in an old
castle that he had restored and turned into his country
residence
(79)
(80)
(81). But no sooner had he returned to Rome around
mid-May than he granted Galileo an audience. This was to
be their only meeting during the eight weeks Galileo
spent in Rome. His Holiness, as we have seen, had to
attend to more pressing matters than guesswork about the
nature of the rising and the setting of the Sun. Galileo
was probably received by the Pontiff on 18 May, the very
day the gossip column known as the Avvisi spread
the following item of news: “Galileo, the famous
mathematician and astronomer, is here to try to publish a
book in which he attacks several opinions held by the
Jesuits. He has been understood to say that D. Anna.
[Colonna, the wife of Taddeo Barberini, the Pope’s
nephew] will give birth to a son, that we shall have
peace in Italy at the end of June, and that shortly
thereafter Taddeo and the Pope will die.”14
The rumour that Galileo had something to do with the
newssheets retailing prophesies of the early death of the
Pope was pure libel. As a professional astronomer,
Galileo occasionally cast horoscopes, and a disreputable
journalist could seize on that to write a sensational
article that rested on no other evidence than the fact
that life-threatening forecasts concerning the Barberini
had begun to appear. Alas, some of Galileo’s
friends may have been involved in these dubious exercises
in astrological computation.
We do not know what Galileo said to Urban VIII when
they met, but the Pope did most of the talking during
audiences and it was not always easy to get in a word.
How much Galileo was allowed to say will remain a
mystery, but the Pope’s position had not changed.
Galileo had heard it from his own lips as early as 1616,
and what the Pontiff had said was recorded by Agostino
Oregio, his personal theologian, in a book published in
1629. While still a cardinal, wrote Oregio, Urban VIII
had told a “learned friend” of his, who had
worked out the path of the planets on the assumption that
the Earth moves, that many other models were conceivable,
for God can do anything that is logically possible.
There can be little doubt that the “learned
friend” was Galileo, for the Pope’s argument
is echoed at the end of the Dialogue.
Unfortunately, it is placed in the mouth of Simplicio,
who did not distinguish himself by his intelligence
during that time. Simplicio is made to say that he
considers Galileo’s arguments for the motion of the
Earth ingenious but not conclusive because of what he
heard “from a most eminent and learned person,
before which we must fall silent.” To which,
Galileo’s mouthpiece, Salviati, replies:
“What an admirable and angelic doctrine! It is in
agreement with another one, equally divine, which allows
us to argue about the constitution of the universe
(perhaps in order that the working of the human mind
should not be curtailed or become lazy) while making it
clear that we cannot discover the work of His hands. Let
us, then, exercise the activities permitted to us and
ordained by God, that we may recognise and thereby so
much the more admire His greatness, however much less fit
we may find ourselves to penetrate the profound depths of
His infinite wisdom.”15
The claim that God can create things in a variety of
ways is not ludicrous in itself, but it arrives after
Salviati has shown that the evidence in favour of
Copernicanism is overwhelming. For someone who had read
the Dialogue from the beginning, the passage
quoted above was unmistakably ironical, although taken in
isolation and without awareness of what comes before, it
might pass muster. Galileo was not foolish enough to
enjoy a cheap joke at the pope’s expense, but he
may have been vain enough to think that neither he nor
his censors would notice. In this, he was sadly mistaken.
When the book finally appeared in print in 1632, someone
murmured in the pontiff’s ear that he was being
ridiculed.
(82)
(83)
(84)
6.
Sixth Trip (13
February 1633 - 6 July 1633)
FOUL WEATHER IN ROME
(85)
On Sunday, February 22, 1632, the Granduke of Tuscany
was given a copy of the Dialogue in a ceremony at
his Palace.
