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Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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by Alberto A. Martinez


  than the soul of the world,’ and so on.33 His account could alert 168

  The Enemies of Galileo

  ignorant readers that opinions about many worlds, the world soul

  and transmigration were heretical.

  Some historians used to doubt whether Schoppe’s claims echoed

  the Inquisition’s accusations. Such doubts became unjustified once

  the ‘Summary’ of Bruno’s trial became available. Moreover, Marta

  Fattori discovered a document from 1621 in which a censor of the

  Index approved and praised Schoppe’s account as ‘fruitful and

  useful’. Thus Fattori found that in 1621 the Index actual y upheld

  the Inquisition’s sentence of 1600.34 Hilary Gatti agreed and said,

  ‘It is clear that in the minds of the Roman Curia, Bruno’s trial and

  execution and the budding Galileo affair were closely connected.’35

  It was improper to write about heretics, so Catholic astronomers

  hardly mentioned Bruno. In Protestant lands, however, astronomers

  could. Denmark had been Lutheran since the 1530s, so in a discussion about celestial discoveries the Danish astronomer Christen Sørensen Longomontanus remarked: ‘But first we respond to the

  Pythagoreans, whom others in our age have defended, and principally the Italian Bruno of Nola.’36 Longomontanus named Bruno as the top advocate of the Pythagoreans.

  Also in 1622, Giulio Lagalla denied the transmigration of souls.

  He argued that such ‘Pythagorean fables’ were false, absurd, impossible and condemned. 37 Following Aristotle, Lagalla insisted that the soul is real y the form of the body. Lagal a denied that the human

  soul is like ‘a sailor in a ship’. He repeatedly emphasized this point. 38

  Bruno had defended this belief. It was one of the heretical propositions that Bellarmine had demanded that Bruno recant in 1599. But Bruno refused. Later Bellarmine rejected it again as a wrong way

  to speak about the union of Christ’s divinity with His humanity.39

  Also in 1622 one of Rusca’s colleagues at the Ambrosian College

  critiqued Pythagoras. Franciscus Collius discussed whether ancient

  pagan philosophers received salvation or eternal damnation, and

  began by citing Philaster’s book against heresies. 40 Collius dedicated eleven chapters to discussing Pythagoras. He cited claims about Pythagoras by many writers, including Porphyry, Iamblichus,

  Philostratus, Diogenes, ‘Plutarch’, Pliny, Plotinus and Ficino. He

  quoted many critics, including Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Jerome,

  Lactantius, John Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Theodoret, Pico della

  Mirandola, Ludovico Ricchieri and, especially, Augustine. Collius

  denied claims about Pythagoras as inconsistent and absurd.

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  Divination based on astrology was ‘perpetually condemned’ by the

  Church.41 Successful predictions by Pythagoras had been caused by demons; claims about transmigration and that Pythagoras had lived

  in Hell came from demons too, and his alleged miracles and magic

  were caused by demons.42

  I noted earlier the important fact that Pope Leo x denounced

  Martin Luther as ‘a new Porphyry’, blinded by the Devil. The implication is that Porphyry, advocate of Pythagoras, was one of the greatest enemies of Christianity. To confirm that the Pythagoreans were as

  despised as the Protestants we would expect to find that some writers had actually compared the main reformers to Pythagoras himself.

  And indeed such expressions exist. Nicolas Romaeus, a Jesuit, published a book denouncing the ideas of John Calvin. As Romaeus criticized the Calvinists, he twice referred to their misleading leader

  as ‘their Pythagoras’. 43 Romaeus also criticized Luther’s disciples, including Melanchthon and Osiander, and other reformers, such

  as Zwingli. He complained that the ‘filth of the Heretics that now

  floods the Christian world’ fol owed the shameless claims of Luther,

  ‘their Pythagoras’. 44 Thus Romaeus ridiculed Luther as ‘the devil’s close friend’ and ‘the architect of all the heresies of our time’.

  Also in 1622 the Index banned a book, On Pythagorean

  Symbols. 45 The record states that it was banned ‘for religious reasons’. The author was a German Franciscan monk concerned with the ‘calamities and transformations’ of governments. He discussed

  the significance of ‘signs’ such as comets, eclipses, earthquakes and

  floods. Since our present interest is not political astrology, but

  links among Pythagorean works, I should point out that this book

  briefly referred to ‘Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, who

  like the Philosopher Anaxagoras, said that there are many worlds’. 46

  The book also discussed ‘the Earth’s motion’, but only in respect

  to earthquakes, which the author called ‘premonitions of fate and

  future evil’. 47 In December 1622 the Decree of the Index prohibiting On Pythagorean Symbols was signed by one Cardinal Maffeo Barberini.48 The next year he became the new Pope. It was also signed by Capiferreus, who had co­signed the two Decrees against

  the ‘Pythagorean doctrine’ of Copernicus, Foscarini, Zúñiga and

  Kepler.

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  Campanella Defends Galileo from Prison

  From his youth Campanella wrote poems. Most are undated, but

  they convey the feelings he experienced for years. For example, these

  lines convey the age of darkness he endured:

  It befits our age to wear black robes.

