Galileo's Dream

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  You see then how treacherous time subdues us, how we are all subject to mutation. And that which most afflicts us among so many things is that we have neither certainty nor any hope at all of reassuming that same being in which we once found ourselves. We depart, and do not return the same; and since we have no recollection of what we were before we were in this being, so we cannot have an indication of that which we shall be afterward.

  —GIORDANO BRUNO, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast

  GALILEO WOKE WITH A START, and Cartophilus put a hand to his arm. “You’re in the Vatican. Remember?”

  “I remember,” Galileo croaked, looking around.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Galileo stared at him. “I want justice.”

  Cartophilus frowned. “Everyone does, maestro. But there may be more important things to want right now. Like your life.”

  Galileo growled at him.

  Cartophilus shrugged. “Just the way it is, maestro. Here. Drink this wine.”

  Eighteen days after his first deposition, and two days after his private conversation with Maculano, Galileo asked to speak to the commissary general again. He was brought before his examiners, there in the same room where the first deposition had taken place.

  When they were all in their assigned places, Maculano said in his sonorous Latin, “Please state whatever you wish to say.”

  Galileo read aloud from a page of writing he held in his hand, enunciating clearly his Tuscan Italian. “For several days I have been thinking continuously and intensively about the interrogation I underwent on the sixteenth of this month, and in particular about the question of whether sixteen years ago I had been prohibited, by order of the Holy Office, from holding, defending, and teaching in any way whatever the opinion, then condemned, of the earth’s motion and sun’s stability. It dawned on me to reread my printed Dialogo, which over the last three years I had not even looked at.”

  This was impossible to believe, given the job it had been to print it; but onward—

  “I wanted to check very carefully whether, against my best intentions, through an oversight, I might have written not only something enabling readers or superiors to infer a defect of disobedience on my part, but also other details through which one might think of me as a transgressor of the order of the Holy Church. Being at liberty, through the generous approval of superiors, to send one of my servants for errands, I managed to get a copy of my book, and I started to read it with the greatest concentration and to examine it in the most detailed manner. Not having seen it for so long, I found it almost a new book by another author. Now, I freely confess that it appeared to me in several places to be written in such a way that a reader not aware of my intention might have had reason to form the opinion that the arguments for the false side, which I intended to confute, were so stated as to be capable of convincing because of their strength, rather than being easy to answer. In particular, two arguments, one based on sunspots and the other on the tides, are presented favorably to the reader as being strong and powerful, more than would seem proper for someone who deemed them to be inconclusive and wanted to confute them, as indeed I inwardly and truly did, and do, hold them to be inconclusive and refutable. As an excuse for myself, for having fallen into an error so foreign to my intention, I did it because I was not completely satisfied with saying that when one presents arguments for the opposite side with the intention of confuting them, they must be explained in the fairest way and not be made out of straw to the disadvantage of the opponent. Being dissatisfied with this excuse, as I said, I resorted to that of the natural gratification everyone feels for his own subtleties and for showing himself to be cleverer than the average man, by finding ingenious and apparently correct considerations of probability even in favor of false propositions. Nevertheless—even though, to use Cicero’s words, ‘I am more desirous of glory than is suitable’—if I had to write out the same arguments now, there is no doubt I would weaken them in such a way that they could not appear to exhibit a force which they really and essentially lack. My error then was, and I confess it, one of vain ambition, pure ignorance, and inadvertence.

  “This is as much as I need to say on this occasion, and it occurred to me as I reread my book.”

  He looked up at Maculano and nodded, and Maculano again gestured to the nun. In a moment the transcript was ready for his signature, boldly and clearly executed:

  I, Galileo Galilei, have testified as above.

  When he was done with that, after swearing him again to secrecy, Maculano concluded the hearing.

  Galileo was free to leave the chamber, and did. But all of a sudden he rushed back in, looking stricken. Everyone there was startled to see him reappear. Pop-eyed, his voice far humbler than it had been at any time so far, he asked Maculano if he could add something to his deposition.

  Maculano, taken aback, could only agree. Galileo then spoke extempore, almost faster than the scribe could write.

  “And for greater confirmation that I neither did hold nor do hold as true the condemned opinion of the earth’s motion and sun’s stability, if, as I desire, I am granted the possibility and the time to prove it more clearly, I am ready to do so. The occasion for it is readily available since in the book already published the speakers agree that after a certain time they should meet again to discuss various physical problems other than the subject already dealt with. Hence, with this pretext to add one or two other Days, I promise to reconsider the arguments already presented in favor of the said false and condemned opinion and to confute them in the most effective way that the blessed God will enable me. So I beg this Holy Tribunal to cooperate with me in this good resolution, by granting me the permission to put it into practice.”

  If granted, this would of course imply that the Dialogo was to be taken off the prohibited list. It looked like he had come back in on an impulse, to beg for the book’s life, even though the changes he proposed would make it into one gigantic mass of incoherent contradiction.

  He stood there red-faced, drawn up, shoulders back, staring at Maculano.

