After Galileo’s death some Catholics continued to denounce
Pythagorean heresies. In November 1642 the Jesuit Pierre La Cazre
wrote to Pierre Gassendi warning him to reject Galileo’s theories.
Gassendi had discussed the Earth’s motion hypothetically. La Cazre
complained that such a belief entailed that the stars are inhabited,
which was dangerous to Christianity:
Now consider not what you might think, but what others
will conjecture, who on your authority or reasons will be
persuaded that the Earthly globe moves among the Planets.
First they will conclude that without doubt Earth is one
of the Planets, which since it has inhabitants, then it will
be easy to also believe that in the other Planets too, and
even in the fixed Stars, inhabitants are not lacking, and
how much preferable, if the other Stars exceed the Earth
in magnitude and perfection. Here Genesis would become
suspect, for saying that Earth was made before the other
Stars, established only on the fourth day [of Creation], to
illuminate the Earth, to measure times and years. Thus the
entire Economy of the Incarnate Word and the truth of
the Gospel would become suspect, indeed and the whole
Christian faith, which presupposes and teaches that all Stars
are not dwellings [ habitationem] for men, or other creatures,
but only to illuminate the Earth with their light, fertilizing,
to be produced by the creator God. You see therefore how
dangerous it is to divulge this in public, and especially by
men whose authority seems to generate faith; and how not
undeservedly since the time of Copernicus the Church has
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Marble statue of Pope Urban viii, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his assistants,
at the Musei Capitolini, Rome, c. 1635–40.
always opposed itself to this error, even very recently, not
only some Cardinals (as you say) but the supreme head of
the Church, condemned Galileo in a Pontifical decree, and
that teaching it be solemnly prohibited in future words
or writing.54
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Worlds on the Moon and the Stars
This Jesuit thus explained that the Pope and cardinals had condemned the theory of the Earth’s motion because it led to dangerous antiChristian ‘absurdities’, such as that the stars are inhabited.
In a manuscript published in 1658, posthumously, Gassendi discussed whether many worlds exist. He credited such views to many authors, from the Pythagoreans to ‘Jord. Brun.’, and he quoted crit iques by Hermias and Augustine. 55 Gassendi also discussed the
notion of the soul of the world. He said that Pythagoras and the
Stoics believed that if anything is warm it absolutely has a soul, a
mind that penetrates all.56 And Gassendi quoted Virgil:
Spirit nourishes within, totally infused in the limbs
a Mind moves the mass, and intermixes itself with the
great body.57
Gassendi argued that it was permissible to think of God as the ‘soul
of the world’ only inasmuch as God is the powerful presence that
penetrates all things, governs and thus animates them, but not as
a material component. Gassendi tolerated the expression ‘soul of
the world’ also to describe the heat that propagates throughout the
universe. But Gassendi noted that these two meanings were just
‘an improper sense, as an analogy; but to be willing to properly say,
or admit that in the whole World there is a soul, without abusing
the word soul, namely which is vegetative, or sensitive, or reasoning, it does not seem easy, wherein lawful’. 58 Two centuries later, Christian readers debated whether Gassendi believed in the soul of
the world, ‘the monstrous doctrine’ that embodied ‘the fatalist and
immoral pantheism that weighed upon antiquity from Pythagoras
to Plotinus’, or whether this was a ‘deplorable calumny’ against
Gassendi, that ‘in the 17th century, a proper savant, a Christian,
a priest, Gassendi . . . wil remain plunged into one of the most
shameful errors of paganism. ’59
Meanwhile in 1633 the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Scheiner
finished a manuscript of a book criticizing Galileo’s errors, but it lingered unpublished for many years until 1651.60 Similarly, Inchofer’s Vindication . . . against the NeoPythagoreans was never published.
