Shea and Artigas - Galileo in Rome

by William R. Shea

  Potentially more ticklish was the ambiguous reference to Adam and the implied theological stricture. In the penultimate paragraph of his letter, Galileo sidestepped the whole issue by declaring that Dini was better qualified to deal with this matter. What did the professors of the University of Perugia have in mind by bringing in Adam? In the light of subsequent events, it would seem that they were uncomfortable with the notion that the Earth was no longer at the center of the world. This had seemed not only physically natural but theologically suitable since the most important cosmic event of history, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, occurred on Earth. The incarnation was never defined as happening at the physical center of the world, but tradition associated the centrality of Christ’s redeeming mission with the hub of the universe. Although geo-centrism was never a Christian dogma, it was to take time before biblical statements about the Sun rising or setting were interpreted as common-sensical utterances without any scientific implications. The world has not only to be understood, it must also be imagined.

  A ROMAN CELEBRATION

  But these were mere clouds on the horizon. In Rome, on Friday 13 May, the Jesuits had just given Galileo the equivalent of a modern honorary doctorate in a lavish ceremony at the Roman College. The Dutch Jesuit Odo Maelcote read an address in Latin about The Sidereal Message in the presence of the entire Roman College, several cardinals, and notabilities, including Cesi. The Jesuit scientist first discussed the newly invented telescope and the geometrical proofs of the magnification it provided. Next he offered a brief description of Galileo’s observations of the lunar body, the moons of Jupiter, the fixed stars, the phases of Venus, and the curious shape of Saturn. The address, entitled “The Sidereal Message of the Roman College” was not published, but excerpts were prepared by Grienberger, presumably for distribution in the order.

  Father Maelcote offered a picturesque description of the potted surface of the Moon:

  We can observe at the tips of the Moon’s horns certain brilliant peaks, or rather, I might say, small globules like the shining beads of a Rosary, some scattered among themselves, others strung together as if by a thread. So, too, can many bubble-like spots be seen especially around the lower horn: that part of the lunar surface is adorned and painted by them as if by the eyes of a peacock’s tail.

  Maelcote did not go as far as to confirm the existence of peaks and mountains on the Moon, and, in deference to the objections expressed earlier by Christopher Clavius, he recalled that he was himself only a celestial messenger and that his audience was free to attribute the spots on the Moon to “the uneven density and rarity of the lunar body” or “to something else,” as they chose.

  Prior to Galileo the Moon was generally compared to a crystal ball, and its apparent spots were dismissed as optical illusions caused by atmospheric conditions. Clavius’s personal reluctance to accept that the Moon was rough and covered with deep depressions rested on two reasons, one scientific, the other symbolic. The first was that the illuminated edges of the Moon in all its phases show themselves perfectly round, without those indentations that one would expect from the inequalities of its surface. The second reason is that there was a popular religious representation of the Virgin Mary with her feet resting on the surface of a perfectly spherical Moon. Clavius would not have wished to make a doctrinal point out of an icon, but we can understand his regard for the Marian convention and his reluctance to admit too readily the bumps and dents that would render a traditional image inappropriate.

  The destruction of the pure and perfect Moon was a lengthier process than Galileo had anticipated. When Ludovico delle Colombe heard about Clavius’s skepticism about mountains on the Moon, he wrote to say that he shared his doubts. A copy of the letter was passed on to Galileo by Gallanzone Gallanzoni the secretary of Cardinal Joyeuse, who wanted to know how he would reply. Galileo, at his wittiest, complied:

  If anyone is allowed to imagine whatever he pleases, then someone could say that the Moon is surrounded by a crystalline substance that is transparent and invisible. I will grant this provided that, with equal courtesy, I be allowed to say that the crystal has on its outer surface a large number of huge mountains, that are thirty times as high as the terrestrial ones, and invisible because they are diaphanous.

  One might just as well, Galileo adds, define Earth to include the atmosphere at the top of the highest mountain and declare that “the Earth is perfectly spherical.” We witness here how Galileo’s sarcasm could be amusing but also dangerous. He laughed delle Colombe off the stage, but what was really required was a scientific answer and, in this instance, Galileo might have replied that the full Moon appears perfectly circular because the mountains on its surface are close together, so that at the distance of the Earth the intervening depressions are not discernible.

  TRIUMPHAL RETURN

  When Galileo left Rome on Saturday, 4 June 1611, he could be happy with the result of his trip and look forward to a hero’s welcome in Florence when he handed the grand duke the glowing report that Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte had prepared for him:

  Galileo has, during his stay in Rome, given great satisfaction, and I think he received as much, for he had the opportunity of showing his discoveries so well, that the learned and notable in this city all found them no less true and well-founded than astonishing. Were we still living under the ancient republic of Rome, I am certain that a statue would have been erected in his honor on the Capitol.

  If we bear in mind that the equestrian statue on the Capitol is that of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, we can see how highly Galileo was being praised. Cardinal del Monte was not the only prelate to sing his praise. Cardinal Farnese gave a banquet for him prior to his departure and even accompanied him as far as Caprarola, the country seat of the Farnese family.

