These worries made the pontiff so restless that he ordered all the birds in his garden killed because they disrupted his sleep with their nocturnal calls. The pope had become enmeshed in the war of the Mantuan Succession, in which French and Spanish interests were again at stake. To cover the high cost of equipping 7,000 infantrymen and 800 cavalry, Urban VIII had to raise taxes in the pontifical states, thereby undermining his popularity. The War of the Mantuan Succession had an even more unfortunate consequence: The Austrian Habsburg troops that crossed the Alps left the plague in their wake in 1629. As we shall see, the disease spread like wildfire.
Discontent with the pope’s external policy was fuelled by resentment against the promotions and pensions that he showered on members of his family. Nepotism was a way of insuring that higher officials remained loyal, but it was often used to accumulate wealth at the expense of more worthy causes. Shortly after his election in 1623, Urban VIII had made his brother, Antonio, and a nephew, Francesco, cardinals. In 1628, he added his youngest nephew, also called Antonio, who was barely 19. Meanwhile, he had chosen the middle child among his three nephews, Taddeo, to perpetuate the Barberini name and had married him to the daughter of a titled Roman family.
Urban VIII had always been proud of his gifts as a versifier, and he was only too ready to accept the adulation of courtiers who called him the greatest poet of his age. When he reformed the breviary, the handbook of prayers to be recited each day by persons in holy orders, he did not hesitate to add his own original hymnal compositions in honor of the saints that he canonized. He even undertook a lasting memorial to his name in the basilica of St. Peter by ordering the great architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini to erect a monumental canopy or baldacchino over the tomb of the first of the apostles. When Galileo returned to Rome in 1630 the huge bronze baldacchino was rising from four marble plinths, each emblazoned on two sides with the Barberini three-bee coat of arms. Four support pillars spiralled upward 29 meters toward the canopy, which was still under construction. The enormous quantity of bronze required for this gigantic structure had been plundered from the Pantheon, which even the barbarians had left intact. The punning gibe, “What the barbarians did not do, the Barberinis did,” was soon in the mouth of every Roman. The growing dissatisfaction with the Barberinis found expression in a way that was characteristic of the age: Astrological forecasts prophesying the early demise of the pontiff began to appear. As might be foreseen, Galileo’s name was to be associated with these ill-advised horoscopes.
THE OTHER GUEST
While Galileo was being made welcome at the official residence in the Palazzo Firenze, preparations were under way to receive someone else at the Palazzo del Giardino, the Villa Medici where Galileo had himself resided in 1615. The new guest was a 31-year-old painter on his first trip to Rome. His full name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez. Like Galileo, Velazquez was in the employ of a prince, but one of much higher standing, Philip IV, the king of Spain and the most powerful ruler of Europe.
Velazquez had sailed from Barcelona on 10 August 1629 and had stopped in Venice and Ferrara before going to Rome, where he received a warm welcome from Cardinal Francesco Barberini. He was offered an apartment in the Vatican, but when he saw the Villa Medici he fell in love with the place and asked the Spanish ambassador, Count de Mounterrey, to see if he could live there. The count wrote to the grand duke in Florence, who was happy to instruct his Roman ambassador to extend an official invitation to the painter. On 19 May 1630, the Villa Medici was ready for Velazquez, but Ambassador Niccolini voiced unease about Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s possible reluctance to relinquish such an attraction. Everything worked smoothly, however, and Velazquez was pleased with his new surroundings, where he made two paintings of the gardens, which now hang in the Prado in Madrid. The scenes they represent are exactly those we can admire today at the Villa Medici. Among the famous works that Velazquez painted in Rome are “Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob” and “The Forge of Vulcan,” which added to his fame.
