Shea and Artigas - Galileo in Rome

by William R. Shea

  THE LEADING JESUIT THEOLOGIAN

  Clavius may have been the leading mathematician at the Roman College, but the most prestigious professor was the theologian and future cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who came from a noble Tuscan family. His uncle had been elected pope with the name Marcel II in 1555 but had died shortly thereafter. In 1560, when he was 18, Bellarmine went to Rome to join the Jesuits. He became a member of the staff of the University of Louvain in 1569, and in 1576 he was appointed professor of theology at the Roman College. A generous and saintly person, he was also a man of discipline and order who disliked the doctrinal confusion that followed in the wake of the Reformation. It appeared to him that the task of theology was chiefly to systematize and clarify the faith, conceived as a body of coherent intellectual propositions, in such a way as to maximize its certainty and finality.

  Bellarmine articulated Catholic doctrines into systems so that they might be directed, in their most unequivocal and effective form, against doubt and heresy. Indeed, to make confrontation easier he even systematized the views of his opponents. His best-known works are the four volumes of Controversies, which had run through 30 editions by the end of the seventeenth century. They were so popular that when the second volume was published in 1588, all the copies at the Frankfurt Book Fair were sold immediately. They included Bellarmine’s lectures at the Roman College and consisted of a clarification of Catholic doctrine by contrasting it with Protestant theology. This is not to say that Bellarmine and his Protestant adversaries were totally at odds, as is shown by the fact that one of Bellarmine’s devotional works, The Art of Dying W ell, was translated into English by an Anglican priest and went into at least two editions.

  Galileo may have met Bellarmine in 1587 but they would have had little in common at the time. Bellarmine, who was 45, was a major representative of Catholic thought, Galileo a mere unemployed mathematician trying to attract attention to his first paper. Bellarmine became rector of the Roman College in 1592 but his administrative skills were soon needed elsewhere, and he was sent to Naples to head the Jesuit Province in 1595. The pope then decided that his services were even more urgently required in Rome, summoned him back, and appointed him cardinal. Bellarmine’s name was mentioned at the two conclaves he attended, but he did not wish to be considered a candidate for the papacy. In 1606, when Cardinal Camilo Borghese became Pope Paul V, Bellarmine agreed to handle the controversial issues that arose with Venice (1606), the Anglican Church (1607–1609), and the French Gallicans (1610–1612). Bellarmine had examined the dossier of the Italian thinker Giordano Bruno, a one-time Dominican friar who ended up being burnt at the stake in Rome in 1600. Bruno was condemned for his unorthodox views in theology, but he had also embraced the Copernican system, which may have made the motion of the earth suspect. In 1587, Galileo was not committed to the new theory, but he was probably aware of its existence and may have already begun toying with its possibilities.

  THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

  To understand Bellarmine’s role we have to say something about the Council of Trent and the Catholic Counter Reformation, of which he was one of the most prominent spokesmen. The Church had held general or ecumenical councils at various times since antiquity. The Council of Trent, named after the city in northern Italy where it was held, was convened in 1545 in the hope of reuniting Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants were skeptical of Roman intentions and refused to come, with the result that the Council of Trent was mainly attended by Italian bishops. Of 270 bishops present at one time or another between 1545 and 1563, 187 were Italian, 31 Spanish, 26 French, and 2 German. The growing Italian influence can also be seen at the level of the Sacred College of Cardinals, which, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, numbered 35 of whom 21 (68 percent) were Italian. By 1598, when the number had risen to 57, 46 (more than 80 percent) were from Italy.

  Of the many doctrinal issues that were discussed at Trent, two were to become important for Galileo, namely the interpretation of Scripture and the doctrine of the Eucharist. At the Fourth Session of the council, on 8 April 1546, the following declaration concerning Holy Scripture was approved:

  Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, the council decrees that, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, no one, relying on his own judgment, shall distort the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, and presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation, has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, even though such interpretations should never at any time have been published. Those who act contrary to this shall be made known by the ordinaries [i.e., bishops] and punished in accordance with the penalties prescribed by the law.

  The Catholic Church wished to stress the importance of tradition and the magisterium against the Protestants who downplayed their relevance. The key words in the decree that we have just quoted are “in matters of faith and morals.” The council operated in this theological context, and no one at the time seems to have thought that science in general, and much less the specific hypothesis that the Earth moves, recently put forward by Copernicus, could be a religious issue.

  If scriptural exegesis was a sore point between Catholics and Protestants, the doctrine of the Eucharist was equally controversial. The crux of the matter was the interpretation of Christ’s words at the Last Supper: “This is my body; this is my blood.” Some Protestants favored a purely spiritual or symbolic interpretation while Catholics and other Protestants insisted on a real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine. This latter position was upheld by the Council of Trent and, to emphasize that the bread and the wine were changed into the body and blood of the Savior, they used the technical term “transubstantiation,” which became a bone of contention with the Protestants. The decree was also to cause problems for scientists, like Galileo, who favored atomism. Some theologians claimed that the atomic theory was incompatible with the teaching of the Council of Trent because it did away with the distinction between substance and accidental properties. These theologians believed that the distinction was required to render intelligible the doctrine whereby the substance of the consecrated host becomes Christ’s body while the appearances remain those of bread. We will see how this issue became serious when we consider Galileo’s fourth trip to Rome in 1624.

