Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

have actually written something about it. If so, such statements

  would constitute a ‘smoking gun’, evidence still simmering after

  having fired at Galileo. Does such evidence exist? Remarkably, it

  does – and I found it five years after beginning my research, right

  when I was nearly finished.

  While Inchofer was composing his Summary, he began writing a

  longer manuscript explaining why ‘the Holy Tribunal’ condemned the

  Copernicans. I first learned about this unique, unpublished manuscript in a book by Domenico Berti, published in 1876. I later noticed it mentioned in a footnote in Blackwell’s translation of Inchofer’s

  Summary. Blackwell later told me that he had never read it.

  Its title drew my attention: Vindication of the Holy Apostolic See,

  the Sacred Tribunal and Authorities against the Neo­Pythagoreans’

  Moving Earth, and Stationary Sun. 210 This nearly 400­year­old manu script is in an archive at the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome,

  which houses the papers of many cardinals and clergymen. As far as

  I know, there exists no scholarly analysis or translation of this manuscript in any language, and I don’t know why. The only account of its contents that I have found is the old, very brief summary by Berti,

  no more than a single paragraph. This is my translation of what Berti

  wrote; his text is in Italian with some Latin phrases (which I here

  render in italics). According to Berti, Inchofer argued:

  Mathematicians tread slippery terrain when they try to walk

  without theology by adopting the opinion of Pythagoras

  which was more than once rejected as impious and for so

  many ages buried in the grave, and which will never be reconciled with religion, with religion it can never cohere. There does not exist any other but only one world, the Earth, on which

  was created the first man, from whom all men are descended;

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  and by one man sin was introduced into the world. Since God

  ordered the apostles to teach all peoples, it is necessary that

  all peoples are contained on the Earth: conclusion, all the

  human race is in this world. But if there were more worlds we

  would not know how to determine which are the men who

  in those other worlds should be immune from original sin

  and to which of them extends the well­being of redemption.

  Therefore the things said by Kepler and Galileo about the

  similarity of the Earth to the other stars are nothing but

  dreams that will not take long to dissipate if they have not

  dissipated already. This refutes the opinion of Gilbert that

  the Earth is a magnet, and it studies with various arguments

  to prove that the Copernican doctrine is heretical, impious,

  philosophically and mathematically erroneous. In ending,

  the book provides the history of the prohibition of the same,

  the Decree of 5 March 1616, then that of 22 November 1619,

  in which the corrections are introduced in the book On

  the Revolutions of Copernicus, as requested by the Supreme

  Pontiff.211

  The Gospel of Matthew includes a statement whereby Jesus Christ,

  having resurrected, orders his apostles to take his message of salvation to everyone: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the

  Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you’

  (Matthew 28:19–20). Thus Inchofer concluded that all peoples really

  must live on Earth alone, because if anyone lived in other worlds,

  like the Moon or Jupiter with its moons, then such persons could

  not receive the apostles’ crucial message.

  Therefore, the Moon and planets were not worlds. Earth was

  the only world. This shows again that Inchofer knew that the theory

  of Earth’s motion entailed more offensive, ancient notions: multiple worlds exist, they are inhabited, the Creation story in Genesis is challenged, and therefore the Christian doctrine of salvation

  becomes confused. These beliefs were associated with Bruno.

  Strangely, historians have not analysed Inchofer’s manuscript.

  In the recent literature the main instance in which it has been

  just briefly mentioned was in connection with two much shorter

  manu scripts. Famously, in 1982 Pietro Redondi discovered an

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  undated three­page manuscript in the Protocolli of the Index. That

  brief manu script, known as ‘G3’ (a cryptic tag on its first page),

  denounces the doctrine of atomism in Galileo’s book of 1623, The

  Assayer. The anonymous author of the three­page manuscript argued

  that Galileo’s atomism was incompatible with the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. On the basis of G3, Redondi famously developed a reinterpretation of Galileo’s trial, advocating a provocative but very speculative conjecture that Galileo was accused of Copernicanism only because the Pope protected him against the

  greater accusation voiced in G3. Most historians rejected Redondi’s

  conjecture for lack of evidence, in addition to the Pope’s hostility

  towards Galileo. In 1999 Mariano Artigas discovered another document in the Archives of the Index, which were finally opened to scholars in 1998. This new document was just one and a half pages,

  immediately preceding G3 in the same archival volume. 212 This document, known as EE 291 (archival volume ‘EE’, plus its folio

  number), is also about transubstantiation, but it does not specify its

  author or date of composition.213 EE 291 is a draft or an internal report in which someone recommends that the Inquisition conduct

  an investigation against Galileo.

