The ambassador went on to lament that Galileo was too passionately involved in what he said and unable to see that the pope was not interested in intellectual fireworks. Paul V was a practical man and was said to prefer new jobs for workmen to new ideas from scholars. The ambassador got it almost—but not quite—right, as we now know from documents that can be consulted in the archives of the Holy Office, and from which we will draw.
On Thursday, 19 February, the Holy Office decided to submit to a panel of 11 experts the following propositions: “The Sun is the center of the world and hence immovable of local motion. The Earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable but moves according to the whole of itself, also with a diurnal motion.”
The awkward English reflects the original Italian that was derived from Caccini’s delation. When the consultants met on Wednesday, 24 February they divided the proposition into two separate Latin ones: the first for the Sun and the second for the Earth. They unanimously agreed that they deserved the following “qualifications” or censure notes. The first proposition, which had been slightly altered to read, “The Sun is the center of the world and completely immovable of local motion,” was declared “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors.” The second proposition, which affirmed that the Earth moves, was declared “to receive the same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological truth, to be at least erroneous in faith.”
The experts could only advise, but all decisions rested with the pope and the cardinal inquisitors or with just the pope. The very next day, on Thursday, 25 February Cardinal Millini notified the commissioner and the assessor of the Holy Office that the recommendation of the experts had been communicated to the pope, who decided on the following course of action: Bellarmine was to summon Galileo and admonish him to abandon Copernicanism. If he refused, the commissioner of the Holy Office was to formally order him, in the presence of a notary, not to teach, defend, or even discuss it. Should he refuse, he was to be incarcerated. It is interesting to note that recommendation of censure was minuted but never published. This had important legal consequences since Canon law explicitly states that an unpublished decision does not have a binding character. In other words, the censure never acquired juridical status.
The pope had foreseen three possible scenarios. First, Galileo assents without demurring, and that is the end of the procedure. Second, he tries to vindicate himself or defend Copernicanism; there is a change of scene, and Commissioner Seghizzi enters with witnesses and formally forbids Galileo to maintain heliocentrism. Third, Galileo persists in his refusal, and the curtain falls as he is led offstage. What was to happen if he were to go to prison is not stated, but we can assume that he would have been sent to trial. Fortunately, things did not go that far.
FURTHER EVIDENCE
There is a short document in the archives of the Holy Office that summarizes what actually took place: “On the 26th His Excellency Cardinal Bellarmine warned Galileo of the error of the aforesaid opinion etc. and afterwards the precept was enjoined on him by the Father Commissioner as above, etc.” The use of etc is common in internal documents that refer to customary procedures and has no special significance. Here etc. means something like “as was ordered” in the first instance, and “as is usually done” in the second. It would seem, therefore, that the first two scenarios were enacted, although the document does not say that Galileo refused to comply.
A second document in the archives states that at a meeting of the Holy Office on Thursday, 3 March 1616, which was attended by the pope and seven cardinals, Cardinal Bellarmine reported that, as instructed by the Holy Office, he admonished Galileo to abandon the opinion, which he had held until then, that the Sun is at rest and the Earth in motion, and Galileo accepted. This document does not provide new information, but there exists a third document that is more detailed and is more frequently cited because it surfaced at Galileo’s trial in 1633. It is now considered authentic, but some nineteenth-century historians thought it was a forgery because it is neither notarized nor signed, as is normally the case. According to this document, Galileo was admonished by Bellarmine in the cardinal’s residence in the presence of Commissioner Shegizzi, some members of his staff, and two guests, who had come to see the cardinal. Galileo was told by Cardinal Bellarmine to abandon the error of Copernicanism,
and immediately thereafter, before me and before witnesses, the Cardinal being still present, the said Galileo was by the said Commissioner commanded and enjoined, in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the Holy Office, to relinquish altogether the said opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and at rest and that the Earth moves; nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way verbally or in writing. Otherwise proceedings would be taken against him by the Holy Office. The said Galileo acquiesced in this ruling and promised to obey.
This minute was probably penned by some zealous official (who speaks in the first person) who wanted to record that the Commissioner had actually stepped in to give Galileo a strict injunction to relinquish Copernicanism altogether. Bellarmine may have felt that his own admonition had been sufficient, and the minute was left unsigned in the dossier. When it was found in 1633, it put Galileo in the uncomfortable position of having apparently acquiesced, in the wording of the minute, not to hold, teach, or defend Copernicanism in any way, verbally or in writing. To break such a promise would be a much more serious offence than would a contravention of the warning not to go beyond using Copernicanism “as a convenient hypothesis” to facilitate computations. This is how Galileo later remembered having been instructed.
