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Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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by Alberto A. Martinez


  scripture holds the last place; and that in such disputes philosophical or astronomical arguments have more force than divine arguments.

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  (5) Galileo says that the expositors (Church Fathers) of the

  Bible are often wrong in their interpretations.

  (6) Galileo argues that scriptures should not meddle in

  topics other than faith.

  (7) Galileo is regarded with suspicion in matters of faith,

  partly because he corresponds with Paolo Sarpi, infamous in

  Venice for impieties and for interpreting scriptures against

  the interpretation of the Church Fathers.

  (8) Galileo’s disciples speak disrespectfully of the Church

  Fathers and Thomas Aquinas, rejecting Aristotle’s philosophy.

  (9) Galileo’s disciples say God is not substance but accident; everything is discrete quantity and empty space; God is sensuous, laughs and cries; and saints’ miracles were

  not real.203

  Some of these accusations had been level ed previously against Bruno.

  These were the following: (1) Earth moves; (3) certain ways of speaking about scriptures are literally false; (5) some Church Fathers were wrong in their interpretations; (8) speaking disrespectfully of Church

  Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, and rejecting Aristotle’s philosophy; and

  also, in a general way, (4) attributing undue importance to philosophy,

  and (9) having wrong opinions about God and the Saints.

  Meanwhile, Tommaso Campanella sat in prison. But years later

  he published a book in which he claimed that, in early 1616, Cardinal

  Bonifazio Caetani in Rome contacted him to request that Campanella

  provide a theological evaluation of Galileo’s astronomical assertions.

  This claim has been debated by scholars, such as Luigi Firpo, who

  doubt that a cardinal would contact a convicted monk to request

  theological opinions. Yet Campanel a’s claims do not seem like a fabrication; we just do not know. Anyhow, instead of a letter, Campanella wrote a treatise, which he allegedly sent to Cardinal Caetani: ‘this

  inquiry, composed at your request: in which the Earth’s motion, and

  the stability of the starry sphere, and the rationale of the Copernican

  system are examined following Sacred Scriptures’.204 It was a strong defence of Galileo, arguing that his theory was based on the ideas of

  the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras, which allegedly stemmed from

  Moses. However, Campanella later said that Caetani received his

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  article eight days after the Inquisitors ‘had condemned the proposition of the Earth’s daily motion as contrary to scriptures’. Too late.

  Therefore, Campanella immediately noted, his own approach was

  ‘neither Copernican, nor of the Nolan’, that is, of Bruno.205

  On 24 February Pope Paul v had a meeting with the cardinals.

  They discussed Galileo, but then Cardinal Alessandro Orsini made a

  comment in favour of Galileo. According to the Tuscan ambassador,

  The Pope told him [Orsini] that it would be good for him

  [Orsini] to persuade him [Galileo] to leave this opinion.

  Orsini replied something, annoying the Pope, who cut off

  the argumentation and told him that he had remitted the

  business to the Holy Cardinals of the Holy Office; and

  Orsini having left, His Holiness called Bellarmine to him,

  and having discussed this matter, they concluded that this

  opinion of Galileo was erroneous and heretical.206

  The Tuscan ambassador added that ‘This point, this thing, today in

  the Court is shameful and abhorred.’ He said everyone fled from

  contentious discussions about individual opinions, ‘especially about

  astrological or philosophical things’, especially because the Pope

  was hostile to them.

  That same day, 24 February, eleven consultors of the Inquisition

  filed a unanimous official report concluding that the proposition that

  the Sun is immobile at the centre of the world is ‘foolish and absurd

  in philosophy; and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the sentences of Sacred Scriptures,’ according to theologians and Church Fathers.207

  About the proposition that the Earth is not the centre, but

  moves, all the consultors censured it too as foolish and absurd in

  philosophy, ‘and regarding the Theological truth, it is at least erroneous in faith’. 208 We should recall that in 1597 other consultors of the Roman Inquisition had already censured the proposition about

  the Earth’s motion when analysing the works of Giordano Bruno.

  It was so important to them that it was one of only ten censured

  propositions in Bruno’s works; it was the fifth on their list.

  Some hearsay accusations about Galileo were disregarded, lacking evidence. The Inquisition singled out for correction only two allegations: about the Earth and the Sun. But despite its consultors’

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  internal report, the Inquisition itself did not issue a formal condemnation against anyone. 209 It was late February 1616, and Galileo was still in Rome.

  Given the theologians’ judgement ‘against the propositions of

  the mathematician Galileo’, that the Earth moves and the Sun sits

  still at the centre, Pope Paul v himself asked Cardinal Bellarmine

  to summon Galileo to ‘warn him to abandon these opinions; and

  if he refuse to obey, the Father Commissary, in the presence of a

  notary and witnesses, is to issue him an injunction to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it; and further, if he should not acquiesce, he is to

  be imprisoned’.210

  Hence, Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo to warn him seriously that the two opinions were erroneous, and to abandon them immediately and completely. Also present were the Commissary of

  the Inquisition and two witnesses. Reportedly, ‘Galileo acquiesced

  in this injunction and promised to obey. ’211

  Historian Peter Godman has analysed this meeting in the context of Bellarmine’s extensive experience as censor and Inquisitor.