(86)
(87) The first sign of trouble came in July 1632 when
Urban VIII had the Dialogue removed from
bookshops. On 4 September 1632 Ambassador Niccolini had a
stormy audience with the Pope, who broke out “in an
outburst of rage” against Galileo. Niccolini tried,
as he had been instructed by the Granduke, to obtain that
Galileo be notified of the charges against him. The Pope
answered that the Holy Office was not an ordinary court
of law. It studied the case, and if the accused was found
guilty he was told to recant. When Niccolini urged his
request, Urban replied impatiently: “This kind of
information is never given out in advance to anyone. Such
is not the procedure. Besides, he knows very well where
the difficulties lie if he wants to, since I discussed
them with him, and he heard them from
myself.”16 Niccolini now tried another tack:
Since the Dialogue was officially dedicated to the
Granduke of Tuscany by someone who worked for him, might
it not be wise to use clemency and hush the matter up?
For all reply the Pope said that he had banned works
dedicated to himself and that even had his name on the
cover.
Galileo’s file in the archives of the Holy
Office was re-opened and the admonition that he had
received in 1616 from Cardinal Bellarmine was found. It
was now clear that Galileo had been told to abandon the
Copernican theory. The news of the injunction struck
Florence like a bombshell. The Granduke and his advisers
were shocked. The scales tipped; far from being the
victim of unscrupulous adversaries, Galileo suddenly
became the man who acted under a cloak of secrecy. The
Granduke immediately took a more cautious stance in
dealing with Rome. In fair return, the Pope treated
Galileo with a leniency that was rare in the seventeenth
century
(88). When he was summoned to Rome in 1633, he was
lodged at the Tuscan embassy and not placed under arrest
in the Holy Offìce, as would normally be done
(89). The few days that he spent inside the Vatican
during his trial were not passed in a prison cell but in
the comfortable apartment that the notary had vacated for
him
(90). He was not served the usual food but meals
prepared by the chef at the Tuscan embassy. After his
condemnation, he was not incarcerated but placed under
house arrest, first at the Villa Medici
(91), then at the palace of Archbishop Piccolomini in
Siena
(92), and finally in his own house in Florence
(93).
Galileo was summoned to Rome on 1 October 1632, but he
tried to drag things out. On 13 October, Galileo wrote to
Cardinal Francesco Barberini a letter in which he pleaded
for mercy on the grounds of his advanced age (he was 68
but said he was 70). He claimed that the poor state of
his health, the inclemency of the roads, and the bad
weather would not allow him to make it halfway to Rome.
Instead he offered to respond to objections in writing or
to appear before the Florentine inquisitor. The
archbishop, or anyone they should choose to appoint. But
the Pope would brook no further delay, and Galileo had to
leave for Rome on 20 January 1633. His carriage was
halted on the border and the Papal States. The plague had
flared up and quarantine had been imposed. It was only on
the first Sunday of Lent, 13 February that he finally
entered Rome. Two days later, on 15 February, he turned
69 without fanfare. The event is not even mentioned in
the correspondence.
Galileo was made to wait until 12 April 1633 before
being called to the Holy Office in the Vatican. As Urban
VIII had made clear to Ambassador Niccolini, the Tribunal
of the Inquisition was a court where defendants were
summoned not to justify themselves but to acknowledge
their errors and recant. Voluntary confession was not
only wise but mandatory. Nonetheless, if being called
before the Holy Office was an indication of guilt, the
penalty was only decided after an interrogation had taken
place.
We must not picture Galileo as being ushered into the
presence of the Pope or the ten cardinal inquisitors. The
interrogation was conducted by two officials:
Commissioner Vincenzo Maculano and his assistant,
Prosecutor Carlo Sinceri. The Commissioner asked about
what Cardinal Bellarmine had told Galileo in 1616.