  Originally white, afterward various, today Moorish,

  nocturnal, river, infernal, traitorous,

  with ignorance and horrid fright and sick.

  We shun with shame all cheerful colours,

  that mourn our end and living under tyranny,

  the chains, knotted ropes, the metal and the snare

  of sombre heroes, and of the suffering soul intact.49

  Copying Emperor Charles v, who dressed entirely in black, many

  aristocrats and clergymen had dressed in black since the 1530s.

  Even though Campanel a remained imprisoned in Naples in

  1622, he still managed, finally, to publish in Frankfurt his long delayed Defence of Galileo. Campanella’s goal was to answer ‘whether the philosophical view advocated by Galileo is in agreement with, or

  opposed to, the Sacred Scriptures’.50 Campanella began by summarizing arguments against Galileo. Among them, Campanella echoed claims that some of Galileo’s opinions apparently contradict the

  Church Fathers by teaching that the Earth moves and is not the

  centre of the universe, and that the Sun and stars do not move.51

  He cited multiple ancient and religious authorities to analyse

  whether the theory of Earth’s motion was heretical. He mentioned Cicero, Ovid, Pliny, Diogenes, Eusebius, Lactantius, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Copernicus, Bruno and Kepler. For ex ample, he remarked that according to John Chrysostom ‘it is heretical and contrary to Scriptures and the Church to affirm many

  heavens and orbs. ’52

  Campanella made a vague reference to Giordano Bruno, without saying his name. He stated the claim that multiple previously unknown Suns and planets exist: ‘This opinion was defended by

  a person from Nola and by others who, being heretics, we cannot

  mention by name.’ This remark confirms that heretics other than

  Bruno believed ‘many suns’ exist. But Campanella said they had not

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  been condemned specifically for such opinions. He gave multiple

  examples of prominent men who held some such views, inclu
ding

  Cardinal Cusa, Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert.53

  Campanella argued that the question of whether Earth is the

  centre of the universe is not a Catholic dogma, but it seemed closely

  related to questions about the location of Hell: whether Hell is at

  the centre of the universe, and whether Hell is inside the Earth.

  Campanella quoted the apostle Paul, ‘Christ descended to the lower

  regions of the Earth’ (Ephesians 4:9), and also Psalm 15:10, which

  speaks of Christ descending to the lower regions: ‘You will not

  abandon my soul in Hell.’ Campanella inferred that therefore Hell

  probably is located in the lower regions of Earth, ‘unless we assume

  that there are other Earths’. 54 Apparently Hel was within the Earth, but the location of Earth itself remained unclear. Campanella concluded: ‘Therefore we do not know whether the Earth is in the centre of the world’, which he said helps Galileo’s case.

  It is unclear how much Campanella, in prison, knew about the

  proceedings against Galileo. Yet his Defence includes the interesting

  claim that Catholic censors specifically opposed the implication, in

  Galileo’s writings, that other worlds exist. Campanella explained:

  If someone were to hold that the infernal darkness, which

  Christ called ‘exterior’, is located outside this world, as

  Origen conjectured in his commentary on Matthew and as

  Chrysostom thought in his commentary on the Letter to the

  Romans, then there are other worlds outside of our world.

  The censors condemned this idea in Galileo because they

  had not carefully examined the Scriptures and the books of

  the holy Fathers.55

  This is a remarkable claim! Recall how promptly, after Bellarmine

  admonished him, Galileo wrote to Cardinal Muti’s nephew to clarify

  his position on the existence of other worlds.

  Campanella exaggerated words by John Chrysostom – who once

  wrote that we can only know that Earth is cold, dry and dark – to mean

  specifically that we don’t know whether it moves or is at the centre of

  all. Citing other Catholic authorities who did not specify that Earth

  is central, stationary, Campanella interpreted them to mean that perhaps it wasn’t. Furthermore, he argued that if Hell is really at Earth’s 172

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  centre, as Catholics believed, then it necessarily follows that Earth

  moves. He said fire is always in motion. 56 So he argued: If indeed it is true that Hell is located in the centre of the our

  Earth where the damned are tormented by fire, as Gregory57

  and others seem to think, then it must be that the Earth

  moves. For as Aristotle reports, Pythagoras, who located

  the place of punishment in the centre of the Earth and who

  taught that fire is the cause of motion, concluded that the

  Earth moves and is animated, as was also believed by Ovid in

  Book xv of his Metamorphoses, by Origen in his commentary

  on Ezekiel, by Alexander of Aphrodisias, and by Plato . . .

  Hence Galileo’s view is not inconsistent with St Gregory

  but with Aristotelianism.58

  Like Thomas Aquinas, Campanella construed Aristotle’s claim

  about the Pythagoreans and the centre of the world as being about

  Pythagoras himself.

