Maria Novella in Florence, a young Dominican friar, Father
Tommaso Caccini, complained about Galileo. Caccini lived with
Lorini in the convent of San Marco. They sympathized with
Ludovico delle Colombe, who had criticized Galileo. In the Bible,
the Joshua miracle was that the Sun stood stil . So in his sermon
Caccini condemned as ‘nearly heresy’ the idea that the Earth moves.
He disdained mathematicians as agents of the Devil, who should be
exiled from Christendom. He was referring chiefly to astrologers,
such as Galileo and Kepler, who were professional astronomers and
mathematicians but were also astrologers, although they had some
reservations against astrology.174
Now Galileo felt pressed to respond. On December 1613 one of
his devoted students, Benedetto Castelli, had visited the court of the
Grand Duchess Christina, where conversation turned to Galileo’s discoveries. The Grand Duchess and Cosimo Boscaglia, a philosopher, argued that scriptures deny a moving Earth. Galileo wrote a letter to
Castelli discussing religion and astronomy. Handwritten copies of
Galileo’s letter soon circulated in Florence. In it, Galileo analysed the
use of biblical quotations in science. Several passages in the Bible seem
to say that the Sun moves but the Earth does not. Galileo argued that
such passages do not necessarily mean what they say.
Thus he violated Catholic rules on interpreting scriptures. Bruno
had done the same indiscretion. They didn’t have permission.
Between 1545 and 1563 the Council of Trent had decreed that:
in matters of faith and morals . . . no one, relying on his own
judgment and distorting the Sacred Scriptures according to
his own conceptions, shall dare to interpret them contrary to
that sense which Holy Mother Church, to whom it belongs
to judge their sense and meaning, has held and does hold, or
even contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.
Regardless, Galileo now argued that the Bible’s ‘only’ purpose is
to persuade readers ‘of those articles and propositions that are necessary for . . . salvation and surpass human reason’. He pleaded that God doesn’t want us to abandon rationality. He said that in science,
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interpreters are not limited by ‘the apparent meaning of words’.
Galileo discussed ‘problems that already have been debated by the
greatest Philosophers for thousands of years, which are the stability
of the Sun, and the mobility of the Earth: opinions that were held
by Pythagoras and by all his sect’, plus Heraclides, ‘Philolaus, who
was Plato’s teacher’, Plato himself, Aristarchus, Seleucus, ‘Nicetas’
and ‘many others’. 175 He didn’t name Bruno, who belongs in that list.
Galileo’s letter to Castelli triggered complaints. The Bishop of
Fiesole, a hill town near Florence, said Copernicus should be im prisoned, not knowing he had died. Lorini sent a copy of Galileo’s letter to the Inquisition in early February 1615. Then Castelli met with
Archbishop Francesco Bonciani at Pisa. The archbishop asked him
about Galileo and then urged Castel i ‘to abandon certain bizarre
opinions, and in particular the motion of the Earth, telling me that
this would be for my own good, and not to become my downfall [or
perdition], that these opinions were dangerous, scandalous and temerarious, being in direct opposition to the Sacred Scripture’. Castelli alerted Galileo. He said the archbishop voiced arguments ‘which
summed up to this: that since all creatures were created in the service
of man, it necessarily followed very clearly that the Earth could not
move like the stars’. The archbishop said ‘those opinions were hearsay
and simply madness, and that this was the downfall’ of Galileo, and
that such beliefs ‘deserved to be condemned’.176
Meanwhile, in Naples, Father Paolo Foscarini of the Carmelite
Order published a defence of the ‘New Pythagorean System of
the World’ in 1615.177 He described ‘the Pythagorean opinion, and of Copernicus’, that the Earth moves. Foscarini admitted that it
seemed to be ‘one of the strangest, and most monstrous paradoxes’,
because it seemed ‘repugnant’ to scriptures, so everyone judged it as
‘mere madness’.178 It was denied by habit, not reason. New astronomical evidence supported it. He said it could be reconciled with biblical passages. First it had been defended by Pythagoras himself,
Forscarini said, and then by ‘many famous, and courageous men,
such as Heraclides, and Ecphantus the Pythagorean, and all the
Pythagorean school, Nicetas of Syracuse, Martianus Capella and
many others’.
Foscarini submitted his argument to the judgement of the
Church. But he quoted an irreverent line from the Epistles of
Horace: ‘I am not bound to swear as any master dictates. ’179 Horace 140
Aliens on the Moon?
was a Roman poet from around 20 bce, known for the maxim ‘dare
to be wise.’
Father Foscarini accepted that the Church could not err in matters of faith and salvation. But he said it could err in practical and philosophical judgements. He said the Bible includes metaphors
and common expressions: it refers to God as walking, having a face,
eyes and anger. It refers to Death as eating, moving, having a voice
and a shadow. Foscarini defended the ‘monstrous and extravagant’
idea that Hell, at Earth’s centre, revolves in heaven around the Sun.