  Maculano nodded impassively, instructed the scribe to show Galileo the revised deposition. After reading it, Galileo again signed.

  I, Galileo Galilei, affirm the above.

  So, Galileo had kept his part of the deal. Confession in return for a reprimand. He had confessed to vainglorious ambition, which had led him to break the rule of an injunction from 1616 that he had never seen—that in fact he knew very well had been forged, either back at the time or recently. He had given Maculano what Maculano had asked for. Now he had to wait for Maculano to do his part.

  At first things looked promising. Niccolini’s weekly letter to Cioli reported that Maculano had spoken to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and after that conversation, on the cardinal’s own authority, the Sanc-tissimus being away at Castel Gondolfo, Francesco Barberini had ordered that Galileo be allowed to move back to the Villa Medici to await the next stage of the proceedings, so that he can recover from the discomforts and his usual indispositions, which keep him in constant torment.

  At the Villa Medici, Niccolini wrote in his next letter, he seems to have regained his good health. He was allowed to walk in the extensive gardens daily, even to help with the weeding if he wanted to. He looked hungrily over the wall at the gardens of the Trinita church, and on his behalf Niccolini asked Maculano to ask Cardinal Barberini if Galileo could extend his walks there. This too was allowed. Galileo’s own letters home, to Maria Celeste and various associates, though silent on the trial, as they had to be, were positive in tone. The letters to close colleagues indicated that he expected the Dialogo to survive the trial, revised but with the prohibition lifted.

  After reading one of his letters to her, Maria Celeste wrote back the next day.

  The joy that your last dear letter brought to me, and the having to read it over and over to the nuns, who made quite a jubilee on hearing its contents, put me into such an excited state that I was s
eized by a terrible headache that lasted from the fourteenth hour of the morning on into the night, something truly outside my usual experience. I do not say this to reproach you, but to show how I take to heart all your concerns. And though I am not more strongly affected by what happens to you than a daughter ought to be, yet I dare to say that the love and reverence I bear my dearest lord and father does surpass by a good deal that of the generality of daughters. And I know that in like manner he excels most parents in his love of me, his daughter: and that is all I have to say.

  Actually she had much more to say, as she wrote almost daily. And he wrote her back at least weekly, and often more frequently, depending on how he was feeling. She gave him news of the convent and of his own household at Il Gioièllo: the fate of the crops and the wine production, the behavior of the donkey, the affairs of the servants, her shock that her brother Vincenzio had not written to Galileo even once, and so on. Always there was encouragement for him, and reassurance that he was blessed by God, and lucky to be who he was. Galileo snatched these letters when they arrived and stopped whatever else he was doing to read them like a man in a desert drinking a long draft of water. Sometimes he shook his head at their contents, with a sad or cynical smile. He kept them in a neat stack, in a basket on a night table by his bed.

  During these days of waiting for a judgment, Grand Duke Ferdi-nando had Cioli write to Niccolini to say that the time during which the grand duke was willing to pay for Galileo’s lodging had come to an end, and that Galileo should now pay for his own upkeep. Niccolini let nothing of this particular slight be heard by Galileo himself, though it did get around the villa. Not that it took this news to make Galileo aware of the weak support he was getting from home. He was already aware of it; he would never forget it, or forgive it.

  For now, he enjoyed the friendship and support of Niccolini and his wife, the wonderful Caterina Riccardi. Indeed all the staff of the Villa Medici seemed both proud of him and fond of him—like all the other Galilean households, in other words, except that this one was not also afraid of him.

  Niccolini wrote sharply back to Florence.

  In regard to what Your Most Illustrious Lordship tells me, namely that His Highness does not intend to pay for his expenses here beyond the first month, I can reply that I am not about to discuss this matter with him while he is my guest. I would rather assume the burden myself. The expenses will not exceed 14 or 15 scudi a month, including everything; thus, if he were to stay here six months, they would add up to 90 or 100 scudi between him and his servant.

  “A trifling amount for a grand duke to be stingy about,” he said aloud but did not add.

  Galileo’s third deposition was to be a formality only, completing the steps every trial for heresy had to go through: confession, defense, abjuration. This was both confession and defense, and what Galileo must confess to and what he could say in his own defense had both already been worked out in the private meeting with Maculano.

  When the time came for it—the tenth of May, a month after the first deposition, and three months after his arrival in Rome—Galileo was returned to the Vatican with the document he had carefully written out, copying it over five times before getting it to his own satisfaction.

  The white examination room with its crucifix was as before, the occupants likewise.

  Maculano began by explaining to Galileo that he had eight days in which to present his defense, if he wanted it.

  Having heard this formality, Galileo nodded and said, “I understand what Your Paternity has told me. In reply I say that I do want to present something in my defense, namely in order to show the sincerity and purity of my intention, not at all to excuse my having transgressed in some ways, as I have already said. I present the following statement, together with a certificate by the late Most Eminent Cardinal Bellarmino, written with his own hand by the Lord Cardinal himself, of which I earlier presented a copy by my hand.”