  Campanella painstakingly interpreted passages in scriptures to

  show that they are not incompatible with the notion that the Earth

  moves, for example, ‘A generation passes, and a generation comes,

  but the Earth stands forever’ (Ecclesiastes 1:4). Campanella argued

  that this passage does not mean that Earth stands unmoving, but

  instead, that it remains in a constant state of motion. He attributed

  this view to recent astronomers and to ‘Pythagoras and all his followers, Heraclitus, Aristarchus, Philolaus and so on, whose opinion St Thomas did not condemn as heretical’.59 Campanella said that therefore it was permissible for Galileo too to interpret it in this

  way. Likewise, the Joshua miracle, when interpreted as the Earth

  stopping, was not a denial but merely an explanation.

  Campanella argued that the ‘firmament’ in Genesis does not

  move, and is the same as the starry heavens. Therefore, ‘it follows that

  the Earth moves in a circle, like a ship, and the stars appear to move

  in a circle, like an island or a tower on the shore. ’60 He reviewed different theories about this firmament, the heavens. Campanella

  agreed with ‘the view of Empedocles and other Pythagoreans’ that

  it is composed of the same four elements as Earth.61

  Campanella explained that years earlier he had not appreciated

  the theories of the Pythagoreans. Thinking the heavens were made

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  of fire, he had ‘tried to refute all the arguments of Copernicus and

  Pythagoras’. But following the discoveries by Brahe and Galileo,

  Campanella increasingly doubted that stars and planets are different

  from Earthly things. Still, he would ‘suspend my own judgment on

  these matters’, to willingly ‘obey the commands of the Church and

  the judgment of others who know more than I do’.62

  He concluded that ‘the theory of Copernicus and Galileo’ was

  probable, and that nothing obviously harmful seemed to ensue. 63

  Nevertheless, he acknowledged: ‘But it is up to the Church to judge

  whether Galileo should be permitted to write about and debate

  these matters.’

  Another argument against Galileo’s theory, said Campanel a,

  was that it implied the plurality of worlds, which seemingly revived

  an old heresy:

  Further, from Galileo’s opinion it follows that there are many

  worlds and earths and seas, as Mohammed said, and that

  there are human beings living there, if the four elements of

  our world also exist in the stars. For if every star is composed of all four elements, then clearly each will itself also be a world. But this seems contrary to the scriptures, which

  speak only of one world and one human race. I will omit

  the point that to say that Christ also died on other stars to

  save those inhabitants is to revive the heresy, which some

  have maintained, that at one time Christ was crucified a

  second time in the other hemisphere of the Earth to save

  the humans living there as he has saved our part of the

  world. It would also be necessary to agree with the heretic

  Paracelsus that there are other humans who live in the air

  and in the waters and under the Earth, who enjoy beatitude,

  even though it is doubtful whether they are included in the

  redemption. The Jesuit Martin Delrio has written against

  this in his Disquisitiones magicae.64

  If rational beings inhabit distant worlds, then how would they

  receive Christ’s redemption? Campanella noted that some writers

  had denied that people might live in distant places on Earth because

  they would need to know about Christ, and therefore ‘Christ would

  have had to be crucified twice, once here and once there. ’65

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  This was a common Christian reason to deny that many worlds

  exist. Another book published in 1623 argued that ‘only one world

  was created, not many worlds, because the Sacred history is silent
/>
  about the plurality of worlds’, and also because ‘In this way we

  assert that one divine person was incarnated, not many, because the

  Evangelical narration does not affirm that many were incarnated. ’66

  So, one world, one Christ.

  Yet Campanella believed that Galileo really discovered new

  worlds! He said that just as Galileo had revealed mountains on the

  Moon, the Bible agrees with him because Genesis and Deuteronomy

  ‘speak of fruits and mountains and hills in the heavenly bodies’. 67

  Campanella didn’t quote these passages. What they say is:

  The God of your father will be your helper, and the Almighty

  will bless you with the blessings of heaven above, with the

  blessings of the abyss that lies beneath, with the blessings

  of the breasts and of the womb. (Genesis 49:25)

  Likewise, to Joseph he said: ‘His land shall be from the

  blessing of the Lord, from the fruits of heaven, and the

  dew, and the abyss which lies below, from the fruits brought

  forth by the Sun and the Moon, from the top of the ancient

  mountains, from the fruits of the eternal hills, and from the

  fruits of the Earth and from its plenitude. (Deuteronomy

  33:13–16)

  The first passage doesn’t say what Campanella claimed. The second

  says ‘fruits from heaven’, which Campanella interpreted literally,

  but it does not specify whether the mountains and hills are in the

  heavenly bodies.

  Campanella mistakenly said that nowhere in the Church canons

  does any decree deny that many worlds exist.68 His mistake illustrates the ignorance of those untrained in the prosecution of heresies.

  Still, he knew that Thomas Aquinas criticized Democritus for such

  beliefs, so Campanella argued that the critique referred not to the

  idea of many worlds in itself, but only to the belief that many worlds

  might exist without any ordering, as if by chance.69 As in Sense of Things, he again argued that God certainly can make many worlds,

  and we cannot limit His powers.

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  Campanella claimed that living beings might exist in the stars,

  even if they are somewhat different from us. He said that Galileo

  at least denied that there are humans in the stars, and that Kepler’s

 

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