In January 1636 the internal reviewers within the Society of Jesus
at the Collegio Romano did not approve it for publication.61 Most importantly, they claimed that the subject seemed to require a
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mathematical approach, but that Inchofer had instead provided
a theological and historical argument, which might not meet the
potential readers’ expectations. 62 The Jesuit reviewers also complained that the proposed book title suggested that Inchofer officially spoke for the institutions that he defended, whereas it was just his
own work. Finally, the Jesuit reviewers complained that Inchofer had
not written with the ‘dignity’, ‘seriousness’ and ‘solidity’ used by other
writers in their Society. Inchofer promptly responded. He offered
to shorten the title to Vindication of the Holy Authorities.63 Inchofer acknowledged that his arguments were theological and historical,
not mathematical. He said that his new book would vindicate the
claims made in his Summary Treatise, which for the most part was
not mathematical either. He explained that he followed ‘the Holy
Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Justin and others’, as well as historical
writers such as Cardinal Baronio, and writers against heretics, such
as Bellarmine. Inchofer denied that there was any lack of solidity in
his historical and theological accounts. He expected that ‘matters of
faith’ should trump alleged mathematical demonstrations.64
Despite his command of theology and Church history, Inchofer
was out of his depth in the area of mathematical astronomy. In addition, his tone was too bitter and combative. For whatever reason, Inchofer did not edit and resubmit his long manuscript. Regarding
the difference between Inchofer and some of his fel ow Jesuits,
historian Michael Gorman remarks that ‘Inchofer’s style of argumentation from scripture and the Church Fathers’ deviated from astronomy and logical demonstrations and thus threatened ‘to place
the mathematicians of the Jesuit order outside a global republic of
astronomical practitioners that they had helped to create’.65
Still, Inchofer became increasingly close with Cardinal
Francesco Barberini, who consulted him on several occasions. 66
Between 1637 and 1647 Inchofer served as ‘one of the Cardinal’s
intimate ad visors on two matters: Spanish intrigues in Sicily and
the Jansenist movement in Belgium’.67
Meanwhile Inchofer became increasingly disgruntled with some
fellow Jesuits. In 1645 an anonymous volume criticizing the Jesuits
was published in Venice. For one, it accused them of indulging in
excessive freedom in matters of philosophy. In 1648 the Jesuits put
Inchofer on trial for having coauthored or contributed to that
offensive book.68 He confessed to some of the charges and was 258
Worlds on the Moon and the Stars
incarcerated. He died a few months later. Blackwell writes: ‘This
&nb
sp; story could hardly be more ironic. Galileo’s foremost critic at his
trial, who was the sharpest and most damaging in his denunciation
of the Dialogue, was fated himself fifteen years later to undergo a
trial, condemnation, and sentence which had eerie similarities to
what happened to Galileo. ’69
Catholic orthodoxy extended also to the Spanish portions of
the New World. Perhaps nothing is quite as compelling in showing that a particular belief was truly heretical as to find the record that someone was executed for such a belief. For decades writers
have mistakenly downplayed the importance of Bruno’s belief in
many worlds in leading to his execution. Thus it is essential not
only to know that this belief was in fact heretical, but that apparently another clergyman in Rome had been previously executed for believing in ‘many suns’, as we saw. But furthermore, subsequently,
the theory of the plurality of worlds was involved in the execution of
yet another heretic. It happened in 1659, in a faraway land: Mexico.
Just as the Catholics had denounced the transmigration of souls in
distant India, they also denounced it in Mexico City.
The case in question involved Sebastian Alvarez (or Albarez),
born in Bayona de Galicia, Spain, but residing in Mexico. The record
of 1659 stated that he was then ‘more than sixtythree years old’, so he
had been born around 1595. He had been incarcerated allegedly ‘for
being a sectarian of Luther, the Sacramentarians, and other heretics,
and for inventing many and new heresies’. In his third depos ition,
Alvarez said that thirty years earlier (roughly around 1629) he had
written some texts that had many errors; but that once he finally read
the Bible he realized that he himself was actually Jesus Christ. The
Inquisitors inferred that sometimes he was possessed by the Devil.
On the night before his autodefé, the Inquisition’s public ritual of
penance, Alvarez insisted that he truly was Christ and would resurrect in three and a half days to judge both the living and the dead.
And then immediately, as the Inquisition’s report notes:
He said that there exist thousands of worlds, and that in each
of them Jesus Christ would die twice; and that having once
died on the cross, it was now his turn to die a death by fire,
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and he added: ‘Look, fathers, if after three days you do not
see me resurrect, then don’t believe me’, and that he rejoiced
to die in order to be resurrected. He insisted on the heresy
of the transmigration of souls from some bodies to others,
and for the many heretical blasphemies that he said, the
clergymen asked that he wear a gag even while in prison.70
Alvarez claimed that God had given him the ability to interpret
scriptures, and that he actual y had within him the soul of Solomon.
Like Bruno, Alvarez was turned over to the government so that
he would be burned alive without using a garrotte to first kill him.
This was the most severe kind of execution, for the gravest heresies.
However, when Alvarez was being taken to the funeral pyre, he was
moved by seeing a priest who cried for him. The priest then said that
Alvarez was ‘walking toward Hell’. Alvarez asked him: ‘Father, why
are you crying?’ The priest replied that it was for the loss of his soul.
Alvarez then said: ‘Well, what do you want me to do, Father?’ The
priest begged him to recant his errors. So finally Alvarez agreed, and
retracted and confessed everything that they asked him. Afterward,
the executioner killed Alvarez with a noose, and then threw him
into the bonfire.71
Records show that from 1540 until 1700 the Spanish Inquisition
executed a total of seventeen individuals in Mexico, out of the 950
who were put on trial for heresies. In the same time period, the
Secretariat of Aragon (which included Mexico), plus the Secretariat
of Castille, both constituting all of Spain and its distant lands, executed a total of 826 persons, out of more than 44,000 who were put on trial.72 The case of Alvarez holds remarkable similarities to that of Bruno. Both men allegedly voiced blasphemies about Jesus;
both were accused of being possessed by the Devil or by demons,
and of being Lutherans. They both spoke about many worlds and
transmigration, both reportedly accepted their sentence fearlessly,
and both were gagged and sentenced to execution by fire. Whether
in Rome or in distant lands, the Catholic Inquisition suppressed
impenitent heretics.