  The Papal Bull with which Pope Pius IV approved the decrees of the Council of Trent was signed on 26 January 1564, a few days before Galileo’s birth. These decrees provided the doctrinal background against which the relations between science and religion would henceforth be discussed in Catholic countries. The administrative background was shaped by the development of the pontifical government, or the Roman Curia, as it was usually called. Two new Congregations (what we would today call ministries) of the Curia are of special significance. One is the Holy Office, the other the Congregation of the Index.

  The Holy Office was the third, modernized version of two earlier Tribunals of the Inquisition. The first was the medieval Inquisition created in the twelfth century to combat heretical and social movements such as the Albigenses in the south of France and northern Italy. The second was the Spanish Inquisition, which operated independently but had been recognized by the pope and lasted until the nineteenth century. The third, the Holy Office, was established by Pope Paul III in 1542 as a bulwark against the spread of Protestantism and was later raised to the rank of the first of the Congregations and installed, in 1566, next to St. Peter’s in a building with which Galileo was later to become only too well acquainted.

  The Congregation of the Index, whose job was to censor books, was created after the Holy Office. An index of proscribed books existed since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1515, but it had been administered locally by bishops or universities. Paul IV thought it should be handled from Rome, and in 1559 he issued the first official Index of Prohibited Books, a list that included all the works
of Erasmus, the complete productions of sixty-one printers, and all the translations of the Bible into vernacular languages. It was so harsh that it was actually mitigated by the Council of Trent in 1562. Shortly thereafter, Pius V (1566–1572) changed the nature of the index, intending it no longer as a fixed list of condemned writings but as a continuous action of vigilance and censorship. In order to oversee this enterprise he set up the Congregation of the Index in 1572.

  THE NEW ROME OF THE COUNTER REFORMATION

  When Galileo arrived in Rome in 1587 he could not have failed to be impressed by the urban renewal that had unexpectedly been set in motion a couple of years earlier when a mild-mannered and soft-spoken Franciscan became Pope Sixtus V. At 64, and with a reputation for indifferent health, Sixtus V had been seen as a “transitional” pontiff who would not live long and would not upset anyone. Events were to show otherwise. During the five years of his pontificate, Sixtus was more active than any pope within living memory. He was convinced that a shabby Rome was a disgrace and that Christendom needed a symbol of victory over paganism and heresy. He was also indignant at the fact that Rome’s 140,000 inhabitants lived huddled close to the Tiber, which often flooded and caused severe hardship and disease. Sixtus asked the simple question, Why should they not live on higher ground? The Roman hills of the Quirinal, the Esquiline, and the Viminal had been settled in ancient times, and Sixtus V made this possible again, laying out new streets and constructing a major aqueduct to solve the city’s recurrent shortage of drinking water. He also rendered the streets of Rome safer than they had been for decades. He remodeled the Lateran and the Vatican palaces, and, two weeks before his death on 27 August 1590, he was able to admire the completed dome of St. Peter’s from his residence on the Quirinal, which is now the residence of the president of the Italian republic. Indeed, he turned Rome into an open-air museum.

  Sixtus carried his reforms to the heart of the pontifical administration. In 1588 he enlarged the Curia to 15 permanent Congregations, composed of several cardinals, and he confirmed the priority of the Holy Office. To remind everyone of the triumph of Christianity he had the ancient columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius crowned with the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. He also fitted with crosses four huge obelisks that had been brought to Rome under the Romans. He had one erected on the Piazza del Popolo, and the others in front of the Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and St. Peter’s. The most spectacular of these engineering feats consisted in moving the very heavy obelisk that had stood in the Circus of Caligula and Nero. Renaissance popes had considered moving the 25-meter-high column, but Michelangelo and Sangallo had dissuaded them. Sixtus V persuaded his architect, Domenico Fontana, that it was feasible. After six months of preparation, the obelisk was carried on a specially designed oak carriage to the center of St. Peter’s Square, and, on 10 September 1586, it was raised by 800 workers and 140 horses. The crowd had been asked to remain silent but suddenly a loud yell of, “Water! Water!” was heard. A worker had noticed that the dry ropes were getting too warm and might burst in flame, and he had the courage to disobey orders and sound the alarm. The foreman grasped the urgency of the situation, and the ropes were immediately drenched with water. The day was saved and the worker was handsomely rewarded by the pope.

