Galileo briefed one of his young disciples, Mario Guiducci, who had recently been elected consul of the Florentine Academy and was anxious to create a favorable impression by choosing a fashionable topic for his inaugural lectures. He delivered a series of three talks that were published, under his name, as the Discourse on the Comets. The manuscript, examined by Antonio Favaro, the editor of the National Edition of Galileo’s Works, is largely in Galileo’s own handwriting, and the sections drafted (or perhaps merely copied) by Guiducci show signs of revision and correction by the master.
As Guiducci was a lawyer and enjoyed no scientific reputation, it was clear to Grassi that Galileo was the real author, and he prepared a rejoinder, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, which he published under the pen name of Lothario Sarsi, purportedly a student of his. However, he let his identity be known to friends, and he even sent Galileo a complimentary copy of the book. Galileo was far from pleased to see his ideas hung on a philosophical steelyard and found weightless. He replied in kind and claimed that Grassi was no more than a lightweight in a work he entitled The Assayer (Il Saggiatore in Italian) to indicate that Grassi’s balance was being supplanted by a much more delicate instrument, one that was used to determine the amount of pure gold in a lump of ore. The Assayer took the form of a letter to Virginio Cesarini, the nephew of Prince Federico Cesi, who paid for its publication. It was completed in October 1622 but delayed by numerous suggestions that the Lynceans continued to offer. When Cardinal Barberini was elected pope, Cesi saw that it was time to move, and he promptly commissioned a new frontispiece with the coat of arms of the Barberini family (three bees) and added a dedication to the pope, who was hailed as the patron of the Lyncean Academy.
In an age that has demythologized the heroes of the scientific revolution, admirers of Galileo can at least rest assured that his prose will remain one of the finest achievements of Italian baroque. The Assayer is a masterpiece of style. It was wildly acclaimed not so much by scientists as by poets and writers. It is a model of devastating irony, and it is here that we find the brilliant passage on nature written in the language of geometry:
Perhaps Sarsi thinks that philosophy is a book of fiction created by one man, like the Iliad or the Orlando Furioso, books in which the least important thing is whether what is written in them is true. Sig. Sarsi, this is not the way matters stand. Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word of it, and without which one wanders in vain though a dark labyrinth.
A SCIENTIFIC PARABLE
It was the pope’s custom to be read to at mealtimes and as soon as The Assayer was published at the end of October 1623 Giovanni Ciampoli read a number of choice passages aloud. The one we have just quoted was almost certainly one of them. The pope was so pleased that he took the book to peruse it at leisure. He particularly enjoyed the more literary passages and those that were closest to his own understanding of the nature and limits of human knowledge. Ciampoli, who knew his tastes, probably also read him the parable about the song of the cicada, which illustrates the innumerable ways God operates in nature. “Once upon a time,” wrote Galileo,
in a very lonely place, there lived a man endowed by nature with unusual curiosity and a very penetrating mind, who raised different kinds of birds for a pastime. He much enjoyed their song, and he observed with great admiration the happy contrivance by which they could transform at will the very air they breathed into a variety of sweet songs.
One night this man chanced to hear a delicate song close to his house, and being unable to imagine that it could be anything else than some small bird, he set out to capture it. He went out onto the road and found a shepherd boy who was blowing into a hollow stick while moving his fingers on the wood, thus drawing from it a variety of notes similar to those of a bird, though by quite a different method. Puzzled, and led on by his natural curiosity, he gave the boy a calf in exchange for his recorder. Pondering this incident, he realized that if he ha d not chanced to meet the boy he would never have learned that there are two different ways of forming musical notes and sweet songs, and so he decided to travel in the hope of coming across something new.
As the man roved, he discovered that sounds could be produced by the beating of the wings of bees or mosquitoes, by sawing with a bow string stretched over a hollowed piece of wood, by rubbing one’s fingertips around the rim of a goblet, or by pushing a heavy door on metal hinges. After a while, as he was beginning to feel that he knew all the ways of producing sounds, he was suddenly confronted with something that baffled him even more than before:
For having captured in his hands a cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales, which covered its body, or any other part. At last he lifted up the armor of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath, and thinking that the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice, so that he was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those ligaments. This experience reduced him to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created he used to answer candidly that, although he knew some of the ways, he was certain that many more existed that were unknown and unimaginable.
This passage shows Galileo at his best as a storyteller, but it is important mainly for the lesson that it embodies and to which Urban VIII fully subscribed. As earnestly as we may seek to understand nature, we must never forget that it can produce in an infinite number of ways what we have discovered to be possible by one particular method. In his creative labors, God is not hampered by our limited logic or our imperfect means of experimentation.
The pope was pleased that the grand duke’s chief philosopher and mathematician (as Galileo described himself on the frontispiece of The Assayer) should be in complete agreement with his own philosophy of science. Little did he suspect that Galileo had no intention of restricting himself to such a tentative approach and was determined, given a chance, to proclaim the physical truth of Copernicanism. Galileo was equally misinformed about the pope’s intentions because Ciampoli, in the letter of 4 November 1623, intimated that he could now attempt much more:
Here is greatly desired something new from your talent, and should you decide to print those ideas, which until now have remained in your mind, I am sure that they would be received most gratefully by the Pope, who does not cease to admire your eminence in all matters and to keep intact the affection that he has had for you in the past.
