Galileo’s disclosures caused the stir that might be expected from the first revision of the world since that evening in October, 4004 bc, when, according to Archbishop Ussher’s careful calculations, God “ushered in” (so he put it) the universe. Some early readers extolled Galileo as the new Columbus; others denounced him as a charlatan; and many sat on the fence. Conspicuous among the denouncers was Martin Horky, a true Foolosopher, who objected that the telescope created the sights seen through it and that, even if the Medici stars existed, they would be useless, since judicial astrology did well without them. Horky’s objections briefly occupied the attention of several of King James’s subjects then in or around Padua. One of them hesitated whether to believe in the rocky moon or “the 4 new Medicea [S]idera, found out by Galileo,” but accepted the resolution of the Milky Way into stars and the ability of Copernican astronomy to predict phenomena “as truely, as we that [think] the Heavens [in] motion and the Earth to stand still.”58 A Catholic Scot studying at Padua, John Wedderburn, a protégé of Wotton, undertook to rebut Horky. What was the use of the Medici stars? Wedderburn: To vex people like you, Horky, “who superstitiously try to apply the least glimmers in the heavens to particular effects and want to govern the free will of men.” What was the use of Galileo’s discoveries? “To liberate posterity from astrology.”59 Were all Galileo’s observations persuasive? The disciple hesitated. Although he allowed that the telescope reliably enlarged distant objects and revealed ones undetectable without it, Wedderburn could not understand how it could show an object differently shaped from its appearance to the naked eye. He therefore doubted Galileo’s detection of the phases of Venus, although many astronomers accepted them as proof that the planet’s orbit encircled the sun.60
The Jesuit mathematicians of the Roman College entertained Galileo in 1611. A Catholic Englishman, George Fortescue, who then boarded at the English College, was present. Perhaps paraphrasing conversations he heard there, Fortescue wrote a dialogue in Latin between Galileo and two of the mathematicians, the patriarchal Christoph Clavius and his more liberal disciple Christoph Grienberger. Fortescue begins his dialogue with Clavius’s account of powerful lenses and a tall story about an engraver who stared so hard at his work that his spectacles were riddled with holes; then deviates to astrology; and returns to optics with the telescope and the discoveries made with its aid.61
The Jesuits accepted the discoveries, both in Fortescue’s report and in fact, as did other important Roman churchmen and laymen to whom Galileo demonstrated them. Among the impressed laity was the young nobleman Federico Cesi, the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei (“Of the Lynxes”), a small keen-eyed group interested in natural science. Galileo joined it and advertised himself as a lynx in several of his publications, including the Dialogue. By the time Fortescue wrote up his Feriae academicae (“Academic holidays”) in the late 1620s, Cesi’s lynxes included Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the powerful nephew of Pope Urban VIII. Probably the “Roman academics” to whom Fortescue dedicated his book, and among whom he specially mentioned Barberini, were the lynxes. When Galileo received Fortescue’s short dialogue, his great one was nearing completion.62 He had worked on it for twenty years, he informed Fortescue, and still it lacked important information. Do you know any unusual certain facts about the tides? “In the book I enquire into their most hidden causes, which have stirred up more commotion among philosophers than in the sea itself, and which, unless I deceive myself, I explain marvelously.”63 He deceived himself grievously.
In Fortescue’s dialogue, Grienberger anticipates Galileo’s subsequent career with the warning, “if you are thinking about Copernicus, go cautiously and timidly.” And he points the admonition by asking what Galileo had to say about the inhabitants of other worlds.64 Galileo’s friendly rival Johannes Kepler replied to a similar question by writing a book about life on the moon. Galileo dissociated himself from such speculations for fear of association with Bruno and also, perhaps, because he did not believe in extraterrestrial intelligence. But it was so obvious an inference! Ben Jonson easily inserted it into a play in 1611: Love, helping Cupid to unravel a riddle that required finding “a world without,” observes that “[it] is already done, And is the new world i’ the moon.”65 Galileo did not heed the advice Grienberger gave him in Fortescue’s fiction and probably also in real life.
