Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition
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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
burned alive
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