Of course, Ciampoli was ascribing his own sentiments to Urban VIII, but Galileo had no way of knowing this and he took for hard cash what was only a promissory note.
THE ROMAN RESPONSE
When the first copy of The Assayer was displayed in the Bookshop of the Sun in Rome it was immediately snatched up by Orazio Grassi, who walked off in a huff. He announced that though Galileo had consumed three years in writing it, he would remove its sting in three months. This was an allusion to a sarcasm of Galileo, who had said that Grassi’s Balance might more appropriately have borne the title Scorpio since he claimed that the comet had originated in that zodiacal sign and was full of stings. Although Grassi complained of Galileo’s biting language, he said that he would not reply in kind and let it be known that he would be happy to make peace with Galileo should he come to Rome. He could not help mentioning that his rival enjoyed the great advantage of having someone to pay for the publication of his works, and he could have added that the Jesuits had been enjoined to exercise restraint and avoid polemics. Unfortunately, Grassi’s charitable dispositions
evaporated when he saw a letter from Florence in which it was stated that the Jesuits would never be able to counter the arguments in The Assayer. If the Jesuits could answer a hundred heretics a year, Grassi declared, they knew well enough how to deal with one Catholic. He drafted a rejoinder to The Assayer, but as he was busy as rector of the Jesuit College in Siena between 1624 and 1626, it only appeared late that year. He may have desired to avoid insult, but he made Galileo furious by referring to his book, accidentally or on purpose, not by its proper title of Il Saggiatore (The Assayer) but Il Assaggiatore (The Wine Taster), which seemed to imply that Galileo had been drinking when he wrote his book. It was no secret that Galileo knew and loved his wine.
It is regrettable that Galileo’s success as a satirical writer was purchased at the price of alienating the Jesuits, who had treated him so handsomely in 1611 and who could have helped him later. His old foe, the Dominican Tommaso Caccini, continued to slander him, and in December 1623, Benedetto Castelli wrote to say that he had learned that Caccini was saying that had it not been for the protection of the grand duke Galileo would have at once been put on trial by the Roman Inquisition. Things were not helped by the arrival in Rome at about this time of Tommaso Campanella’s Defense of Galileo. It had actually been written in 1616 at the height of the Copernican controversy, and there was consternation when it was printed by a Protestant publishing house. Murmurings against Galileo were revived, but his friends still outnumbered his foes at the end of 1623. The Florentine Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, who was appointed lieutenant to the cardinal who administered Rome, assured Galileo that the pope was glad to hear about what he was doing. His brother, Tommaso Rinuccini, who also held an influential post, added on 20 October that Urban VIII had said that he would be delighted if Galileo’s health would allow him to return to Rome.
The Rinuccinis had acted with some prodding from Galileo, who had asked them to let him know about the lay of the land. On 9 October 1623 he had also broached the subject with Prince Cesi:
I have great need of Your Excellency’s advice (in whom more than anyone I trust) about carrying out my desire, or perhaps my duty, to come to kiss the feet of His Holiness. But I would like to do it at the right moment and I shall wait until you tell me so. I am turning over in my mind things of some importance for the learned world, and if they are not carried out in this marvelous combination of circumstances, there can be no hope in the future, at least as far as I can see, of ever finding such an opportunity.
Cesi replied unambiguously on 21 October:
Your coming here is necessary and will give much pleasure to His Holiness. When he asked me when you were coming, I answered that an hour delay seemed to you like a thousand years. I added what I could about your devotion to him, and told him that you would soon bring him your book [The Assayer]. He admires you, and is more than ever fond of you.
Cesi suggested that Galileo leave for Rome the very next month and stop in Acquasparta, the country seat where he usually resided, to confer on the way. He gave him to understand that this would entail no more than a small detour by Perugia, where he could find a horse to ride to Acquasparta. Galileo gladly accepted, and on 29 October his daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, mentioned her father’s trip as imminent and, on the next day, Galileo wrote to Cesi as though he was about to leave.
But history repeated itself and Galileo postponed his departure. On 21 November Sister Maria Celeste expressed concern for her father’s health with the sudden onset of cold weather. Her fears were justified, for Galileo was once more bedridden. His Roman friends commiserated and tried to cheer him up. Tommaso Rinuccini wrote on 2 December to say that it was a good thing Galileo did not undertake the journey because the roads were cut by floods. Galileo hoped the skies would soon clear up, and he asked Sister Maria Celeste whether he could do something for her convent when he was in Rome. He knew that the nuns often lacked money to buy food and blankets, and he hoped that the pope might grant them a piece of property to generate enough income to meet their modest needs, as had been done for other monasteries. On 10 December Sister Maria Celeste replied that they were accustomed to material scarcity. What troubled them was something far more important, and this was the lack of spiritual guidance. The current chaplain was uneducated, worldly, and had no experience of monastic life. It would be a great blessing, she confided to her father, if he could be replaced by a priest from a religious order who understood their calling and was dependable.
