Second Argument
‘The starry heaven is called a Firmament, only because it
is stable and unmoving, therefore the Earth really moves.’
Third Argument
‘Scriptures speak metaphorically and in the common ordinary way in many places, especially in Mathematics and in 204
The Enemies of Galileo
Theoretical Truths; therefore the Earth’s stasis and Sun’s
motion are said in the ordinary sense, from which it does
not follow that this happens in Physics and Mathematics.’
Fourth Argument
‘That the Firmament rests and the stars in it, is not contrary
to Scriptures, therefore by necessary consequence the motion
of the Earth is not contrary to Scriptures.’
Fifth Argument
‘Hell is in the Centre of the Earth, and in it is a fire tormenting the damned; therefore it is absolutely necessary that Earth moves . . . Because fire is a cause of motion,
therefore Pythagoras, who as Aristotle reports put the place
of punishment in the Centre, felt that Earth is animated and
endowed with motion.’
Sixth Argument
According to Genesis 1, there are waters in heaven above the
firmament and beneath it. ‘Therefore the Earth’s Water is not
contained only in the solidity of the Earth, and consequently
the natural place of the Earth is not the centre, but possibly,
outside it and carried in circular motion in a Great Orb.’
Seventh Argument
‘This opinion of the Earth’s motion, and quiescence of the
Sun at the Centre is most ancient, not first by Pythagoras,
but had been conveyed by Moses from whom Pythagoras
received it as a kind of Jew.’
Inchofer rejected these seven arguments. Since it was inappropriate to discuss heretics, he did not mention Galileo or Campanella, or much less Bruno. Still, he criticized many claims Campanella had
voiced: that the scriptures refer to the starry heavens as the ‘firmament’ because they are immobile, that Copernicus’s book had been approved by Pope Paul iii, and that recent astronomers (allegedly)
had found it impossible to establish astronomical tables correctly
without using Copernicus’s book. 200 Inchofer also criticized Bruno’s beliefs, without naming him either.
205
burned alive
Since Inchofer considered the Earth’s motion to be an ancient
Pythagorean idea, and he described its advocates as ‘Pythagoreans’,
then all of these seven arguments were Pythagorean, both to him
and to his readers. But among these arguments, consider the two
that explicitly mentioned additional Pythagorean notions: the fifth
and the seventh.
The fifth argument states that since the fires of Hell are in the
Earth’s centre, therefore Pythagoras argued that Earth is animated
and moves. Whereas Aristotle has attributed to ‘the Pythagoreans’
the idea that the centre of the world is the place of punishment,
Inchofer (like Thomas Aquinas) blamed this idea on Pythagoras
himself. Inchofer agreed that Hell is in the centre of the Earth, and
it contains fire. But he said that this would not necessarily cause the
Earth to move, because ‘if the argument is valid, it proves also that
lime kilns, baking ovens and hot firegrates are animated and in
themselves movable.’ He also argued that fire naturally goes upward,
whereas ‘such a motion is conceded neither by Pythagoras nor other
more recent followers’. Inchofer agreed that in some sense there
is fire in animals that, affected by their soul, causes their bodily
motions. But he disagreed that this applies to Earth:
Thus if Pythagoras attributed soul to Earth because of fire
contained within it, he did so in ignorance, and against his
own principles, for elsewhere the stars are said to be fiery
and animated, and even the Sun is animated by its fiery
nature, and hence they would be endowed with motion;
then how can the Sun be at rest in the Centre as the Earth
moves around it?
Inchofer cited Thomas Aquinas as having proven that Earth is
not animated, ‘against the arguments of Alexander who followed
the errors of the Gentiles, who thus attributed a cult of the Deity
to the Earth’. Inchofer said the Earth is not moved by a soul:
thus clearly the Earth is not animated, nor can its generator
be a soul joined to the Earth, as Pythagoras wanted, rather
it has a separate mover, which however is not sufficient for
Earth in the opinion of the Pythagoreans and other ancients,
but [allegedly] requires also a soul conjoined to the Earth as
206
The Enemies of Galileo
a proximate mover; thus, if the Pythagoreans want it to be
fire, they have to admit that this fire is produced by a separate
form and again that Earth was produced by fire according
to this same Philosophy; but everyone sees that all of this
is ridiculous and absurd.
Thus clearly, the Pythagoreans have clashed greatly against
their own principles, especial y in saying with Pythagoras
that Earth is made of fortyeight angles, containing six triangles with equal sides, and similarly with the Cube; and as was said above in Chapter 3, giving a completely useless
account of [Earth’s] motion; nevertheless they endow it
with a soul, and affirm that it rotates with an extremely fast
motion. This has led their fol owers into deceptive errors, as
not undeservingly ridiculed by the philosopher Hermias in
his Book on the Pagan Philosophers, and especially given their
argument about the Cube and the Earth, they are laughed at.