Galileo, who already knew that a memorandum had been
found in his file at the Holy Office, replied that
Cardinal Bellarmine had informed him that the opinion of
Copernicus could be held hypothetically, as Copernicus
himself had done. When the Commissioner sought to probe
further into what Cardinal Bellarmine had said, Galileo
thought the moment had come to produce his secret weapon,
and he drew out a copy of the certificate that Bellarmine
had given him, adding that he had the original in
Bellarmine’s own handwriting. Galileo’s
triumph was shortly lived, however, for the Commissioner
continued asking him whether he had been given a clear
order not to hold, defend, or teach Copernicanism in any
way whatsoever, as stated in the memorandum. Galileo
answered that he only remembered Bellarmine’s
handwritten words. If something else was told him, he
added, “I did not give much thought to it or keep
it in mind because I was given some months later the
certificate of Cardinal Bellarmine of 26 May that I have
presented, and in which it is mentioned that I was
ordered not to hold or defend the said opinion. As for
the other two particulars of the precept now notified to
me, that is ’nor teach’ and "’n any
way,’ I do not remember them, I think because they
are not set forth in the certificate on which I relied
and kept as a reminder.”17
The Commissioner then enquired whether, “after
the aforesaid injunction was issued,” Galileo had
asked for permission to write in favour of the motion of
the Earth. Galileo answered that he did not consider this
necessary because he had not contravened
Bellarmine’s orders. The Commissioner listened
patiently before asking whether he had told Father
Riccardi about the injunction that he had received.
Galileo had not expected this direct question and his
reply, the last at the end of the long interrogation, was
to determine the evolution of the trial: “I did not
happen to discuss that command with the Master of the
Sacred Palace when I asked for the imprimatur, for I did
not think it necessary to say anything because I had no
doubts about it since I neither maintained nor defended
in that book the opinion that the Earth moves and the Sun
is stationary. Rather I proved the contrary and showed
how weak and inconclusive the arguments of Copernicus
were.”18
(94)
By claiming that he had not argued in favour of
Copernicanism, Galileo had painted himself into a corner
from which he would be unable to extricate himself. The
Holy Office knew full well that the Dialogue on the
Two Chief World Systems had been written to
demonstrate that the Earth goes around the Sun, something
only a silly person, like Simplicio, could fail to see.
The tribunal would not take kindly to the suggestion that
they were simpletons.
After his interrogation on 12 April, Galileo was
assigned to a suite of three rooms in the palace of the
Inquisition. He wrote to Florence to say how spacious
they were and how graciously he was being treated. His
daughter, Maria Celeste, could read between the lines,
and she knew that her father was in great distress. As
the days dragged on, it became clearer to Commissioner
Maculano that things would go very badly for Galileo if
he persisted in denying that his book was not a defence
of Copernicanism. At a meeting of the Holy Office on 28
April 1633, Maculano suggested a course of action that
was unusual: he proposed to have a heart-to-heart
conversation with Galileo and deal with the matter
extrajudicially. Some of the cardinals immediately voiced
their doubts about Galileo’s willingness to be
reasonable, but the Commissioner, who was eager to spare
Galileo and the Church from more unpleasantness,
convinced them to let him try. He met Galileo, and he
agreed to co-operate. Once he had given in, the sequel
was just a matter of following the routine and showing
that due process had been observed. Three days after his
interview with Maculano, Galileo re-entered the
Commissioner’s office for a second formal hearing
on Saturday, 30 April. As we know from the transcript,
Galileo declared that over the last few days he had
thought it advisable to reread his Dialogue, which
he had not looked at for the past three years. He wanted
to see whether he had unwittingly given offence.
“Not having seen it for so long,” he
explained, “it seemed almost a book by another
author. I freely confess that it appeared to me in
several places to be written in such a way that a reader,
ignorant of my intention, would have reason to believe
that the arguments for the wrong side, which I intended
to confute, were so expressed that they meant to convince
rather than be easily refuted.”19
Galileo singled out his two prize arguments (the
rotation of sunspots and the oscillating motion of the
tides) as having been presented too energetically when
they were no proof at all. He supposed, he said, that he
had succumbed to the natural complacency that everyone
feels for one’s own ideas and had tried to show
himself more skilful than others in devising, even in
favour of false propositions, clever arguments. “My
error,” he confessed, “has been one of
vainglorious ambition, pure ignorance and
inadvertence.”20
(95)
On 10 May, Galileo returned to the Holy Office for the
third time. The Commissioner officially informed that he
had eight days to present his defence. But he had already
written it, and produced it to Maculano
(96). On Tuesday, 21 June, he was summoned for the
fourth and last time. He maintained that he had never
held the Copernican theory after its condemnation in 1616
and that he had not advocated it in the Dialogue.
