Moving along, Inchofer referred to the things that ‘Galileo’s
observations’ with a telescope had allegedly revealed on the Moon:
woods, fields, mountains, valleys, rivers and seas. Since Galileo himself had not affirmed so much, Inchofer turned to criticize Kepler’s Discussion with the Starry Messenger for having posited men who
live on the Moon and hide in its shadows. 236 Regarding Galileo and Kepler, Inchofer disdained ‘their deviant imagination of many
worlds’, insisting that theologians rightly teach that there is only
one world. 237 He said that the deviant fictions were necessarily
‘erroneous and temerarious’.238
To consolidate his argument, he said that the plurality of worlds
had been declared absurd by St Philaster in his book on heresies, and
in conflict with scriptures. And there it is! The explicit evidence that
Inchofer knew ‘that worlds are innumerable’ had been categorized
as heretical. In 1616, an important date, Bel armine had similarly
noted that he knew well about ancient pagan heresies thanks to
the works of Philaster and others. And now Inchofer made an even
more explicit statement.
Inchofer added that St Isidore of Seville had also condemned
the ‘postulate of infinite worlds’ as a heresy. He also cited Augustine,
Thomas Aquinas and the apostles John and Paul. Echoing Augustine,
Inchofer admitted that in a Christian sense it was admissible to say
that there exist two worlds. Augustine had borrowed the expression
from Plato: that there is a sensible world and an intelligible world.
Like other writers, Inchofer justified this notion on the basis of John
18:36, where Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, as if there
exists another. Still, for Inchofer there existed only one physical,
sensible and present world: the Earth.
Inchofer argued: ‘Therefore, allow that it is a Catholic assertion
that the world is one, to deter those who resolutely contend multiple, from achieving heresy.’239 Inchofer noted that Origen held the opinion of many worlds, although it was not easy to believe.240
Inchofer further attacked the notion of many worlds and systems,
and ridiculed those who ‘very stupidly’ affirmed it by misinterpreting scriptures. Right then he again dismissed ‘the imaginary wisdom of Galileo and Kepler’, elicited by the new telescopic phenomena,
but which was actually just ‘trash and dreams’.241 Inchofer argued that we can
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appreciate all errors acutely, as they do not understand
this nonsense at all, because they [Galileo and Kepler]
have trusted their imagination so much, that which others
condemn from the sense of reasoning, about the Earth’s
quiescence and the Sun’s motion, from sight and errant
imagination daring to affirm many worlds, animals and
lunar men.242
Inchofer then reiterated that such ‘New Pythagorean arguments’
had already been denounced as fallacious when Pope Zacharias
condemned the notion of the antipodes.
Moving along, Inchofer argued that the errors of the New
Pythagoreans resembled the heresies of the Manichaeans and the
Valentinians (Gnostic heretics). He mentioned questions about
souls, the Earth’s magnetism and the generative power of the Sun’s
heat. He touched upon whether ‘the universe has life and sense, the
metempsychosis in the opinions of the Pythagoreans and of the
Manichaeans, as thought commonly by the innovators, and also by
the institutes of Kepler and Galileo that humans and other animate
beings inhabit the orb of the Moon’.243 Thus Inchofer linked Galileo to the heretical theory of many worlds, and lunar beings, and even
the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis) – but again, without
mentioning Bruno or Campanella.
Next Inchofer discussed an ancient confrontation between
Pope Gelasius and the Manichaeans. Recall that the Manichaeans
believed that Earth is infused by a soul and that there are many
worlds. Many of the Manichaeans also refused to eat meat or
drink wine. Hence Melchior Inchofer recounted that around 494
ce Pope Gelasius had persecuted the Manichaeans by decreeing
that everyone had to partake of communion by ingesting both the
bread and the wine. Thus the many members of this sect who had
infiltrated the Christian Roman community would be exposed as
heretics. Similarly, Inchofer argued that now the Copernicans or
New Pythagoreans had to be exposed.
Furthermore, St Augustine had also criticized the Manichaeans
for worshipping the Sun and the Moon as divine.244 In one of his writings, Augustine replied to a Manichaean who claimed to
believe in Mani because ‘He taught us why there is day and why
there is night. He taught us about the course of the Sun and the
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Moon. Since we have not heard this in Paul or in the writings of the
other apostles, we believe that Mani is the Paraclete. ’245 Augustine replied that God wanted to make Christians, not astronomers, and
that knowledge about the Sun and the Moon did not pertain to
Christian doctrine. Similarly, Inchofer warned about the misleading
pronouncements of Pythagoras and the New Pythagoreans about
the Sun and the Moon.246
Inchofer insisted that the Earth’s motion was false, just
‘Pythagorean dreams, that are eternally false and imaginary, and
plainly opposed by the true contents of divine Scriptures’. 247 The
‘doctrine of Pythagoras’ seemed to be the product of a depraved
intellect. Inchofer praised Tycho Brahe for having rightly asserted
that there are five planets and that both the Sun and the Moon circle
the central Earth.248
Furthermore, Inchofer complained that some of the New
Pythagoreans had cast doubt on the traditional Catholic notion
of how long the Earth had existed. He therefore pointed out that
Philaster had listed, as heresy number 84, to be ‘uncertain about
the number of years since the origin of the world, and to be ignorant of the course of human time, from Adam to the flood, there being ten generations and two thousand two hundred and fortytwo
years’.249 Still, Inchofer also cited various time frames specified by other ancient Christian authorities.