  Artigas’s collaborator, Rafael Martínez (no relation to me), soon

  discovered that the author of EE 291 was Melchior Inchofer. The

  handwriting matches Inchofer’s manuscripts: two signed documents

  in the same archival volume EE plus two others at the Biblioteca

  Casanatense.214 Inchofer’s neglected long manuscript Vindication

  . . . against the Neo­Pythagoreans has thus been used merely to confirm his authorship of EE 291. Some historians conjectured (with no certainty) that the anonymous G3 was drafted around 1624 and

  that Inchofer composed EE 291 sometime between 1631 and 1632.215

  In a survey of censures against Galileo, including EE 291 and

  G3, Francesco Beretta too looked at Inchofer’s long manuscript.

  Beretta mentioned this in an article, but gave even less indication

  of the manuscript’s contents than Berti had done in 1876. Beretta

  al udes to its contents in five sketchy sentences, noting: ‘Inchofer

  engages a series of questions pertaining mainly to biblical and

  historical controversies. ’216

  There has been much discussion about documents G3 and EE

  291, documents that constitute less than five pages of text. Ironically,

  the very long manuscript by Inchofer remains almost entirely

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  neglected: a fully finished and polished treatise explaining why the

  Inquisition acted against the Copernicans!

  To analyse Inchofer’s arguments in depth, I travelled to Rome

  in 2014 and 2015 to study his unique manuscript at the Biblioteca

  Casanatense. The handwritten but bound text is 210 pages long.

  It consists of two parts or ‘books’ bound as one. The title page

  shows that its original title was
Vindication of the Sacred Tribunal

  and Authorities against the Neo­Pythagoreans’ Moving Earth and

  Stationary Sun. In the margin Inchofer subsequently added the

  phrase, the Holy Apostolic See, above the title, as if his work vindicates the views of the Papacy itself. Recal that his Summary Treatise had the image of the three Barberini bees.

  The title page lacks a date, but Inchofer finished the manuscript in 1635, because in the Preface he referred to his Summary as having been written ‘two years ago’, and because by January

  1636 the internal reviewers of the Jesuits finished reviewing it. The

  Summary has 94 pages of printed text, constituting roughly 33,000

  words. The Vindication is much longer, it consists of roughly 49,000

  words. The Summary does summarize some material contained in

  the Vindication, but each work includes much material that is not

  mentioned in the other.

  The sophistication of Inchofer’s manuscript warrants a full scholarly analysis of its contents. However, I now confine myself only to discussing its primary contents, which remarkably are directly

  relevant to the historical developments and Pythagorean context

  that I have reconstructed at length. By the time I finally inspected

  Inchofer’s manuscript, my present book manuscript was virtually

  complete, so I am delighted that the Vindication connects directly

  to the issues at hand and unites them as a capstone. I have to discuss

  Inchofer’s manuscript succinctly, owing to space limitations, but this

  will still be at greater length than any works previously discussed.

  As in his Summary Treatise, Inchofer reiterated that it was necessary

  to ‘militate’ against the Pythagoreans because their vulgar arguments

  were ‘temerarious’ and embodied ‘manifest errors’. Inchofer complained about Pythagoras and his early followers, and their damned opinions that had been ‘buried in the grave for many ages’. But his

  main critiques were about the recent theorists whom he repeatedly

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  called ‘New Pythagoreans’. In almost every manuscript page, and

  sometimes even five times on a single page, Inchofer repeatedly

  wrote one damning phrase: New Pythagoreans.

  In his Summary Treatise Inchofer had not overtly named Galileo,

  Campanella or – God forbid – Bruno. After all, it was unseemly

  to discuss heretics, but I have pointed out how Inchofer clearly

  criticized their arguments. However, in his Vindication Inchofer

  did mention Galileo by name several times. At far greater length,

  Inchofer named other ‘New Pythagoreans’ who had not been formally declared to be heretics: Copernicus, Kepler, William Gilbert and Philippe van Lansberge, a Dutch minister who had authored

  a short treatise in favour of the Earth’s motion (1630), which was

  published in a 65­page Latin translation in Middelburg, the capital

  of the Dutch province of Zeeland.217 By the time Inchofer wrote, all of these so­called New Pythagoreans were dead, except Galileo.

  Dr Gilbert had died in 1603, apparently of the bubonic plague in

  London; Kepler died in 1630; and Lansberge had died most recently,

  in 1632. All of the recent New Pythagoreans named repeatedly by

  Inchofer were Protestants, except for Galileo. He did not discuss

  Bruno, Foscarini, Zúñiga or Campanella. It is impossible to imagine

  that he was unaware of them – he just chose not to discuss them.

  Inchofer cited numerous ancient and authoritative theologians

  against the New Pythagoreans. For example, in his Preface he noted

  that St Augustine had criticized Manichaeus (or Mani) because

  ‘his teaching concerning the heavens and stars, and the motions of

  Sun and Moon, was false. ’218 Augustine said that the arrogance of Manichaeus was sacrilegious, by affirming things of which he was

  ignorant, and by perverting ideas with egregious vanity and pride,

  as if he were divine. Inchofer also cited St Epiphanius, Origen’s

  critique against Celsus, St Basil against Origen, and others.