In the 1680s Daniel Morhof was a German professor of history and the chief librarian at the University of Kiel. He wrote an authoritative historical encyclopaedia in which he included a chapter on Bruno and other ‘recent innovators’. Morhof ’s first paragraph 260
Worlds on the Moon and the Stars
Statue of
Giordano Bruno,
in Mexico City,
Mexico. Sculpted
by José Ortiz and
Josafat Chavez
and unveiled
1 February 1991.
plainly stated why the Romans killed Bruno, and he linked Bruno
with Galileo:
Giordano Bruno, asserted a multitude of innumerable
Worlds and Suns, and he paid for this opinion by being
burned alive. A plurality of Worlds, and Moons, other
Planets, homogeneous to the Earth, was defended before
him by Nic. of Cusa and Nic. Copernicus, and after him by
Galileo Galilei (forced to voice a Recantation), Johannes
Kepler, Athan. Kircher, Tomm. Campanella and other
mathematicians.73
Also, while discussing the followers of Epicurus, Morhof noted
again and again that Bruno was burned for his belief in other worlds,
‘although there are not lacking some who think that he was executed
for some other reason’.74 After summarizing Bruno’s opinion that many worlds exist, Morhof immediately remarked:
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Everywhere Galileo subtly argued and presented this opinion, as other Mathematicians too who, although they do not voice all the words of the speaker, tacitly conspire with
him. But this miserable man [Bruno] paid for his audacious
opinion by burning alive; which greatly injured that belief;
for it made his writings become suspected of the crime of
Atheism.75
Morhof noted that Campanella had written an Apology to defend
Galileo, in which he tried to use scriptures to prove the existence of
men on the Moon.76
In a book of 1705 a German librarian and theologian, Johann
Albert Fabricius, also discussed the claim that the Moon and the
stars are inhabited. He said that Orpheus was the first to assert this
belief, followed by the Pythagoreans and others. Fabricius noted that
Philaster, Augustine and Praedestinatus declared that this belief was
a heresy, and he added that, ‘in the [Corpus of] Canon Law, Cause
24, question 3, column 39, it is ascribed as a heresy, the Ophic heresy
which some write as Orphic’. Fabricius added that Praedestinatus
‘called this the heresy of the Ametritarum, namely that which to
an infinite power attributes infinite effects, introducing infinite
worlds. The same was taught by the Manichaeans, about
which see
Archelaeus with Epiphanius, vol. i, p. 645. ’77
Immediately Fabricius listed the ‘recent writers who in some
sense said that the stars are inhabited’, namely, ‘Nicolas of Cusa, the
miserable Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Tommaso Campanella,
William Gilbert, René Descartes, and those who follow him, and
Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and David Fabricius, those who
with their own eyes have dared to see the inhabitants of the Moon’.
About Bruno, he added a footnote: ‘Burned in Rome on 9 February
Year 1600. His teachings were first expounded in his eight books
on the innumerable, the immense and shapeless or the universe and
the worlds. ’78
Finally, in 1829 and 1830 an English antiquarian, Algernon
Herbert, published historical conjectures that included alleged links
between the heresies of the Pythagoreans and the Copernicans.
Herbert, who was Dean of Merton College at Oxford University,
argued that Pythagoras was ‘a charlatan’ who travelled widely to
learn mystic secrets, including the idea that Earth moves around
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a central fire; he was a ‘corrupted mystic’ who pretended to be the
god Apollo.79
Herbert wrote that ‘Melchior Inchofer was privy to all the
hidden motives which had animated Galileo and his friends, in
republishing (at the time they did) the doctrines of Pythagoras; and
from thence conceived such a hatred of those doctrines as he evinced
in his Treatise de terrae solisque motu.’80 Furthermore, Herbert denounced Campanella for being ‘addicted to atheism and magic’,
he called him ‘the AntiChrist’, inspired by an ‘infernal muse’. 81
Herbert criticized Campanella’s dream of a Philosophical Republic:
it superabundantly shows how justly the schemes and doctrines of the Solipses are reprobated by Father Inchofer; and how closely those impious and immoral notions were at
the time interwoven with the Galilean astronomy. It avows
that they intended to worship the Sun, inculcate the law of
nature, and renew the dæmonolatrous atheism of the city
and tower of Babel. And moreover that a certain man was
to reign over all nations, calling himself, and pretending
to be, the Sun, as Pythagoras pretended to be Apollo; not,
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