Inchofer thus cited Hermias against the Pythagoreans. He didn’t
explain it, but Hermias had ridiculed claims about transmigration,
that souls consist of ‘number in motion’, and many worlds. More
importantly – Inchofer denounced the notion that Earth has a soul.
Bruno had said this, not Galileo.
Next, the seventh argument, criticized by Inchofer, claimed
that the opinion of Earth’s motion was so ancient that Pythagoras
derived it from Moses, and therefore it was true. Inchofer countered
that philosophical opinions are not rejected because they are new
or old, but because they are false. He said many old opinions are
‘false and disproven’, including the claim that ‘the Sun is a prison
for the souls of sinners.’ More to the point, Inchofer said that it is
false that Moses originated the Pythagorean theory. He added that
it is indifferent whether Pythagoras was really Jewish. He did not
specify who said that, but Campanella had stressed it in Defence
of Galileo.
Inchofer insisted that if good astronomers use any statements
that seem to contradict Scriptures, then they should proceed as
if such statements are mere hypotheses, not truths. He therefore
quoted astronomer Nicholas Mulerius, who in 1611 wrote that
Sacred Scriptures should have such a great authority over us ‘that
we would not dare to fall into the opinion of the Pythagoreans,
207
burned alive
which is openly contrary to scripture’. 201 Elsewhere Mulerius called the Pythagorean astronomers ‘a sect’.202
Inch
ofer construed the theory of Earth’s motion as an ancient,
Pythagorean idea that had been revived and refined by Copernicus.
His knowledge of Christian theology informed him that such ideas
had been criticized centuries ago by thinkers such as Aristotle,
Hermias, John Chrysostom, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Inchofer summarily explained: ‘Indeed before Copernicus came
to light, the Philosophy of the Pythagoreans was contemplated by
many, but it was not introduced into the [monastic] Schools, either
because nature opposed it, or divine Faith. ’203
Inchofer traced the infamous beliefs of Pythagoras to his supposed teacher, quoting Tatian: ‘the fictions of Pherecydes were fol owed by the dogmas inherited by the Pythagoreans, and fol owed
by the imitations of Plato.’ Pherecydes of Syros apparently lived
around 550 bce and some writers claimed that at some point he lived
on the island of Samos. Several writers claimed that Pherecydes was
the first to teach the transmigration of human souls and their eternal
existence. Cicero and Augustine, for example, both said that he first
taught the ‘immortality of the soul’. Hence some writers said that
Pherecydes had been the teacher of Pythagoras.204
For Catholics not everything in scriptures had to be interpreted
literally, but there were clear limits to interpretative liberties. In
particular, any Catholic was required to accept the interpretations
dogmatized by the Church. Thus it was heretical for Bruno and
Galileo to wilfully reinterpret biblical passages as they wished, especially to try to make such passages mean the opposite of what they literally state, or the opposite of what Church Fathers had explained.
Heretics typically said, on the one hand, that they believe
everything the Catholic Church teaches, while on the other modifying certain dogmas at will, say, to match pagan beliefs. In opposition, Inchofer complained:
Christian piety does not conform with the precepts of error.
Otherwise never was Philosophy taught better than to defend
with clear reasons against these glorious errors: that in each
man there are three distinct substantial souls; that the one
in all is informed by a rational soul, as in each mortal; also
that Angels are corporeal; that other Worlds exist in the Sun
208
The Enemies of Galileo
and the Moon, with other creatures endowed with reason
and humanity; and six hundred other monstrosities stirred
up, introduced into the [monastic] Schools, and defended
with obstinate speculations; when many [philosophers] of
such kinds, excluding the Faith, dispute philosophically, and
despite a certain verisimilitude, cannot prove even one such
discourse.205
Inchofer said that Thomas Aquinas had written, ‘it is not possible
that there exists an Earth other than this one. ’206
Inchofer’s critiques against Pythagorean ideas are remarkable
for how much they echo ideas that the Roman Inquisition had
denounced in the books of Giordano Bruno. Inchofer rejected the
following Pythagorean ideas:
(1) The Earth moves.
(2) The Earth is animated, alive.
(3) The Earth has a soul.
(4) Souls transmigrate from body to body.
(5) There are many worlds, including the Sun and the Moon.
(6) Such worlds are inhabited by rational, humanlike beings.
(7) The Sun too is animated.
(8) The stars too are animated.
The Roman Inquisition had censured all of these ideas in the works
of Bruno! No historian previously had pointed this out because they
usually treat Galileo’s trial separately from Bruno’s. This is revealing
because it shows that many of the main and controversial concerns
in Bruno’s trial were in fact part of the systematic critique against
Galileo three decades later. Inchofer thought that such pagan falsehoods were intimately linked to the propositions Galileo defended.
Although Inchofer mentioned the latter two notions only briefly, that
‘the stars are said to be fiery and animated, and even the Sun is animated by its fiery nature’, he rejected such ideas. In addition to these critiques, Inchofer also rejected other socalled Pythagorean ideas:
(9) The Sun does not move.