  The primary importance that Inchofer attributed to very old

  ecclesiastical authorities is evident in his first chapter. That chapter discusses how Pope Zacharias had opposed and ‘condemned’

  Virgilius in the year 748. For Inchofer, this was the very ‘First

  Argument’ against the New Pythagoreans. He avoided the interpretation that this ancient conflict had merely been a misunderstanding and disagreement about whether there are other people living on

  the opposite sides of the spherical Earth, the antipodes, specifically

  because Zacharias had also denounced the plural notion that there

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  are ‘suns and moons’.219 This was directly relevant against the views of Bruno, Galileo, Kepler and others. It is very noteworthy that in

  his Dialogue Galileo had briefly echoed one of Bruno’s beliefs in a

  comment voiced by Salviati, the character that spoke for Galileo

  himself, saying, ‘and as the fixed stars, which are so many Suns, in

  accord with our Sun are perpetually at rest’ (emphasis added).220

  Inchofer said, ‘The postulate of many worlds is ridiculous. ’221

  He said that the professor of theology at Leuven, Libert Froidmont,

  had piously and learnedly condemned the heresies of the ‘recent

  Pythagoreans’.222 Inchofer cited the accounts by Baronius and Aventinus about the dispute between Zacharias and Virgilius.

  Regarding the account by Aventinus, who had spoken favourably of the theory of Virgilius, Inchofer noted that Froidmont had rightly remarked that the book by Aventinus had been censured by

  the Congregation of the Index. 223 Inchofer cited Lactantius and Augustine for having criticized the theory of the antipodes. In City

  of God, Augustine denied the antipodes as a ‘fable’ that had not been

  proved, because, he said, even if the Earth indeed were spherical,

  one would have to prove that it has lands throughout, not just bare

  waters, plus, one would have to prove that there were people there,

  and descended from Adam. 224 Augustine preferred biblical and historical evidence over scientific conjectures. Similarly, Inchofer

  argued that the Earth’s motion was imaginary and false.225

  In addition to citing Pope Zacharias as the principal authority against the notion that there exists more than one world, Sun and Moon, I was surprised to see that Inchofer also cited another

  pope (although not of Rome): Dionysius of Alexandria. 226 (I mentioned him earlier precisely because I found him cited in Inchofer’s manuscript.) Around 260 ce Dionysius had criticized Epicurus and

  Democritus, partly for arguing that ‘infinite worlds’ are randomly

  created by the random interactions of atoms. 227 Inchofer’s arguments lead me to think that his title Vindication of the Holy Apostolic See

  referred not to Pope Urban viii but to the popes of antiquity in particular and to the Apostolic See or Chair in general. After all, the Pope was supposedly the designated representative of God on Earth,

  capable of making infallible pronouncements. The Inquisitors’ rulings

  against Copernicus, Galileo and others had vindicated the Papacy.

  Next, Inchofer discussed the ‘various opinions about many

  Worlds’. He discussed the beliefs of ancient philosophers, Talmudic

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  writers and ‘recent’ theorists. Inchofer affirmed that there exists only

  one world, as shown by faith in
the scriptures and in the Holy

  Fathers. Inchofer cited the Pseudo­Plutarch’s Placita to name several

  ancient philosophers who in one way or another posited more than

  one world: Anaximander, Anaximenes, Aristarchus, Xenophanes,

  Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Metrodorus. 228 He noted that

  the Pythagoreans believed in many or infinite worlds. He also cited

  ‘Cleombrotus, who in a triangular figure constituted three and eighty

  worlds’.229 Inchofer complained that ‘the recent Pythagoreans’ had readily adopted similar opinions.

  Against them, Inchofer cited various authorities, including

  Augustine, Theodoret and Tertullian. In his Cure of Greek Maladies

  ( c. 430) Bishop Theodoret had ridiculed the opinion of many

  worlds, which he attributed to Anaximander, Democritus and

  others, adding that ‘Heraclides among others of the Pythagorean

  sect said that each of the stars are individual worlds, which contain

  land and air.’230

  Inchofer mentioned and dismissed Hebraic claims that there

  were ‘eighteen thousand worlds’.231 For example, according to tradition, in the first century ce, in ancient Israel, Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai allegedly composed the Zohar, the chief work of Kabbalah,

  and in that work we find the claim: ‘When the words come forth

  from the mouth to the lips to murmur in all the eighteen thousand

  worlds: until all are connected together in the twelve paths and

  roads. ’232 Inchofer dismissed such notions as ‘Talmudic fables’.233

  Inchofer cited Tertullian for having once said that change

  should not be construed merely as a mutation of garments, ‘as

  when Anaximander made many worlds’.234 Inchofer also cited an ancient letter in which St Jerome criticized Origen for believing in

  many worlds. Jerome there explained a difference between Origen’s

  conception and that of other philosophers:

  In his second book he asserts that worlds are innumerable,

  not according to Epicurus where at one time many similar

  [worlds] exist; instead, after the end of the world, another

  begins; and before this world of ours, there was another

  world; and after this one another will be in the future, and

  after it another; again another after another.235

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