He was then formally commanded to tell the truth,
“otherwise one would have recourse to
torture,” to which he replied, “I am here to
obey, but I have not held this opinion after the
determination was made, as I said.”21 Galileo
signed his declaration and left the room.
(97) We can almost hear his judges heaving a sigh of
relief.
(98)
On the next day, Wednesday, 22 June, Galileo was
ushered into a room adjoining the church of Santa Maria
sopra Minerva, in what is now part of the library of the
Italian parliament.
(99)
(100)
(101)
(102)
(103) This was to be the most unpleasant part of the
trial. Galileo was ordered to kneel down while his
sentence was read out. He was condemned for holding an
opinion after it had been declared contrary to Scripture.
The tribunal was ready to absolve him if he formally
abjured his errors, but his book would be proscribed and
he would be condemned to imprisonment. As a religious
penance they imposed upon him the duty to recite the
seven penitential psalms once a week for the next three
years. This would have taken him about 20 minutes, but
his daughter Maria Celeste relieved him of the burden
after securing ecclesiastical permission to take it upon
herself.
(104)
(105)
(106)
(107)
Of the ten cardinal inquisitors seven were present,
the average number at meetings. The most conspicuous
absence was that of Francesco Barberini, the Pope’s
nephew, who had always advocated clemency. The second
absentee was Cardinal Gaspare Borgia, who had recently
inveighed against the pope at a meeting of the cardinals
and was probably unwilling to condemn anyone who caused
embarrassment to Urban VIII. The third was Cardinal
Laudivio Zacchia. No documents explaining these absences
have survived, and the three cardinals may simply have
been ill or bound by other duties on that day.
In popular accounts it is sometimes said that when
Galileo rose from his feet he muttered under his breath,
“Eppur si muove” (And yet it moves).
This may have been his inner conviction, bur he was wise
enough not to express it before his judges. His
confession had been part of a deal and the next day, 23
June, his imprisonment was commuted to house arrest in
the Villa Medici.
(108)
(109)
(110) Soon thereafter the ambassador requested that
Galileo be allowed to leave Rome for Siena, where his
friend Ascanio Piccolomini was Archbishop. This was
granted at a meeting of the Holy Office presided by the
Pope on 30 June.
In Siena, Galileo was not treated as a self-confessed
heretic but as a good Catholic and an honoured guest.
Archbishop Piccolomini invited scholars to dine with them
and he provided Galileo with the opportunity for lively
conversations. Tongues began to wag and someone sent an
anonymous letter to the Holy Office in which he claimed
that Galileo was spreading unorthodox ideas in Siena with
the approval of the Archbishop, who was rumoured to have
told several people that Galileo had been unjustly
sentenced by the Holy Office.
In December 1633 Galileo was authorized to return to
his villa in Arcetri, but his movements were restricted.
He was free to receive members of his family or friends,
but under no circumstances was he to hold meetings or
entertain a large number of people. He was not allowed to
go down to Florence, but could visit his daughters in the
neighbouring convent. Galileo’s eyesight began to
deteriorate rapidly in 1637 and blindness was soon added
to his miseries. In 1638 he obtained permission to stay
in Florence at the house of his son but was still kept
under house arrest to the point that he needed a special
permission to attend, at Easter, the Church of St.
Giorgio a few yards away. In 1639 he was back at Arcetri,
where a young scientist, Vincenzio Viviani, came to live
with him. Toward the last, Evangelista Torricelli was to
join him as amanuensis and companion.