He insisted that the planetary heavens are distinct from the spiritual
heaven above everything. Since scholars have focused on how
Foscarini’s opinions pertained to Galileo, they haven’t compared
them to Bruno’s doctrines.
Did Foscarini support any heresies that Bruno had defended?
Yes. He said that thanks to the telescope we now know ‘the Moon is
mountainous’, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter consist of multiple bodies,
and many new stars exist. Galileo’s telescope ‘brought, and yielded
new fixed Stars, and new Planets, and new Worlds’. 180 Foscarini argued ‘the Stars are nothing other than so many Suns, so many
Moons, but more distant.’181 Furthermore, ‘the Earth is nothing other than a Moon, and a Star. ’182 All these beliefs – many worlds, including the Moon, the stars are suns, Earth is a star – had been
advocated by Bruno, not by Galileo. Foscarini didn’t mention Bruno,
but his booklet crept towards the views of the heretic.
Crediting Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, now Foscarini concluded that Pythagoras was probably right and not in conflict with scriptures. But other churchmen disagreed. Cardinal Bellarmine
intervened.
In a letter to Foscarini he said that Foscarini and Galilei proceeded prudently by speaking hypothetically, instead of speaking as if Earth’s motion were absolute truth. However, Bellarmine seriously
warned Foscarini that any claim that the Earth truly circles the
unmoving Sun ‘is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate
all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the
Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false’.183
Bellarmine warned Foscarini that the Council of Trent had prohibited any interpretation of scriptures deviating from the Holy Fathers. He added that recent commentaries on Genesis, Psalms,
Ecclesiastes and Joshua all agreed o
n the literal interpretation about
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the Sun’s motion, while ‘the Earth is very far from heaven and sits
motionless as the centre of the world.’ Bellarmine concluded that
although the Earth’s motion is not a subject of faith, it is a matter
of faith on those speakers, the apostles, prophets and Catholic
commentators, who wrote about it.
Meanwhile Father Caccini denounced Galileo to the
Inquisition, but apparently the Inquisitors in Florence did nothing. Caccini’s friend, Father Lorini, sent a confidential complaint to Cardinal Paolo Sfondrato (or Sfondrati), the head of the Roman
Inquisition.184 Lorini said the ‘Galileists’ were conceited and fixed in their opinions, including disrespectful errors against the Bible
and its expositors.185
Soon a consultor of the Inquisition wrote a report on Galileo’s
letter to Castelli. Then Caccini gave a deposition against Galileo,
arguing that the notion that the Sun is fixed at the centre of the
universe was ‘almost heretical’ because it clashes with Psalm 18,
Ecclesiastes 1, Isaiah 38 and Joshua 10.
The Inquisition summoned Father Ferdinando Ximenes, who
likewise testified against Galileo and his followers, saying that Earth’s
motion and the immobile Sun were ‘false and heretical’. Ximenes
insisted the Bible says the Sun moves; God is a substance, ‘and that
it is nonsense to say that God is sensuous, laughs, and cries and that
there is nothing but discrete quantity mixed with empty spaces’. 186
The Inquisition also summoned Giannozzo Attavanti, who knew
Galileo. Attavanti testified that Galileo did believe that the Earth
moves and the Sun doesn’t. Attavanti explained that Caccini apparently overheard but misunderstood a conversation Attavanti had with Ximenes about whether God is a substance or accident, whether God
is sensuous, laughs or cries. Attavanti said these weren’t Galileo’s
ideas. He said that Caccini had interrupted another conversation
saying the Sun’s immobility is ‘a heretical proposition’.187
Meanwhile, Galileo’s friends in Rome told him trouble was
brewing. In late February his friend Giovanni Ciampoli relayed a
conversation with Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, another friend. The
cardinal was concerned that greater caution was needed in discussing scientific arguments in order not to trespass the limits of physics and mathematics. Barberini worried that if a bright person introduced new ideas not everyone would be dispassionate enough to portray them well:
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Aliens on the Moon?
Cardinal Maffeo
Barberini in 1612.
Eleven years later,
he became the Pope.
Medal etching by
Guillaume Dupré.
someone amplifies, another modifies; whatever came
from the author’s own mouth, so that it is transformed
in spreading, such that he cannot recognize it as his own.
And I [Ciampoli] know what he [Barberini] tells me:
because your opinion regarding the phenomena of light
and shadow in the bright and dark parts [of the Moon]
posits an analogy between the terrestrial globe and the
lunar; [then] somebody enlarges, and says that you place
human inhabitants on the Moon; and someone else starts
to dispute how these can be descended from Adam, or
come from Noah’s ark, with many other extravagances one
never dreamed of. Surely one should attest often that one
submits to the authority of those who have jurisdiction
over the minds of people in the interpretation of Scripture,
this is extremely necessary to remove this opportunity for
malice.188
Cardinal Barberini told another of Galileo’s friends that he had not
heard anyone talking about the problem that concerned Galileo.189
Barberini was a member of the Index. He wasn’t an Inquisitor, so did
he know that similar accusations had been raised against Giordano
Bruno? He didn’t necessarily know because of ‘the extreme secrecy
that bound the deliberations’ of the Inquisition.190
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Cardinal Bellarmine
holding a crucifix.