Inchofer associated the New Pythagoreans to other heretics
or heresiarchs, such as Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. 250 Like Bruno, Jan Hus had been burned alive, whereas Wycliffe was already dead
when he was condemned, so the Catholics exhumed his body and
burned it. Inchofer also accused heretics who had been condemned
of pantheism, and he cited the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553
for condemning Origen for having believed that the heavens are
animated.251
Next Inchofer turned his wrath to Philippe Lansberge, the
Dutch Calvinist minister who had published a booklet in 1630
endorsing Copernicus. Although Lansberge had recently died,
Inchofer criticized him as if he were still a major threat – after all,
his book had become very popular. Inchofer associated Lansberge’s
beliefs with those of Origen, and he wrote that ‘the mystical theology of Lansberge is plainly ridiculous’ and vain. He praised Libert Froidmont for having derided Lansberge�
��s ‘barbaric speculations’
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and ‘inane New Pythagorean arguments’.252 Inchofer then defended the traditional, literal interpretation of the miracle of Joshua at
Gibeon and the valley of Aijalon. He also cited Job 26:7, that God
‘suspends the Earth over nothing’.253
Inchofer tenaciously belittled Lansberge, Kepler and Gilbert,
and he traced the pagan lineage of their Pythagorean heresy:
Orpheus, then Aglaophamus, who Pythagoras follows, [and
then] Plato’s teacher Philolaus [following] Pythagoras,
and we omit others, but Pythagoras rather badly departing from the example and doctrine of his teachers, with Philolaus, [was] the first of anyone who asserted the heresy
of the Earth’s motion, certainly promoting impiety (just as
Cleanthes of Samos later), unless he were wary.254
The expression ‘and we omit others’ leads me to think about who else
taught the ‘heresy’ of the Earth’s motion. By now I instantly think of
someone in particular: Bruno. Inchofer also discussed ‘the sermon of
Hermes to Asclepius’. In that ancient work, Hermes Trismegistus
claimed that ‘the Spirit agitates or governs all species in the world,
as distributed from God to each of them according to their natures
. . . Therefore the world nourishes bodies, spirits, and souls.’ Inchofer
did not quote these words, yet he rejected Hermes’s notion of the
soul of the world, and complained that ‘other New Pythagoreans
wonder and adore this, as with [David] Origanus, in their contempt,
perhaps not laughing at their own heresy’.255
In case his passing allusions to the soul of the world were not
enough, Inchofer further dedicated an entire chapter to attacking
this notion. He argued that the notion that the Earth has a noble
soul was defeated by scriptures, St Augustine and St Anselm. He
said that Origen’s notion of an animated heavens had been condemned. Again, Inchofer knew wel which ‘philosophical’ notions were theologically illegal for a Catholic person.
Inchofer ridiculed Anaxagoras for having been cited by Gilbert
as an ancient authority who claimed that magnets have portions
of the soul of the world. Anaxagoras was also problematic because
he, like Orpheus, had reportedly taught that the Moon is similar to the Earth. In his biography of Anaxagoras, Diogenes had reported that: ‘Anaxagoras . . . was the first who attributed soul
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to matter . . . He said that the Sun was a mass of burning iron,
and greater than Peloponnesus; but some attribute this doctrine
to Tantalus; and that the Moon has dwellings, and also hills and
canyons. ’256 Hence Gilbert affiliated his own conjectures to those of Anaxagoras; but Inchofer complained that Gilbert’s philosophy
was ridiculous. At length Inchofer ranted that the alien doctrine of
the ‘New Pythagoreans’ was ‘absurd’, ‘aCatholic’ and ‘contrary to the
faith’. Inchofer listed and celebrated the foremost critics of the New
Pythagoreans: ‘the Great Mersenne, Libert Froidmont, Christopher
Scheiner, Joannes Costeus and others’. Inchofer complained that
the ancients believed in a universal soul, and then he quoted disapprovingly the relevant passages from Gilbert’s On the Magnet, which was published in 1600, the year the Roman Catholics killed Bruno.
It should be recalled that Gilbert had not mentioned Bruno in
that book, but he echoed several of Bruno’s beliefs, such as that the
Earth moves because it is a living animal with a soul, and that it
gives parts of its soul to humans, to vivify them, and that the Sun,
Moon, planets and stars all have souls – and even that God is a soul.
Gilbert was active in London at the same time that Bruno lived
there, and therefore historians argue that Bruno helped to inspire
Gilbert’s cosmology. Gilbert died in 1603, but he left a manuscript,
On the World, in which he mentioned Bruno three times. He discussed two kinds of motion that ‘the Nolan’ had attributed to the Earth ‘when he was younger’. 257 In this work too Gilbert wrote about the souls that animate the Earth and the heavenly bodies.258
None of this was orthodox Catholic doctrine.