  Cardinal Maffeo Barberini had become Galileo’s admirer, and this was made clear at a dinner given by the grand duke in Florence on 2 October 1611. Galileo and Flaminio Papazzone, an Aristotelian professor of philosophy, had been invited to publicly discuss whether the shape of bodies has something to do with their ability to float. Galileo argued that shape is irrelevant; Papazzone replied that, on the contrary, it is often decisive. Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, who was also present, sided with Papazzone, while Cardinal Barberini upheld Galileo’s position. Shortly thereafter, Galileo fell ill and was unable to bid farewell to Cardinal Barberini, who was going on to Bologna. The Cardinal’s friendly concern is evident from the letter he wrote to Galileo from that city on 11 October 1611:

  I am very sorry that you were unable to see me before I left the city. It is not that I consider a sign of your friendship as necessary, for it is well known to me, but because you were ill. May God keep you not only because outstanding persons, such as yourself, deserve a long life of public service, but because of the particular affection that I have and always will have for you. I am happy to be able to say this, and to thank you for the time that you spent with me.

  Your affectionate brother, Cardinal Barberini

  This warm letter is particularly remarkable for the last sentence and the final greeting in which Cardinal Barberini describes himself as an affectionate brother. Even if we make allowances for the baroque penchant for flowery language, there is no doubt that the cardinal genuinely admired Galileo and was anxious to help him. Friendship spurned, or perceived as such, and, worse still, friendship betrayed often give rise to deep resentment. It is sad that this will be the fate of the relations between Galileo and Barberini that were so cordial in 1611.

  MISGIVINGS

  We have seen that the Holy Office checked on Galileo’s possible involvement with Cremonini. Although nothing came of this enquiry, it shows how easily the waters could become choppy. The endorsement of his celestial discoveries by the Jesuits had allowed Galileo to take the further step of arguing in favor of the motion of the Earth on the numerous occasions when he was asked to say a few words about the significance of his telescopic observations. Eyebrows had been raised, how
ever, and when Galileo planned a third trip to Rome four years later, the Roman ambassador, Piero Guicciardini, was the first to express concern. Guicciardini had been Galileo’s host after replacing ambassador Niccolini in April 1611, so he had personally experienced some of tensions around Galileo’s discoveries. In a note of 5 December 1615 to Curzio Picchena, the secretary of state of the grand duke, he did not mince his words:

  I hear that Galileo is coming here. Annibale Primi informs me that, on orders from the Grand Duke received from you, he is to expect him at the Garden [the Villa Medici]. I met him here when I first arrived and he spent a few days with me [in 1611]. His teaching, and something else, was not to the taste of the Advisors and the Cardinals of the Holy Office. Among others, Bellarmine told me that, however great their respect for the Grand Duke, if Galileo had stayed here too long, they could not have avoided looking into the matter. I gave Galileo a hint or a warning since he was staying here, but I fear that it did not give him great pleasure.

  Guicciardini and Galileo had not hit it off, but the ambassador was a man of the world and a well-informed diplomat. The matter was more delicate than Galileo surmised, as we can infer from the fact that the italicized words of the letter are in cipher. Upon receipt in Florence, they were decoded and written just above. Clearly the ambassador did not want the information of Galileo’s arrival or the references to Bellarmine and the Holy Office to fall into the wrong hands. The roads that led from Rome were not always paved with good intentions.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Roman Clouds

  THIRD TRIP • 10 DECEMBER 1615-4 JUNE 1616

  Four years after his second trip, Galileo decided that it was time to return to Rome. In the meanwhile, he had published a Discourse on Floating Bodies, and Letters on the Sunspots, in which he argued that sunspots were some kind of clouds near the surface of the Sun. This was a blow to Aristotelianism and an argument in favor of a new cosmology. But Galileo did not want to travel to Rome merely to discuss astronomy. He had come to realize that what he had to do was defend himself against the accusation that what he taught went against Scripture.

  Galileo had become aware of the sensitivities of the ecclesiastical authorities when he had submitted his Letters on the Sunspots to obtain the license to print it. The cavils of the censors forced successive revisions, and brought Galileo into contact with the day-to-day running of the Counter Reformation. The book was to have opened with a letter from Mark Welser in which he quoted from Matthew 11:12, “The kingdom of heavens suffers violence, and men of violence take it by force.” The censors objected to the quotation because it might give the impression that astronomers wanted to conquer a domain that belonged to theologians. To allay these fears, the passage was paraphrased to read: “Already the minds of men assail the heavens, and the more valiant conquer them.” Although there was no significant change in content, the biblical passage had disappeared! In a second passage Galileo had written that “divine goodness” had directed him to openly describe the Copernican system. The censors had him substitute “favorable winds.”