COPERNICUS ON THE INDEX
We now move from the Holy Office to the Congregation of the Index, where five Cardinals, including Maffeo Barberini, met in Bellarmine’s office on Tuesday, 1 March 1616. After discussion, they recommended that the works they had been asked to judge be censured, but not exactly in the terms that had been proposed by the experts. Someone must have objected to the qualification heretical, which was dropped. Two days later at the meeting of the Holy Office, the new resolution was conveyed to the pope, as procedure required, and the pope ordered that it be published. This was done in a decree released by the Congregation of the Index on Saturday, 5 March. The document began by banning five books on topics unrelated to astronomy and went on as follows:
It has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, and Diego de Zuñiga in his Commentary on Job, and is now being spread abroad and accepted by many. This can be seen from a certain letter of a Carmelite Father, entitled Letter of Father Paolo Foscarini, Carmelite, on the Opinion of the Pythagoreans and of Copernicus Regarding the Motion of the Earth, and the Stability of the Sun, and on the New Pythagorean System of the World. Naples: Printed by Lazzaro Scorrigio, 1615. In this letter the said Father tries to show that the aforesaid doctrine of the immobility of the Sun in the center of the world and of the Earth’s motion is true and not opposed to Holy Scripture. Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, it has been decided that the said Nicolaus Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium, and Diego de Zuñiga, On Job, be suspended until corrected. The book of the Carmelite Father, Paolo Antonio Foscarini, is altogether prohibited and condemned, and all other works in which the same is taught are likewise prohibited, and the present Decree prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively.
This decree is remarkable in a number of ways. First, it is the only document to have been published, and hence to have legal status. Second, Galileo is not mentioned. Third, Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus is
not banned outright but taken out of circulation until corrections are made. Fourth, although the panel of experts had called the immobility of the Sun “formally heretical,” the decree merely states that the doctrine is “false and contrary to Holy Scripture.” This point is significant. The Congregation of the Index could have been expected to endorse the censure as it had been approved by the Holy Office. The fact that it did not means that someone objected at the meeting of 3 March 1616. Indeed, not one but two cardinals did, as we know from three sources. The first is an entry in the diary of Giovanfrancesco Buonamici, who happened to be in Rome many years later when Galileo was tried in 1633. He made enquiries about the background of the affair and, on 2 May 1633, wrote as follows: “In the time of Paul V this opinion was opposed as erroneous and contrary to many passages of Sacred Scripture; therefore, Paul V was of the opinion to declare it contrary to the Faith; but on account of the opposition of the Cardinals Bonifazio Caetano and Maffeo Barberini, now Urban VIII, the Pope was stopped right at the beginning.”
The second source is a letter of Castelli to Galileo of 16 March 1630 in which he says that he heard from Prince Cesi that Tommaso Campanella recently informed Urban VIII that he had been on the verge of converting some German Protestants but that they backed away because of the decree banning Copernicus. The pope winced, and reportedly answered, “This was never our intention, and if it had been left to us, that Decree would not have been made.” The third source is a conversation that Galileo had with Cardinal Frederick Zollern when he went on his fourth trip to Rome in 1624:
Zollern left yesterday for Germany, and he told me that he had spoken with His Holiness about Copernicus, and mentioned that the heretics are all of this opinion and hold it as most certain, and that we should therefore proceed very circumspectly in coming to any determination. His Holiness replied that the Holy Church had not condemned it and was not about to condemn it as heretical, but only as temerarious, but that it was not to be feared that it would ever be demonstrated as necessarily true.
Cardinal Bonifazio Caetani, who was mentioned by Buonamici along with Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, was a member of the Congregation of the Index but not of the Holy Office. He was interested in astronomy and astrology and, even before Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus was discussed by his congregation, he had written to Tommaso Campanella in Naples to ask him what he thought about Copernicus and Galileo. Campanella was never to become a Copernican, but he wanted to preserve the intellectual freedom of Catholic scientists, and he sent the cardinal a lengthy reply at the end of February or early in March. We do not know whether Cardinal Caetani received this letter before the Decree of 1616, but the fact that he wanted to be informed speaks in favor of his honesty. Campanella’s letter was published in Germany in 1622 as the Apologia pro Galileo and was promptly added to the list of proscribed books by the Congregation of the Index. Caetani did not live to see this happen but, before his death in June 1617, he had agreed to make the revisions that were required before Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus could be reissued. This task was carried out by his assistant, Francesco Ingoli, who presented a list of corrections at a meeting of the Congregation of the Index on 2 April 1618. To play it safe, the Cardinals submitted the corrections to the Jesuit mathematicians of the Roman College. They agreed with them, and Ingoli’s proposals were approved by the Congregation of the Index on 3 July. Nonetheless, matters dragged on for another two years, and it was only on 1 May 1620 that the Congregation of the Index decided that the De Revolutionibus, described as a work “in which many useful things are found,” could be printed with Ingoli’s corrections. These amounted to very little beyond crossing out or amending the rare passages where the motion of the Earth was clearly acknowledged. But no publisher seemed interested, and a revised edition never appeared. Libraries with copies of the original work were expected to pen in the corrections. This was done for about half the copies in Italy. Elsewhere in Europe, virtually no one bothered.