Galileo became gravely ill in the autumn of 1641, and
after two months of suffering died on the evening of 8
January 1642
(111). His body was brought from Arcetri to the
church of Santa Croce in Florence, and preparations were
made for a public funeral, but the Pope intervened and
objected, and Galileo was not buried in the nave of the
church, where his body now rests, before 1737. One cannot
help feeling that relations between science and religion
would have been different if Urban VIII had been more
lenient. But then history cannot be rewritten. All we can
do is try to learn from it.
(1) A
more extended version of this text will be found in
William R. Shea and Mariano Artigas, Galileo in Rome:
The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
(2)
Galileo Galilei to Filippo Salviati, 22 April 1604, in:
Galileo Galilei, Opere, National Edition by
Antonio Favaro (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890-1909),
vol. 11, p. 89.
(3)
Francesco Maria del Monte to Cosimo II, 31 May 1611:
ibid., vol. 11, p. 119.
(4)
Benedetto Castelli to Galileo Galilei, 14 December 1613:
ibid., vol. 11, pp. 605-606.
(5)
Galileo Galilei, Letter to Christina of Lorraine:
ibid., vol. 5, p. 316.
(6)
Robert Bellarmine to Paolo Antonio Foscarini, 12 April
1615: ibid., vol. 12, pp. 171-172.
(7)
Antonio Querengo to Alessandro d’Este, 20 January
1616: ibid., vol. 12, pp. 226-227.
(8)
Censure of the Holy Office, 19 and 25 February 1616:
ibid., vol. 19, pp. 320-321.
(9)
Antonio Querengo to Alessandro d’Este, 5 March
1616: ibid., vol. 12, p. 243.
(10)
Galilleo Galilei to Curzio Picchena, 12 March 1616:
ibid ., vol. 12, p. 248.
(11)
Certificate by Robert Bellarmine, 26 May 1616:
ibid., vol. 19, p. 348.
(12)
Galileo Galilei to Federico Cesi , 8 June 1624:
ibid., vol. 13, p. 183.
(13)
Urban VIII to Granduke Ferdinand II: ibid., vol.
13, p. 184.
(14)
Avvisi di Roma (a kind of early newspaper):
ibid., vol. 14, p. 103.
(15)
Galileo Galilei, Dialogue on the Two Chief World
Systems, Fourth Day: ibid., vol. 7, p.
489.
(16)
Francesco Niccolini to Andrea Cioli, 5 September 1632:
ibid., vol. 14, pp. 383-384.
(17)
(18)
Galileo’s First Deposition, 12 April 1633:
ibid., vol. 19, p. 341.
(19)
Galileo’s Second Deposition, 30 April 1633:
ibid., vol. 19, p. 343.
(20)
Ibid.
(21)
Galileo’s Fourth Deposition, 21 June 1633:
ibid. vol. 19, p. 362.
Index of slides
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Title
Galileo’s six trips to Rome
First Trip (1587) - JOB HUNTING
Christopher Clavius
The Roman College
Pope Sixtus V
Fontana dell’acqua felice
Fontana dell’acqua felice
Inscription in the Fontana dell’acqua
felice
Fontana dell’acqua felice, detail
Obelisks
Latin inscription at the Vatican Obelisk
Putting the Vatican Obelisk in place
Obelisk of Santa Maria Maggiore
Obelisk at Saint John Lateran
Correspondence Galileo-Clavius
Second Trip: 29 March to 4 June 1611 - ROMAN
TRIUMPH
Galileo’s telescopic discoveries in
1609-1610
Observation of Jupiter’s moons, handwritten by
Galileo
Cosimo II (1590-1621)
In 1610 Galileo published the Sidereus Nuncius
Galileo’s telescopes
Palazzo Firenze
Palazzo Firenze, main entrance
Palazzo Firenze, inner court
The Roman College
The building of the Roman College now
Federico Cesi (1585-1630)
Signature of the four first members of the Academy of
the Lynxes
Using the telescope in the Gianicolo to view the
Lateran
Lateran Palace. Loggia of the benedictions (Sixtus
V)
The inscription of Sixtus V at the Lateran
Galileo’s signature as a member of the Academy of
the Lynxes
Paul V (1605-1621)
Mariano Artigas before St. Peter’s
façade
Paul V at St Peter’s façade (1612)
Third Trip. 10 December 1615 – 4 June 1616 -
ROMAN CLOUDS
Benedetto Castelli
Christina of Lorraine
Galileo’s denunciation before Rome (1615)
Niccolò Lorini and Tommaso Caccini
The dogs of the Lord
Santa Maria Novella, in Florence
Santa Maria Novella, pulpit.