Velazquez and Galileo were guests of the Florentine government at the same time, but in different residences. Did they meet? Ambassador Niccolini was a man who enjoyed bringing people together, and Galileo was interested in painting and a friend of some of the best artists of his age. Since their stays overlapped by more than a month, Galileo and Velazquez almost certainly knew of each other’s presence, and it is likely that they met at the ambassador’s table. Galileo fared better at the Palazzo Firenze than Velazquez, who fell ill with a “tertiary fever” (perhaps malaria) at the Villa Medici and had to take up residence with the Spanish ambassador after Galileo had returned to Florence.
Velazquez journeyed back to Spain early in 1631. He stopped in Naples to make a portrait of the sister of King Philip IV, Maria, who had just married the king of Hungary, who later became the emperor, Ferdinand III. While in Naples, Velazquez bought some works of another Spanish painter, José Ribera, then at the height of his powers.
PAPAL AUDIENCE
When Galileo arrived in Rome Urban VIII was staying at Castel Gandolfo, some thirty kilometers away, in an old castle that he had restored and turned into his country residence. But no sooner had he returned to Rome around mid-May than he granted Galileo an audience. This was to be their only meeting during the eight weeks Galileo spent in Rome. His Holiness, as we have seen, had to attend to more pressing matters than guesswork about the nature of the rising and the setting of the Sun.
Galileo was probably received by the Pontiff on 18 May, the very day the gossip column known as the Avvisi spread the following item of news:
Galileo, the famous mathematician and astronomer, is here to try to publish a book in which he attacks several opinions held by the Jesuits. He has been understood to say that D. Anna. [Anna Colonna, the wife of Taddeo Barberini, the Pope’s nephew] will give birth to a son, that we shall have peace in Italy at the end of June, and that shortly thereafter Taddeo and the Pope will die. This last point is confirmed by the Neapolitan Caracioli, by Father Campanella, and by several articles that discuss the election of a new Pontiff as if the Holy See were already vacant.
Galileo’s arrival on 3 May came as a surprise to Ambassador Niccolini, but it was soon no secret that he was in Rome to have his book published. The claim that he attacked the Jesuits was not entirely false since they were reputed to oppose Copernicanism, but the rumor that he had something to do with the news sheets retailing prophecies of the early death of the pope was pure libel. As a professional astronomer, Galileo occasionally cast horoscopes, and a disreputable journalist could seize on that to write a sensational article that rested on no other evidence than the fact that life-threatening forecasts concerning the Barberini had begun to appear. Alas, some of Galileo’s friends may have been involved in these dubious exercises in astrological computation.
When Father Riccardi received the Dialogue from Galileo’s own hands, he passed it on to a fellow Dominican, Father Raffaello Visconti, who was interested in astronomy but whose curiosity extended well beyond into astrology and the occult sciences. He was a personal friend of Orazio Morandi, the abbot of the church of Santa Prassede in Rome, a master of the Hermetic arts and the author of horoscopes. He had even cast one of Galileo, whom he had known since at least 1613. On Sunday, 26 May 1630, roughly a week after meeting the pope, Galileo was invited to dinner by Morandi, in company of Father Visconti and another consultant of the Holy Office. We know nothing of their conversation.
The article in the Avvisi denouncing Galileo’s dire forecast for the Barberini family attracted attention. Michelangelo Buonarroti, the nephew of the great sculptor by the same name, was in Rome at the time, and Galileo asked him to broach the subject when he met Cardinal Francesco Barberini early in June in order to explain that he was innocent of any astrological foul play. No sooner had Buonarroti mentioned the rumor to the cardinal than the cardinal cut him short to say that he did not believe a word of it and that Galileo had “no better friend than the Pope
and himself,” as Buonarroti reported to Galileo on 3 June.