  The meeting was an ‘admonition’, the mildest form of discipline,

  and it was an unusually abbreviated censure, compared to others

  in Bellarmine’s career. Its promptness indicates that Galileo was

  esteemed with favour. Other historians had long argued that

  Galileo’s mild treatment was due to his social standing with friends

  in high places, such as Prince Cesi.212 Godman says that such explanations focus only on Galileo’s perspective, not his judges’. From Bellarmine’s perspective it was common to treat secular scholars

  less severely than clergymen. Hence Galileo was spared with a mere

  admonishment for his ‘error’, whereas Father Foscarini’s book was

  condemned. According to Godman, ‘Discipline and authority were

  at stake and, if learned laymen might be spared, no quarter would

  be given to the rank and file of the Ecclesia militans who presumed

  to step out of line. ’213 This applied to deviant clergymen, such as Bruno and Campanella.

  Did the prohibitions against Copernicus and Galileo have any

  relation to Bruno’s heresy that many worlds exist, some inhabited?

  The extant depositions and Inquisition minutes do not specify this.

  However, on 28 February 1616, just two days after Galileo received

  Bel armine’s order to abandon the false opinions, Galileo wrote a
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  letter in which he apologetically discussed only one topic: beings

  living on the Moon.

  Galileo wrote to Duke Giacomo Muti, noting that ‘a few days

  ago’, when they had met in the presence of Muti’s uncle, Cardinal

  Tiberio Muti, along with Alessandro Capoano, they had discussed

  the question of whether rational beings live on the Moon. Galileo

  wrote that Capoano tried to impugn Galileo’s claim of mountains

  on the Moon. Capoano argued that since Earthly mountains exist

  for the benefit of plants and animals, which exist for the benefit

  of mankind, then it follows that mountains on the Moon would

  mean that ‘other plants, and animals would exist in the benefit of

  some other intelligent and more perfect creature; a consequence

  that being utterly false, demonstrates that there exist no such mountains.’ Remarkably, this is the problem that Archbishop Bonciani had denounced to Castelli. Moreover, this is also the problem that

  Cardinal Barberini apparently conveyed to Galileo’s friend Ciampoli.

  And Barberini served alongside Cardinals Muti, Sfondrato and

  Bellarmine in the Index.

  It is also significant that in December 1615 the Tuscan ambassador had voiced concern that Galileo had travelled to Rome, ‘I know well that some friars of Saint Dominic, who have a great role in the Holy Office, and others, have a bad will against him [Galileo]; and

  this is not a country to come to dispute about the Moon, nor of the

  will, in the present century.’214 Recall that Bruno had claimed that the Moon is another Earth, with mountains, plains and seas – and

  that it is inhabited.

  Galileo now clarified his reply to Cardinal Muti’s nephew, saying

  that the irregularities on the Moon’s surface had been detected by

  the telescope, but that the alleged consequence was ‘not only not

  necessary, but absolutely false and impossible, since I can demonstrate that in that globe not only can there not exist human beings in any way, but no animals or plants either’. This was because he didn’t

  think the Moon is composed of soil and water, and also because the

  Sun doesn’t affect the Moon like the Earth. The temperatures on the

  Moon vary too much and it seems to have no clouds. Galileo then

  immediately ended his letter:

  And this, as your Excellency can well remember, was all that

  was said that day, without entering into any philosophical

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  discourse, nor that about that matter were any other words

  said. And with all humility I kiss your hand, and to the Lord

  God I beg that you be full of contentment.215

  Philosophical discourse about inhabited worlds had been Bruno’s

  speciality: the Index of Forbidden Books had banned Bruno’s books,

  nine of which spoke about other worlds.

  The evidence thus suggests that at least one archbishop

  (Bonciani), five cardinals (Bel armine, Sfondrato, Taverna, Muti and

  Barberini), plus the Pope, were all concerned about the heretical

  belief in the existence of more than one world.

  On 3 March 1616 the Inquisitors met with Pope Paul v to

  report Galileo’s acquiescence. The meeting included Bellarmine and

  Taverna.216 Two days later, on 5 March, the Index issued a Decree condemning several books for errors harmful to Christianity and

  prohibiting their printing, distribution, ownership and reading in

  any languages. The Decree states, ‘This Holy Congregation has also

  learned about the spreading by many of the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture, of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun’, as taught by Copernicus,

  Diego de Zúñiga and Paolo Foscarini. At the time Bellarmine was

  prefect of the Index.217

  Whereas the Church had not censured Copernicus’s book

  previously, it now censured it, partly because the cardinals had

  become more intolerant towards any deviations from the official

  interpretation of scriptures. The Catholics had lost half of Europe

  to the Protestant reformers, so the Catholic bureaucracy became

  increasingly authoritarian. The clergy increasingly interpreted the

  Bible very literally, to prevent modifications of its meaning.