GALILEO’S DOUBLE GAME
Transparency is a great virtue. Things that are done in the open are less likely to be distorted or used in ways that were not in tended. But privacy is also an important aspect of social life, and the most liberal citizen will value confidentiality when his purse or his life is at stake. Galileo had not been asked to defend himself before the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and the admonition that he received from Cardinal Bellarmine took him by complete surprise. Yet once the warning had been administered he could rely on the discretion of those who had ordered or communicated it. If he did not tell anyone, it would never be bruited. He chose, wisely, to keep mum. On 6 March, he wrote to Curzio Picchena, the secretary of state, to say that he had not written the week before because nothing had happened. As we know, one of the most important events in his life had taken place: He had been admonished by Cardinal Bellarmine to abandon Copernicanism! But this was a personal matter and Galileo prayed to heaven that it would stay so. The Decree of March 5 did not mention him, and if all went well this might be interpreted as a sign that no rebuff had been intended as far as he was concerned. Yet Romans could put two and two together: Galileo had been campaigning vigorously for Copernicanism, which had now been officially decried as false and contrary to Scripture. Even Monsignor Querengo joked about it in a letter to Cardinal d’Este,
Galileo’s arguments have vanished into alchemical smoke, for the Holy Office has declared that to maintain this opinion is to dissent manifestly from the infallible dogmas of the Church. We now know that, instead of imagining that we are spinning in outer space, we are at rest at our proper place, and do not have to fly off with the Earth like so many ants crawling around a balloon.
The puff of smoke, the ants, and the balloon are quite ingenious, but Querengo knew better than to speak of the immobility of the Earth as an infallible dogma. The decree that proscribed Copernicus and other works that taught heliocentrism did not involve the infallibility of the Church, the pope or anyone else. It was, in the eyes of those who prepared and approved it, a prudential decision to remove from public circulation works that might lead unwary readers to misunderstand the nature of science and the role of Scripture. The Counter Reformation did not encourage discussion or debates about doctrinal matters. The theological pendulum that the reformers had pushed too far in one direction was now made to swing to the other extreme, but even the most conservative cardinals would not have considered a decree of the Congregation of the Index as offering a definitive statement of the Catholic faith.
So it is understandable that in his letter to Curzio Picchena of 6 March, Galileo should not have alluded in any way to the admonition he had received on 26 February. He could not, however, avoid mentioning the decree of the Congregation of the Index that had come out the day before. He provided, in the mildest terms possible, a summary of its contents, and then went on to say, As one can see from the very nature of the business, I have no interest whatsoever in it, nor would I have got involved if, as I said, my enemies had not dragged me into it. What I have done can be seen from my writings which I keep in order to be able to silence malicious gossip at any time, for I can show that my behavior in this affair has been such that a saint would not have handled it either with greater reverence or with greater zeal towards the Holy Church. My enemies have perhaps not done as much, since they have not refrained from every machination, calumny and diabolic suggestion, as their Most Serene Highnesses and also Your Lordship will hear at length in due course.
Galileo had toyed with the idea of going to Naples. This was now out of the question, and there was always the convenient reason that “the weather and the roads are just awful,” as he wrote to Picchena in the same letter. But he did not rush back to Florence. Grand Duke Cosimo, a few days before the decision of the Holy Office, and ignorant of what was going to happen, had written to ask Galileo to await the arrival of his brother, Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, so that he might accompany him when he visited the pope and be present at dinner parties in order to liven up
the conversation. Had the grand duke waited a few days before forwarding these instructions, he might have suppressed them altogether after Ambassador Guicciardini had written from Rome to express his fear that Galileo might prove more of an embarrassment than a help.
Shea and Artigas - Galileo in Rome Page 10