  Elsewhere Galileo had called the immutability of the heavens “not only false, but erroneous and repugnant to the indubitable truth of Scripture,” and he had attributed the new astronomy to divine inspiration. When the censors demurred, he produced a new draft in which he called his own theory “most agreeable to the indubitable truths of Holy Writ” and praised his predecessors for their subtlety in finding ways of reconciling biblical passages on the mutability of the heavens with the apparent evidence in favor of their immutability. The tacit implication was that, since theologians had long interpreted the texts to show their agreement with Aristotelian doctrine, there already existed in the church a nonliteral way of reading biblical passages on astronomy. The censors deemed the revision inadequate and demanded a third version, in which Galileo reluctantly excised all mention of Scripture.

  The attitudes of both the censors and Galileo are instructive. On the one hand, the censors adamantly refused a layman the right to meddle with Scripture. On the other, Galileo was inclined to describe his point of view as “divinely inspired” and to brand that of his opponents as “contrary to Scripture.” The popular conception of Galileo as a martyr for freedom of thought is an oversimplification. That his views were different from those of the majority of the academic establishment did not make him a liberal. He cherished the hope that the Church would endorse his opinions and, with many of his contemporaries, looked to an enlightened papacy as an effective instrument of scientific progress. But what Galileo does not seem to have understood is that the Catholic Church, attacked by Protestants for neglecting the Bible, found itself compelled, in self-defense, to harden its position. Whatever appeared to contradict Holy Writ had to be treated with the utmost caution.

  THE PIGEON LEAGUE

  We have already seen that a conservative Aristotelian by the name of Ludovico delle Colombe had criticized the idea of the motion of the Earth. Galileo had never dignified him with a formal reply. Delle Colombe now proceeded to attack Galileo’s Discourse on Floating Bodies, declaring himself “an anti-Galilean, out of respect for Aristotle, the great leader of academies, the head of so many schools, the subject of so many poems, the labor of so many historians, and the man who read more books than there were days in his life, and wrote more than he counted years.” Colombe’s description of himself as an anti-Galilean inspired Galileo’s supporters to call themselves Galileists, and to refer to their opponents as pigeons, or members of the Pigeon League, a pun on the word colombo, which means pigeon in Italian. They were to prove very troublesome birds. On 16 December 1611, the painter Cigoli wrote to Galileo from Rome:

  I have been told by a friend of mine, a priest who is very fond of you, that a gang of ill-disposed men, who are envious of your virtue and merits, met at the residence of the Archbishop of Florence, and put their heads together in a mad quest for some means by which they could damage you, either with regard to the motion of the Earth or otherwise. One of them asked a preacher to state from the pulpit that you were asserting outlandish things. The priest, seeing the animosity against you, replied as a good Christian and a member of a religious order ought to do. I write this that your eyes may be open to the envy and malice of these evildoers.

  If Cigoli was well informed, this was disquieting. The archbishop of Florence, Alessandro Marzimedici, was not ill disposed toward Galileo and may have been his student in Padua, but Galileo’s adversaries were high enough in rank to be allowed to hold meetings in the episcopal palace.

  MORE TROUBLES

  The next sign of trouble came several months later from a member of the Dominicans, one of the main religious orders in Florence. Named after their founder, St. Dominic, they saw themselves as the bulwark of orthodoxy and were often named inquisitors by the Holy Office. Punning on their name Dominicanes (the plural of Dominicans also means dogs of the Lord in Latin), they had themselves represented in paintings as white and black sheep dogs defending their flock from wolves. They were also known to bark at the slightest scent of heresy. When Galileo was told that on 2 November 1612, All Souls’ Day, a Dominican named Niccolò Lorini had attacked his views at a meeting in Florence, he asked for an explanation. The friar immediately complied with the following answer:

  The suspicion that I entered into a discussion of philosophical matters against anyone on All Souls’ Day is completely false and without foundation . . . I did, however, not in order to argue but merely to avoid appearing a blockhead when the discussion was started by others, say a few words just to show I was alive. I said, as I still say, that this opinion of Ipernicus—or whatever his name is—would appear to be hostile to divine Scripture. But it is of little consequence to me, for I have other things to do; for me it is enough that no occasion should be given to anyone for believing that we are what we are not. For I am confident that all our nobility is steadfastly Catholic.

  Lorini, then 67 years of age, was himself a member of the nobility, and
he enjoyed some distinction in his order. He had served as prior of his convent of Santa Maria Novella, and he taught Church history in Florence. In 1585 he had even been invited to preach in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. He was much appreciated by the grand duke but especially by his devout mother, the Grand Duchess Christina, and his equally religious wife, the Archduchess Maria Maddalena. Lorini’s ignorance of the correct spelling of Copernicus’s name makes it unlikely that he made astronomy the subject of his leisure hours.

  Galileo accepted Lorini’s account of what had happened, and he joked about the incident a few weeks later in a letter to Cesi:

  Here also they do not rest from scheming, and the more because their enemy is close at hand. But since they are numerically few and belong to that league (for thus they refer to themselves in private) which may be recognized by Your Excellency in their writings, I laugh at them. Here in Florence there is a clumsy speaker who has decided to detest the mobility of the earth, but this good fellow is so unfamiliar with the author of that doctrine that he calls him “Ipernicus.” Behold whence and by whom poor philosophy is subjected to extortion!