  The Index banned the works of Copernicus and Zúñiga until

  they could be corrected. It ‘completely prohibited and condemned’

  Foscarini’s scriptural defence of the ‘New Pythagorean System of

  the World’, a rejection more forceful and damning than the censures

  against Copernicus, Zúñiga and Galileo.

  Consider now the expression ‘the false Pythagorean doctrine,

  altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture’, that the Earth moves

  and not the Sun. Historians and scientists have read this merely as

  an allusion to ancient mathematicians, scientists and astronomers.

  But were there religious connotations?

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  Suppose that the sentence said instead ‘the false Lutheran doctrine, altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture’, it would then be evident that there was a religious issue involved. But since the

  Pythagoreans had been misrepresented for centuries, the religious

  connotations became invisible to scientists and historians.

  As had happened at Bruno’s trial, most of the accusations

  against Galileo were dismissed, leaving few beliefs as deserving censure. Since Bruno believed in infinitely many suns, in his trial there was no issue of the Sun’s centrality. But in the proceedings against

  Galileo this idea became described as ‘Pythagorean’. Galileo himself

  had attributed it to ‘Pythagoras, and all of his sect’.218

  Copernicus and Kepler had merely credited the Pythagoreans,

  but Foscarini and Galileo took an extra step, they gifted the credit to

  Pythagoras himself. Others too, like Thomas Digges, had not distinguished between the Sun and the ‘central fire’ of the Pythagoreans, which Aristotle criticized. The claim that the central Sun is motionless upset the Inquisitors more than the opinion that the Earth moves. They labelled the former alone as ‘formally heretical’.

  I don’t know all the Inquisitors and censors who in 1616 knew

  about the connection (evident in Bruno’s trial) between the Earth’s

  motion and various heretical Pythagorean beliefs. But at least it was

  known by Bellarmine, head of the Index, Sfondrato, head of the

  Inquisition, Taverna and the Pope. It was Sfondrato who signed the

  Decree of the Index as ‘Bishop of Albano, Cardinal of St Cecilia’.

  Bellarmine requires special attention. In addition to having

  served in the deadly proceedings against Bruno, Bellarmine had

  studied writings by many ancient Church Fathers relevant to

  the present discussion, including Tertullian, Lactantius, John

  Chrysostom and, of course, Augustine.219 Bellarmine’s life had been shaped by his militant struggles against heresies. In a work of 1616

  – a significant date – he said that the ‘various errors’ of ‘ancient

  heretics’ would have been forgotten, ‘had we not read them in the

  Catholic books of those who attacked them: Irenaeus, Philaster,

  Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret and the like’.220 Among them, Philaster, Epiphanius, Augustine and Theodoret had denounced the

  pagan belief in many worlds.

  Did Bellarmine notice their critiq
ues of Pythagorean ideas?

  Yes. For example, in one book Bellarmine discussed the location of

  Hell, among other things, and the pagan opinion ‘that the place of

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  punishment for souls is this world, in which souls stay in bodies as if

  in a prison’. He said that this opinion had been refuted by Irenaeus

  since, according to scriptures, after death souls really ‘descend

  into Hel ’. 221 Similarly, we may wel list some of the reputed ly Pythagorean propositions that, as we have seen, Bellarmine explicitly

  denied or condemned:

  (1) The world has a soul.

  (2) God is the soul of the world.

  (3) God is infused in the substance of the world.

  (4) Human souls are fragments of the substance of God.

  (5) Souls are punished by being imprisoned in bodies.

  (6) The soul vivifies the body, and controls it like a sailor

  in a ship.

  (7) Earth, Sun, Moon and stars are divine, animated beings,

  with souls.

  (8) The Earth moves.

  (9) The Sun does not move.

  (10) There are many worlds.

  Bellarmine didn’t label all these beliefs as ‘Pythagorean’ because

  theologians usually referred to heresies by the names of Christian

  heretics, such as Simon Magus, Valentinus, Mani, Origen, Abelard

  and Novatian, rather than by the names of the reputedly earliest

  pagan proponents.

  Bellarmine occasionally mentioned Pythagoras, without ne cessarily portraying him as evil, just mentioning him as a noble philosopher who taught much but did not write down his teach­

  ings.222 Still, Bellamine did cite a complaint by Irenaeus against heretics who dared to set a portrait of Pythagoras alongside one of

  Jesus.223 Bellarmine also quoted a damning version of an old story about Pythagoras:

  the judge is Saint Jerome. Thus in his book against

  Vigilantius, he said: ‘Just as Euphorbus was said to be reborn

  as Pythagoras, so too the evil mind of Jovinian has reincarnated in this one, so in him, and in that one, we are forced to respond to the snare of the Devil. ’224

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  Moreover, there is a sermon by Bel armine, first published in

  1615, in which he mentioned Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana

  as wayward, pagan philosophers:

  Look at the ancient philosophers, I beg you, what did their

 

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