PLAYING POLITICS
We do not know what Galileo said to Urban VIII when they met, but the pope did most of the talking during audiences and it was not always easy to get in a word. How much Galileo was allowed to say will remain a mystery, but when he left he was firmly resolved to use all his contacts to get his book published. He had already requested the help of Filippo Niccolini, the brother of Ambassador Francesco Niccolini, and the principal advisor of Prince Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, the grand duke’s brother. On behalf of the prince, Filippo Niccolini told Visconti that whatever he did to expedite matters would give the grand duke great pleasure. The poor Dominican priest had probably never been the object of so much attention, but, unfortunately, the pressure that was brought to bear came from political and diplomatic figures who knew little about sensitive issues in theology.
The key player remained the pope, and his position had not changed. Galileo knew how Urban VIII felt from the conversation he had had with Cardinal Zollern in 1624. Better still, he had heard it from the pope’s own lips probably as early as 1616. What the pontiff had said was recorded by Agostino Oregio, the pope’s personal theologian, in a book published in 1629. While still a cardinal, Urban VIII asked a learned friend of his, who had worked out how the planets move on the assumption that the Earth moved, whether some other model was conceivable. If you want to say no, declared the pope, you would have to show that it would imply a contradiction, for God can do anything that is logically possible.
There can be little doubt that the “learned friend” was Galileo, for the pope’s argument is echoed at the end of the Dialogue. Unfortunately it comes after four days of a passionate defence of Copernicanism and it is placed in the mouth of Simplicio, who did not distinguish himself by his intelligence during that time. Simplicio is made to say to Galileo’s spokesman, Salviati, that he considers his ideas ingenious but not conclusive because he bears in mind what he heard “from a most eminent and learned person, before which one must fall silent.” He does not doubt that if Salviati were asked whether God, in His infinite power and wisdom, could have produced the tides without setting the Earth in motion, he would reply that He could in a number of ways that we cannot even imagine. “From this,” Simplicio says, “I conclude that it would be excessive boldness for anyone to limit and restrict the Divine power and wisdom to some particular fancy of his own.”
Having listened impatiently to Simplicio, Salviati burst out, What an admirable and angelic doctrine, and well in accord with another one, also Divine, which, while it grants to us the right to argue about the constitution of the universe (perhaps in order that the working of the human mind should not be curtailed or made lazy) adds that we cannot discover the work of His hands. Let us, then, exercise these activities permitted to us and ordained by God, that we may recognize and thereby so much the more admire His greatness, however much less fit we may find ourselves to penetrate the profound depths of His infinite wisdom.
The claim that God can create things in a variety of ways is not ludicrous in itself, but it arrives at an awkward moment after Salviati has shown that reasonable people should embrace the overwhelming evidence in favor of Copernicanism. For someone who had read the Dialogue from beginning to end, the passage we have quoted would have an ironical ring, but taken in isolation and without awareness of what comes before, it might pass muster. Galileo was not foolish enough to enjoy a cheap joke at the pope’s expense, but he may have been vain enough to think that neither he nor his censors would notice. In this, he was sadly mistaken. When the book finally appeared in print in 1632, someone murmured in the pontiff’s ear that he was being ridiculed.
GALILEO’S HIGH HOPES
But all this unpleasantness was in the future. In the spring of 1630 Galileo was convinced that he could carry the day and he applied himself to his correspondence with influential people. In order to ensure the benevolence of the 20-year-old Grand Duke Ferdinando II, Galileo kept him informed of his progress in Rome by writing to Count Orso d’Elci, the grand duke’s chamberlain. What Galileo hoped to achieve is known from the chamberlain’s reply of 3 June:
I am happy that you should find that the colleague [Visconti] of the Master of the Sacred Palace realizes that your argument is sound and that he hopes to persuade even the Pope that there is no reason to be unhappy with your proof that the tides are produced by the motion of the Earth.