In his Dialogue, however, Galileo had discussed Gilbert at
length.259 Galileo wrote about whether the Earth is really magnetic. He then praised Gilbert for ‘the progress in his manner of philosophizing, with a certain similarity to my own’, and he urged
that Simplicio (or the reader) should actually read Gilbert’s book. 260
Galileo highlighted ‘Gilbert’s progress upon philosophizing’ in the
margin of the page as well as in the index of his book.
Instead, in his Vindication, Inchofer quoted Gilbert’s awful claim:
‘we think that the whole world is animated, all the globes, all stars,
and also Earth, each have their own distinct souls to govern from
the start, to maintain their motions. ’261 He also quoted Gilbert’s claim that the Earth is an animal. Inchofer replied: ‘We laugh at
him more than at the Stoics, as in a contradictory way he affirms
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and denies that which is a soul, he identifies it with what has vigour
or form.’262 Inchofer remarked that here readers could well see ‘how evil is impiety’. 263 Similarly, this was how Schoppe and Mersenne had disparaged Bruno.
Again Inchofer cited more Christian authorities – St Hilary,
Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, St John of Damascus and John
Chrysostom – all to argue that misinterpretations of scriptures had
given rise to heresies and irrationality. For example, in his book On
the Orthodox Faith, John of Damascus had discussed philosophers’
various opinions about the heavens, to show their confusion and
uncertainty, and he there remarked:
It must not be supposed that the heavens or the luminaries
are endowed with life. For they are inanimate and insensible.
Thus when the divine Scripture says, Let the heavens rejoice
and the Earth be glad, it is the angels in heaven and the men
on Earth that are invited to rejoice. For the Scripture is
familiar with the figure of personification, and is wont to
speak of inanimate things as though they were animate: for
example . . . again, the heavens declare the glory of God, does
not mean that they send forth a voice that can be heard by
bodily ears, but that from their own greatness they bring
before our minds the power of the Creator.264
Accordingly, Inchofer quoted multiple passages from scripture,
which, to him, were also not meant to be taken literally, for example,
‘Listen, you heavens, and I will speak’ (Deuteronomy 32:1) and ‘while
the morning stars sang together’ (Job 38:7). Inchofer stressed that
there are many other such phrases: ‘six hundred others of this kind,
of which the explanation is so easy and obvious, and if the New
Pythagoreans strongly oppose this, they should be ashamed of their
ineptitude, but being guided by Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus and
Pythagoras dims the constitution’.265 Inchofer argued that if the Sun and the Moon have a soul and a mind, and if the Earth truly moves,
then in the Joshua miracle the Earth would need to have hearing
organs in order to obey. Inchofe
r pleaded, ‘Turn off the dementia.’
He quoted Origen for falsely asserting that the ‘heavens and
the Sun and the Moon and the stars and the waters that are above
the heavens, have a soul’. This falsehood, Inchofer said, had been
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echoed by Gilbert, but rightly condemned by Augustine, Anselm
and Ambrosius Boethius. Moreover, Inchofer quoted the reputedly
official words of the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople
condemning Origen for this very heresy, that ‘the heaven and Sun
and Moon and stars and the waters that are above the heavens,
are animated and have material powers.’266 Inchofer then pointed out the Copernican affiliation with Origen’s heresies, while quoting
from the Fifth Ecumenical Council:
‘ Anathema to Origen who is Adamantius, who promoted this
with his nefarious and entirely execrable doctrine, and anyone
(note the New Pythagoreans) who claims or defends that statement, or presumes to protect it in any way or at any time.’ It’s all over for the New Pythagoreans, or as settled according
to their own opinion, [they are] Heretics, for if through all
philosophy, like heaven and the stars so too they think that
the Earth is animated, not to say a monstrous animal, having
a soul throughout its entire body, clearly to some degree or
other they are refuted by positing an animated Heaven and
even more so by affirming this about the Earth.267
Furthermore, Inchofer complained about the theory that God
is the soul of the world, which governs the motions of heavenly
bodies. Inchofer said that St Basil, in his Hexameron, had rejected
the claim that the heavens and the stars are animated, in Basil’s
words, as ‘an ancient imposture, ruinous and rotting’. 268 Inchofer further supported this denunciation by citing John of Damascus,
Cyril, Ambrosius and Lactantius.269
Inchofer continued to repeatedly attack Gilbert. He said that
Gilbert’s absurd New Pythagorean philosophy seemed to revive the
ancient ‘Idolatry or Egyptian paganism’, in professing that the Sun is
divine. Such beliefs waged war against Catholic philosophy. Inchofer
said that Gilbert’s claim that magnets and the Earth have souls
was clearly and plainly derived from the awful Hermetic philosophy. And right then Inchofer complained that Galileo had greatly supported Gilbert’s philosophy.270
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