  Galileo, like any visitor at the time, was struck by the dynamism of the papacy. Rome was important, and Galileo took this lesson to heart. He never forgot that the approval of the Church was crucial, and he was to return to the Eternal City on five more occasions with this in mind: in 1611, to have his telescopic discoveries approved; in 1615–1616, to try to vindicate Copernicanism; in 1624, to find out whether he could write about the motion of the Earth; in 1630, to secure permission to publish his Dialogue; and in 1633, to face the wrath of the Roman authorities. But, in 1587, all these trips were unforeseeable. What struck people that year was not unpredictable in itself, but it took everyone by surprise: on 19October 1587 the grand duke of Tuscany, Francesco I, died at the untimely age of 42.

  A CARDINAL BECOMES GRAND DUKE

  The grand duke was childless, and the succession passed to his younger brother, Ferdinando, who had not envisaged this outcome and had become a cardinal as many members of his family had done before him. The Medici had even had two popes. Some of the most dramatic events of the Reformation had occurred under their pontificates: Luther nailed his theses on the door of the cathedral of Wittenberg under Leo X (Giovanni Medici, 1513–1521), and Henry VIII severed ties with Rome under Clement VII (Giulio Medici, 1523–1534). These two popes also intervened in local Tuscan politics. After Rome was sacked by the mercenaries of Emperor Charles V in 1527, Clement VII agreed to support his rule and crowned him emperor in Bologna. In exchange, Charles marched against the Republic of Florence to reinstate the Medici.

  Some years later Cosimo I de Medici, who came to power in 1537, persuaded the pope to crown him grand duke of Tuscany. When his successor, Francesco I, became grand duke in 1574, he had already followed the family tradition of marrying out of political interest and had wed Joan of Austria, the sister of the future emperor Maximilian. When she died, Francesco married his Venetian mistress, Bianca Capello. The only son from his first marriage died in 1582, and, because he had no child from Bianca, his brother Ferdinando was next in line of succession. But Ferdinando had been destined for a very different career. His powerful father had convinced the pope to make him a cardinal when he was only 13 years old. Ferdinando went to Rome to receive his red hat in 1565 and the next year, at the age of 16, he took part in the conclave that elected Pope Pius VI. From 1569 onward Ferdinando lived in Rome, close to the Pantheon, in the Palazzo Firenze, which is now the headquarters of the Dante Alighieri Society. It should be noted that a cardinal in those days was not required to be ordained, and Ferdinando never intended to take holy orders. His role was largely political and diplomatic, and he behaved like a prince, not a priest. With a personal staff of 130 persons, his aim was to impress visitors with the wealth and power of Florence. He even convinced his father, Cosimo I, to increase his annual stipend from 28,500 to 36,000 scudi, and, after his father’s death in 1574, this rose to 80,000 scudi. In order to have an idea of what this amount represented, we can mention that at the height of his career Galileo was paid 1,000 scudi, a huge salary for a professor. Ferdinando received eighty times as much, but it must be said that out of his allowance he was expected to pay the wages of his staff and maintain a huge building that was in constant need of repairs.

  When Galileo arrived in Rome in 1587, Ferdinando had probably already left for Tuscany to see his brother, Francesco I. Relations between the brothers had cooled after Francesco’s marriage to Bianca Capello. Their meeting took place in the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano some fifteen kilometers to the northeast of Florence in a lovely wooded area where the grand duke was fond of hunting. This was his way to escape from the pressure of work and pains in the stomach from which he increasingly suffered. Upon returning from hunting on October 8, he felt worse than usual and took some medication of his own devising. His condition quickly deteriorated and he passed away on October 19, to be followed by Bianca Capello on the very next day. The untimely and coincidental deaths of the granducal pair made tongues wag. To preclude any suspicion of wrongdoing, Ferdinando ordered an autopsy. The physician found that Francesco I had died of cirrhosis of the liver and Bianca of a tumor. In all likelihood Francesco, who dabbled in alchemy, hastened his own demise with one of his exotic potions. Nonetheless, the circumstances were hardly pleasant for Ferdinando, although he was never accused of having a hand in the deaths of his brother and his sister-in-law.

  The Florentines again made a show of respecting republican forms and duly “elected” Ferdinando grand duke. He was by then 38 years old. He resigned his cardinalate and asked the pope to allow him to marry. Spain and Austria declared themselves willing to provide the bride, but Ferdinando preferred Christina of Lorraine, who was reputed to be a devout Catholic. She was also the niece of Catherine
de Medici, the queen of France, who was fond of her and had seen to her education. This strengthened ties with France and paved the way for a second wedding, that of Maria de Medici, the daughter of Francesco I, to Henri IV.

  The wedding of Ferdinando and Christina was celebrated with great festivities in Florence. The new grand duchess was known not to have arrived empty handed but with a dowry of 60,000 crowns and the duchy of Urbino to boot. Christina was to play a crucial role in Galileo’s career by inviting him to come from Padua to give private lessons in the summer to the young Prince Cosimo, the heir to the grand duchy. Years later, Christina was also responsible for stimulating Galileo’s interest in the relations between science and religion, and his most important utterance on the topic will take the form of a letter to her in 1615.