Fresco of the Domini canes in Santa Maria
Novella
Altar of St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621)
Copernicanism and the Bible
In 1616, nobody considered Galileo the father of modern
empirical science
The opinion of the 11 theologians of the Holy
Office
The condemnation of Copernicanism did not involve the
Pope’s infallibility
In 1616, the Roman authorities could have taken a
softer course
Fourth Trip: 23 April 1624 - 16 June 1624 - ROMAN
SUNSHINE
In 1619, the Jesuit Orazio Grassi published in Rome a
lecture
Galileo’s reply to Grassi was written by his
disciple Mario Guiducci
Grassi replied to Galileo with his Libra
astronomica
In 1623 Galileo published in Rome The Assayer, a reply
to Grassi
In 1626 Grassi published in Paris his reply to
Galileo
Galileo’s enemies
Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, Galileo’s admirer,
elected Pope in 1623
Galileo’s letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (27
April 1624)
Galileo and Urban VIII in 1624
The “divine omnipotence argument” used by
Urban VIII
Galileo and Urban’s argument
Galileo Heretic?
G3, first page (of three)
EE291, an intriguing new document
First page of EE291
Galileo in 1624
Fifth Trip: 3 May 1630 - 26 June 1630 - STAR-CROSSED
HEAVENS
Palace of Federico Cesi, in Rome
Nepotism reached a high peak in the pontificate of
Urban VIII
Bernini’s baldacchino at St. Peter’s
(1624-1633)
The Barberini during the pontificate of Urban
VIII
Fontana del Tritone (Bernini, 1642-1643)
Fontana del Tritone, now
Palazzo Barberini
Piazza Barberini, with the Fontana del Tritone at the
center
Fontana delle api (Bernini, 1644)
Galileo and Velazquez
In the Villa Medici, painting by Velazquez (1)
In the Villa Medici, painting by Velazquez (2)
The adventure of the imprimatur (1)
The adventure of the imprimatur (2)
Galileo and Pope Urban VIII in 1630
Sixth Trip: 13 February 1633 - 6 July 1633 - FOUL
WEATHER IN ROME
Galileo’s Dialogue on the two chief sytems of the
world
Aristotle, Ptolomaeus, and Copernicus, in the front
cover
Galileo was never in jail
Palazzo Firenze
Palace of the Holy Office
Villa Medici
Siena: bishop’s palace and cathedral
Villa del Gioiello (Arcetri, Florence)
Galileo’s signature of his first deposition, 12
April 1633
Galileo’s signature of his second deposition, 30
April 1633
Galileo’s signature of his third deposition, 10
May 1633
Galileo’s signature of his fourth deposition, 21
June 1633
Galileo was not tortured
Galileo’s sentence and abjuration at Santa Maria
sopra Minerva
Santa Maria sopra Minerva
Square of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
Bernini’s elephant (Santa Maria sopra
Minerva)
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, today
The rise and fall of an uneasy genius
Sign indicating the Roman College and the
Minerva
The Roman College viewed from the sign
The Minerva viewed from the sign
The inner façade of the Villa Medici
Mariano Artigas within the Villa Medici
In the gardens of the Villa Medici
When, where, and how Galileo died
Full presentation
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