(10) The Sun is at the centre of the universe.
(11) The Sun is a prison for sinners.
209
burned alive
The propositions about the Sun being immobile and central had
been affirmed by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, and denounced
by the Inquisition as ‘Pythagorean’ and heretical. The claim that the
Sun is a prison stems from Aristotle’s early accounts of the beliefs
of the Pythagoreans. It is essentially a religious proposition.
The majority of these eleven Pythagorean propositions were
not merely about astronomy or nature, they were about souls and
the afterlife. Galileo, by attributing the Copernican theory to the
Pythagoreans, had unwittingly pushed it closer to pagan doctrines
that theologians rejected as profoundly perverse.
Inchofer required that the ‘Pythagorean philosophy’ should not
be taught. He ridiculed the Pythagoreans for believing that Earth
has a soul and that hellfire causes it to move. As we have seen,
the idea that Earth has a soul had been advanced by ‘Plutarch’,
Origen, Philostratus, Plotinus, Abelard (allegedly), Ficino, Bruno,
Campanella and Kepler. And the idea that hellfire causes the Earth’s
motion had been discussed by Campanella.
The Imprimatur for Inchofer’s book specifies: ‘Three theologians of the Society [of Jesus] . . . reviewed it and approved it for publication. ’207 The Commissary General of the Roman Curia, Lucas Waddingus, promptly approved Inchofer’s book for publication, remarking: ‘This theologian has given a Christian refutation of these Pythagoreans. And he shows rightly that mathematics and the human sciences should be subordinated to the rule of Sacred Scripture.’208 This book too was approved for publication by Inchofer’s friend Riccardi.
Like Holste’s book on Porphyry and Pythagoras, Inchofer’s
book bears on its first page the official emblem of the Barberini
family: three bees. The globe of the Earth is illustrated inside a triangle, and on each corner a bee holds the Earth in place with its front legs. Overhead, a banner proclaims: ‘Fixed by these, it rests.’
The emblematic bees show that Inchofer’s book was approved by
the highest authorities.
Thus I confirm that Inchofer’s Summary Treatise is a neglected
but revealing window into the motivations of the most critical
expert in the infamous trial against Galileo. Historians would be
thrilled to have a comparable treatise by, say, Bellarmine, explicitly
explaining his personal critiques and concerns in the earlier proceedings against Galileo and Bruno. We are fortunate to have Inchofer’s 210
The Enemies of Galileo
account for the trial of 1633. Furthermore, it turns out that there
exists a more extensive account by Inchofer, which historians have
entirely neglected.
No Life in Other Worlds, No Living Earth
Galileo was perplexed when he heard about Inchofer’s Summary
Treatise. In July 1634 Galileo complained about it to a close friend:
Froidmont restrained himself to submerg
e just below the
mouth that the mobility of the Earth is a heresy. But recently
a certain Jesuit Father has printed in Rome that such an
opinion is so horrible, pernicious and scandalous, that
although we do allow in teaching, in [discussion] circles,
in public disputes and in publications to convey arguments
against the foremost articles of faith, against the immortality
of the soul, the Creation, the incarnation, and so on, yet it
cannot be allowed that there be dispute nor even argument
against the stability of the Earth, such that only this article
above all can thus be held as sacred, that in no way can there
be anything against it, nor any dispute in any way, but for
its corroboration. The title of this book is Summary Treatise
of Melchior Inchofer, of the Society of Jesus.209
Galileo exaggerated, yet he realized that the Earth’s motion was far
more disturbing to Inchofer than he could comprehend.
Inchofer’s Summary Treatise consolidates a circumstantial
argument about the role of Pythagorean notions in Galileo’s trial.
Inchofer denied Earth’s motion while linking it to pagan beliefs
known as ‘Pythagorean’.
However, this is what his book does not do: it does not specify
whether this Jesuit knew that Church Fathers, Saints and theologians had condemned such pagan beliefs as heretical. Like Giordano Bruno, Inchofer linked the Earth’s motion to the theory that Earth
has a soul and that many worlds exist – but did he know those
beliefs were heretical? Apparently Bruno himself did not know. So
did Inchofer know?
After all, we have traced an intricate web of developments in
which numerous Catholic authorities denounced Pythagorean
211
burned alive
beliefs across the centuries. Were such old pronouncements remembered in the 1630s? Did any of the consultants or Inquisitors in Galileo’s trial fret about the ancient judgements of Philaster, Isidore
of Seville or Pope Zacharias? Did anyone connect the Copernicans
to the heretical Gnostics or to Origen Adamantius? Did anyone
worry about the pagan poetry of Orpheus, Ovid or Virgil? Did
anyone care about the Spirit that nourishes within?
If any of the consultants or Inquisitors had cared about such
things at the time of Galileo’s trial we might expect that they would
Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition Page 28