Portrait at the
Church of
St Ignatius
in Rome.
In mid1615 Galileo expanded his letter to Castelli to send it to
the Grand Duchess Christina. Handwritten copies of both letters
circulated in Florence, but the longer letter circulated only among
Galileo’s close allies.
That same year Bellarmine finished his book On the Ascent of the
Mind to God by a Ladder of Created Things, in which he (incidentally)
reiterated his rejection of the soul of the world:
Since the soul is in the body, and governing, and moving
[the body], it necessarily has the form of the body, and so it
is conjoined with it, so that from the soul and body one man
is made. God does not need, in order to make the soul, a soul
of the world; neither is there made a composite substance
from Himself and the world.191
Bellarmine was giving an argument he didn’t include in his previous
critique of the world soul in 1611. It was the same argument that the
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Dominican friar Petreto had published in 1601 against the two heresies that either God or the Holy Spirit is the soul of the world.192
It is fitting that Bellarmine used that argument, since he owned a
copy of Petreto’s tract.193
In the new book Bellarmine also said that God created just ‘one
Sun which was enough; making also one Moon’. 194 In an earlier book Bellarmine had already argued that only one Sun exists, just as
only one God exists: ‘It is very true too about the Sun, which has an
individual nature, we say, this one alone is the true Sun, aside from
it there is no other Sun. ’195
Again, Bellarmine did not say that he was rejecting four of
Bruno’s heresies: the world has a soul, God infuses the substance
of the world, the human soul is not the form of the body, and there
are many suns and moons.
Without being summoned, Galileo went to Rome to defend himself. He met with several cardinals, foremost with Bellarmine. Was there continuity between Bruno’s trial and these proceedings against
Galileo? Was anyone present during both proceedings?
Years later Galileo recalled that he ‘discussed the matter with
some cardinals who oversaw the Holy Office at the time, especially with Cardinals Bellarmine, Aracoeli, San Eusebio, Bonsi and d’Ascoli’.196 At first sight none of these names, other than Bellarmine, seem to match the participants in Bruno’s proceedings. ‘San Eusebio’, however, was an honorary name of Ferdinando Taverna, who had served as Consultor in the Roman proceedings
against Bruno from late 1593 to early 1595. 197 After he became governor of Rome in 1599 he presided over Bruno’s final imprisonment and brutal execution; he became a cardinal in 1604.198
Someone else participated in Bruno’s trial, someone with a
higher ranking than Bellarmine and Taverna. Sfondrato had served
as Cardinal Inquisitor in the Roman trial of Bruno for six years
from 1594 until Bruno’s condemnation in 1600.199 A few months later he became a member of the Index. He was a close friend of
<
br /> Bellarmine.200 By 1616 Sfondrato was the most senior Inquisitor and head of the Inquisition, under the Pope, and still a member of the
Index. Sfondrato received the initial complaint against Galileo and
decided it deserved attention.201
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Bellarmine, Taverna and Sfondrato knew Bruno’s heresies. They
contributed to killing him. Cardinals Bellarmine and Taverna met
with Galileo and asked him specifically to explain the claims of
Copernicus.
Yet another authority had firsthand knowledge of Bruno’s case,
someone with a higher rank in the Church than even Sfondrato.
Cardinal Camillo Borghese had participated in the Roman proceedings against Bruno from 1596 until 1600. He was also present, alongside Bellarmine and other Inquisitors, in March 1597 when
they admonished Bruno to renounce just one particular delusion:
his belief in many worlds. Later, in 1605, Borghese was promoted to
the highest Catholic office, becoming Pope Paul v. Now, ten years
later, he headed the investigation against Galileo.
Records of the Inquisition meetings clarify the sequence of
events. On 7 February 1615 Lorini submitted his complaint to
Sfondrato. On 25 February Bellarmine, Taverna and other officers
of the Inquisition met to discuss Galileo’s errors and misinterpretations of scriptures. On 19 March the Pope met with Sfondrato, Bellarmine, Taverna and four others to discuss Galileo’s errors.
On 2 April the Pope met with Sfondrato, Bellarmine, Taverna and
others to discuss Caccini’s deposition. On 25 November Sfondrato,
Bel armine, Taverna and others discussed Ximenes’s deposition
against Galileo.202
Thus in 1615 at least four official meetings of Inquisitors who had
been at Bruno’s trial discussed allegations against Galileo, twice in
the presence of the Pope, who had also participated in Bruno’s trial.
Now consider the accusations against Galileo:
(1) Galileo says the Earth moves.
(2) Galileo says the Sun and heavens don’t move, and the
Sun is at the centre of the universe.
(3) Galileo argues that certain ways of speaking in scriptures
are inappropriate or literally false; for example, that when
Joshua ordered the Sun to stop, the order was not really
given to the Sun.
(4) Galileo argues that in disputes about natural processes,
Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition Page 19