  So he persisted with the signed document from Bellarmino’s own hand, which he had done well to ask for, as it was serving as the crucial counterweight to the forged injunction that had been sprung on him during his first deposition. Thus Sarpi’s actions in 1616 now helped him at last.

  “For the rest,” Galileo concluded, “I rely in every way on the usual mercy and clemency of this Tribunal.”

  After signing his name, he was sent back to the house of the above mentioned Ambassador of the Most Serene Grand Duke, under the conditions already communicated to him.

  The written defense Galileo had handed to the Commissary focused mostly on the question of why he had not informed Riccardi that he was writing a book that included a discussion of the Copernican view. He explained that this was because in his first deposition he had not been asked about it, and now he wanted to do that, to prove the absolute purity of my mind, always opposed to using simulation and deceit in any of my actions. Which was almost true.

  He described the history of the letter he had obtained from Bellarmino, and the reason for its existence: that he had requested it in order to have an explicit guidance for future action. He went on to claim that what it said in print, frequently consulted by him over the years, had no doubt allowed him to forget any supplementary prohibitions that had only been spoken, if they had been, at one of the many meetings Galileo had initiated in 1616. The new and more extensive prohibitions which I hear are contained in the injunction given to me and recorded, that is, “teaching” and “in any way whatever,” struck me as very new and unheard. I do not think I should be mistrusted about the fact that in the course of fourteen or sixteen years I lost any memory of them, especially since I had no need to give the matter any thought, having such a valid reminder in writing.

  Very new and unheard, he insisted.

  He also reminded the commission that he had handed the manuscript of his book over to the censors of the Inquisition and gotten it approved. Therefore, I think I can firmly hope that the idea of my having knowingly and willingly disobeyed the orders given me will not be believed by the Most Eminent and Most Prudent Lord Judges.

  Most Prudent, he reminded them.

  Then he ended his written defense with the following:

  Finally, I am left with asking you to consider the pitiable state of ill health to which I am reduced, due to ten months of constant mental distress, and the discomforts of a long and tiresome journey in the most awful season and at the age of seventy. I feel I have lost the greater part of the years that my previous state of health promised me. I am encouraged to do this by the faith I have in the clemency and kindness of heart of the Most Eminent Lordships, my judges; and I hope that if their sense of justice perceives anything lacking among so many ailments as adequate punishment for my crimes, they will, I beg them, condone it out of regard for my declining old age, which I humbly also ask them to consider. Equally, I want them to consider my honor and reputation against the slanders of those who hate me, and I hope that when the latter insist on disparaging my reputation, the Most Eminent Lordships will take it as evidence why it became necessary for me to obtain from the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Bellarmino the certificate attached herewith.

  Despite the pathos of old age stuff, it was on the whole a robust, one might even say defiant, defense. All he had confessed to was the vain ambition and satisfaction of appearing clever beyond the average popular writers. To the attentive eye it even seemed he had obliquely alluded to the possibly fraudulent nature of some of the evidence brought against him.

  Perhaps it was this defiance that did it; perhaps it was something else. In any case, for whatever reason, the trial did not proceed. A judgment did not arrive.

  Weeks passed, and more weeks. No word came from the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Galileo spent his days walking the paths of the Villa Medici gardens, in its layout so much like the legal maze in which he now found himself.

  It was late spring by now, and everything was bursting with new life. The white clouds pouring in from the Mediterranean were full of rain
. At the Vatican, the Inquisition was presumably preparing its final report to Pope Urban. Or perhaps they were done, and waiting for the Sanctissimus to return from Castel Gondolfo. Around the city, so full of agents and observers, any judgment on Galileo seemed possible.

  Meanwhile here he stood, in a big green garden. The vegetable patches were located out against the back wall, used by the cook to help feed the villa’s big household, which numbered over a hundred. Galileo strolled down and sat on a stool in the rows of tomato plants, weeding. When hands are dirty the soul is clean. There was nothing he could do but wait. His rheumatism bothered him, as did his hernia. And at night, his insomnia. He had not even brought a telescope on this trip, and if there was one there that he had given an ambassador in earlier visits, no one told him, and he did not ask. Occasionally, despite the garden, he would be overcome with melancholy, or fear, or even terror. The sleepless nights and the days after were especially hard. All day in the garden was sometimes scarcely enough to pull him out of his black apprehension.

  May ran out of days. Then in early June, the pope returned to his residence in the Vatican.

  Niccolini met with him as soon as permitted, and asked for a speedy end to the trial, and for a merciful judgment. Urban explained he had been merciful already, but that the judgment had to be a condemnation. He promised it would come soon.

  “There is no way of avoiding some personal punishment,” he told Niccolini brusquely.

  Niccolini came home worried. Something had changed, he could tell. Things no longer seemed to be going so well.

  He wrote to Cioli:

  So far to Signor Galileo I have only mentioned the imminent conclusion of the trial and the prohibition of the book. However, I told him nothing about the personal punishment, in order not to afflict him by telling him everything at once; furthermore, His Holiness ordered me not to tell him in order not to torment him yet, and because things will perhaps change through deliberations. Thus I also think it proper that no one there at your end inform him of anything.