Galileo was aiming high. In spite of repeated warnings not to offer physical arguments but to stick to astronomical conjectures, he still dreamt of turning Urban VIII round and getting his full endorsement. His letters to his Florentine friends positively encouraged the notion that he had already succeeded in his task. On 3 June 1630 another prominent person, Jacopo Giraldi, wrote to congratulate him on the happy outcome of his business in Rome. Galileo’s optimism seemed to be confirmed on Sunday, 16 June, when he received the following communication from Father Visconti:
The Master [Riccardi] sends his greetings and says that he is pleased with the book and will talk about the frontispiece with the Pope tomorrow. As far as the rest is concerned, once a few small things, such as those that we adjusted together, have been fixed, he will return the book.
The letter is signed, “Your Most affectionate servant and disciple.” Galileo had clearly won Visconti over. Together they had revised a few potentially troublesome passages, and Riccardi was satisfied, although he wanted to make a few small changes. All that remained to be discussed with the pope was the frontispiece, an engraving showing Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Copernicus. Just a routine check. Things could hardly have looked better, and when Galileo left Rome on Wednesday, 26 June, he had every reason to feel elated. So did Ambassador Niccolini, who wrote to the secretary of state in Florence that Galileo had achieved all he intended and that “the Pope had been glad to see him and had treated him affectionately. So had Cardinal Barberini, who kept him for dinner. All the Court honored him and treated him with the high consideration that he deserves.” The grand duke must have been delighted: Rome seemed not only willing but eager to oblige his personal mathematician.
The political and diplomatic side looked rosy, but what had really been achieved? When Riccardi was handed over the manuscript of the Dialogue in April he already knew that the book was an extended plea for Copernicanism. He had asked that this be toned down and that the theory be presented as a mathematical hypothesis for which no physical claim would be made. He entrusted the revision to Father Visconti, who sat down with Galileo and made a few adjustments that probably consisted in deleting claims that the Copernican system was true. Visconti reported that the undesirable material had been excised, and Riccardi, who wanted to please Galileo, the Tuscan ambassador, and the grand duke, expressed his satisfaction. But Riccardi was also concerned with staying on the pope’s right side, and he acted with diplomatic cunning. He requested that a “few small things” be revised, and, more importantly, he did not formally allow the book to be printed. He skilfully conveyed the impression that all that had to be discussed with the pope was the minor point of the illustration on the front page. For the time being, he had managed to please both Florence and Rome. Galileo, he surmised, was wise enough to read between the lines and understand what had to be done.
A PATRON DIES AND A FRIEND IS IN TROUBLE
At the beginning of August 1630, Galileo received a blow when he learned that Prince Cesi had died at the age of 45, intestate, and with his finances in a sorry state. The Lyncean Academy was doomed unless Cardinal Francesco Barberini, a fellow Lyncean, came to the rescue. The cardinal did not deem it opportune to do so, and the academy suffered the fate of its founder. This was sad news for all the members of the select club, but it was singularly devastating for Galileo, who had expected Cesi to pay for the publication of the Dialogue and iron out the matter of the imprimatur with the master of the sacred palace. Who would now defray the cost of printing a 500-page book and, worse still, who would
be in a position to speak to Riccardi and fix those “few small things”? Cesi may have become less influential in recent years, but he was a great nobleman with relatives in high places, and he had a shrewd grasp of what could and could not be attempted at the Vatican. His death meant that Galileo would have to navigate alone in a sea that was more treacherous than he suspected and where the shoals were no less real for being invisible to the naked eye. A publisher would have to be convinced that the book was marketable, and Galileo would have to attend to the business himself. This could not be done in Rome, and Galileo started casting about for a local Florentine printer.
August brought further bad news. Shortly after Galileo had left Rome for Florence, the Abbot Orazio Morandi was denounced for his astrological forecasts, summoned to the Holy Office, and imprisoned. Galileo requested information from Vincenzio Langieri, a mutual friend, who replied on 17 August that the trial was kept so secret that he had no way of finding out what was going on. All he could say was that it was called “the Big Trial” because so many people were involved. This could hardly have been comforting for Galileo if he remembered that his horoscope was among Morandi’s papers.
Shea and Artigas - Galileo in Rome Page 16