When the weather improved at the beginning of 1624 Galileo asked the Grand Duchess Christina to give him a letter of recommendation from her son, Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, who was the resident Florentine cardinal in Rome. The letter, dated 14 January 1624, assumes that Galileo will soon be on his way. But bad weather and physical discomfort once again set in. On 20 February 1624, Galileo wrote to Cesi that he had been detained by heavy snow but that he hoped to set off within two or three days. This stretched into a week, at the end of which Galileo got a new letter of recommendation from the grand duke Ferdinando. It was destined for the ambassador Francesco Niccolini, and it makes it clear that Galileo was not traveling in an official capacity:
Our Mathematician, Galilei, is going to Rome on private business, and we have given him this letter in order that you may help him, as you judge wise and possible. We hope that, as a distinguished servant of our House, he will continue to receive great honors. He must already be well known to the Pope and his principal ministers and, hence, will have little need of your assistance.
The official who drafted this letter was not merely exercising the caution expected of someone who knew that Copernicus had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. He was acting under the instructions of the Grand Duchess Christina, who had already made clear in her letter to Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici that Galileo was not to be hosted, as in 1611 and 1616, in one of the Medici palaces in Rome. The eminent professor wanted to go to Rome; he could do so with their blessing but not at their expense.
It was well over a month before Galileo finally took to the road on 1 or 2 April 1624. The horse-drawn litter was supposed to have taken him all the way to Acquasparta, but when they arrived in Perugia, some 40 kilometers from their destination, the coach driver found someone who wanted to go to Rome, and he unceremoniously dropped Galileo for a better fare. Galileo spent the night in Perugia, and on the next day, which was Maundy Thursday, he found Prince Cesi’s coachman, who was about to leave for Todi with another passenger. As the coachman refused to return to fetch him without explicit orders from the prince, Galileo gave him a letter in which he said that he was not up to riding a horse all the way to Acquasparta and that he would like Cesi to have him fetched. What a pity, Galileo wrote to Cesi, that I will not be able to be with you on Easter!
It does not seem that Galileo made it to Acquasparta by Easter, although the coachman was dispatched back to Perugia by the prince on Good Friday. When the two friends met on Easter Monday, 8 April, they had not seen each other for eight years, and they spent the next two weeks in earnest conversation. Their meeting was clouded by the news of the death of Virginio Cesarini, who passed away in Rome on 11 April. This was a blow for both of them but especially for Galileo, who lost not only an admirer but also a close associate of the pope and almost certainly a future cardinal. The kind of help that Cesarini had been able to give Galileo can be seen in the way he had arranged for The Assayer to be read by a young Dominican professor of theology, Niccolò Riccardi, who not only gave the imprimatur, as the license to print was called, but added what reads like a publicity blurb. Instead of the usual statement that the work was not contrary to religion, he wrote that it contained so many fine considerations pertaining to natural philosophy that I believe our age is to be celebrated by future ages not only as the heir of works of past philosophers but as the discoverer of many secrets of nature that they were unable to reveal, thanks to the deep and sound reflections of this author in whose age I count myself fortunate to be born—when the gold of tru
th is no longer weighed in bulk and with a steelyard, but is assayed with so delicate a balance.
In 1623 Riccardi was still an occasional “consultant” or expert at the Holy Office, but he did not lack visibility. His enormous girth, his weighty eloquence, and his phenomenal memory had earned him the nickname “Father Monster” from King Philip III of Spain. He quickly rose to prominence at the Vatican, and he became master of the sacred palace in 1629, a post that included the responsibility of licensing books to be printed.
PRINCELY CONVERSATIONS
The letter announcing Cesarini’s death was probably delivered by the German physician Johann Winther, who arrived in Acquasparta on Sunday, 14 April, and was told upon dismounting that the prince would see him later because he was in conference with Galileo. Winther was served a meal, assigned a beautiful room with a pleasant view, and then called by the prince, whom he found chatting by the fireside with Galileo. What did they discuss late into the night? Prince Cesi was at the time trying to arrange for the publication of a manuscript that he had found in Naples several years earlier. This was the Medical Thesaurus of New Spain, a summary of the observations of Mexican natural history made by the sixteenth-century Spanish physician Francisco Hernandez. Cesi was deeply interested in botany and he kept a sizeable herb garden. In all likelihood, he spent some time informing Galileo about his activities as a “simpler,” the term for a collector of medicinal herbs in the seventeenth century. He may also have spoken of his desire to publish the constitution of the Lyncean Academy and the microscopical observations that his collaborators had carried out on bees, the symbol of the Barberini family. What he probably did not mention was that his finances were in desperate straits. His father had brought the family to the brink of ruin, and in 1622 they had had to sell their famous garden of antiquities to the Ludovisi, the family then in possession of the papacy. A constant succession of suits threatened to make Cesi bankrupt, and he had to court the new pope to salvage his estate. The help that he could extend to Galileo must be seen in this light. He had no intention of adding to his woes by supporting risky ideas, and it was important that the Lynceans be on good terms with the authorities. Cesi had protected scientists; they might now prove useful in protecting him.
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