The most important immediate response to Sidereus nuncius by an Englishman came from an old friend of Wotton. He was the poet John Donne, writing in prose and exploiting Galileo’s lunar observations in a lengthy satire, Ignatius his Conclave (1611), aimed at the Society of Jesus. Frequently reprinted, Ignatius helped to keep Galileo in the English mind and, by joshing with the implications of innovation, to enrich the significance of the emblem in Cleyn’s picture. In Donne’s satire, the Jesuits make innovation, especially of items that “gave affront to all antiquitie, and induced doubts, and anxieties, and scruples, and…a libertie of believing what [one] would,” the main qualification for entry into Hell. Copernicus, deeming himself so qualified, demanded accommodation. Acting as Lucifer’s lieutenant, Ignatius inquired what novelty Copernicus had produced to assist the Devil. Merely exchanging the sun and the earth did not suffice. “What cares [the Devil] whether the earth traveil, or stand still?” Perhaps Copernicus upset a few philosophers. But that achievement scarcely counted compared with the supererogatory work of confusion engineered by the Jesuits’ great mathematician Clavius—that is, the Gregorian calendar, which put ten days between Europe and England. Still, Ignatius granted, Copernicus was a controversial innovator and might qualify for admission to Hell if the pope declared, “as a matter of faith, That the earth does not move.” That would raise hell. Until then, Copernicus lacked the necessary qualifications.66
Next come the radical physician Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus [Paracelsus] von Hohenheim, whose name sounds like an exorcism, and the more congenial Machiavelli. Ignatius defeats both; the Jesuits and the popes know as much about poisoning as Paracelsus and far outdo Machiavelli in lying. Columbus fails also, on the ground that all the mischief resulting from his discoveries was the work of the Jesuits.67 Ignatius’s high barrier makes Lucifer worry that only Jesuits will be allowed into Hell. How rid himself of them? Call in Galileo! What? Yes, Galileo, whose glasses when blessed by the pope will have the power to draw the moon as close to the earth as desired. “And thither (because they ever claime that the imployments of discovery belong to them) shall all the Jesuits be transferred.” Ignatius agrees, having heard from Clavius that the lunatic queen is easy to lead and because he expected to use the moon as a launchpad for conquering the stars. But before Ignatius can set out, news of his canonization reaches Hell. The pope had yielded to the Jesuitical argument that, since animal butchers have their saint, spiritual butchers should have one too. Saints undoubtedly have a right of residence in Hell. Ignatius remained there.68
Since the first version of Ignatius, in Latin, entered the Stationers’ Register on 24 January 1611, Donne must have begun it within a few months of the publication of Sidereus nuncius. A year later, after he had pondered the ramifications of Copernican ideas more closely, he decided that the innovation did indeed shake the foundations of established learning, and published the famous lines:
And new philosophy calls all in doubt
The element of fire is quite put out
The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit
can well direct him where to look for it
. . . . .
’Tis all in peeces, all cohaerance gone
All just supply, and all relation.69
With this change of tone, Donne sounded as alarmist as the cardinals of the Inquisition.
While Galileo tried to restore coherence by advocating Copernican astronomy more openly and aggressively, the Inquisition was looking into its compatibility with Scripture. We know the result of its interdisciplinary deliberations. The head of the Inquisition’s Copernican
committee was an Irishman, Peter Lombard, then laboring to complete a gigantic manuscript responding to King James’s criticism of his activities as head (in absentia) of the Catholic Church in Ireland.70 Perhaps the Irish Question prevented the learned Lombard from giving his full attention to the Copernican one. On the strength of his committee’s brief report, the Inquisition condemned heliocentrism and the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus’s mathematical masterpiece “until corrected.”
Galileo had come to Rome in 1616 on his own initiative before the rulings of the Inquisition and the Index in the hope that he could persuade their cardinals not to act foolishly. Many prelates already knew his views on the interpretation of Scripture, which were circulating in an unpublished letter he had written to Cosimo II’s mother, the Grand Duchess Christina. Although the Council of Trent had prohibited amateur theologizing, the Roman establishment did not rebuke Galileo publicly for his theology or cosmology. Instead, the pope, still Paul V, deputed battle-hardened Bellarmine to tell Galileo privately about the Inquisition’s decision. Under circumstances not entirely clear, at the same session Galileo received the additional order not to hold or teach the Copernican theory in any way at all. Bellarmine acknowledged, however, that, if irrefutable proof of the earth’s motion and the sun’s immobility were found, the Church would have to rethink its position. This was more a statement of logic than of policy, however, since he deemed such a proof to be infinitely unlikely.
Galileo thought he might have found one in his unfortunate theory of ocean tides. In his solution, probably invented in the 1590s by Sarpi, a combination of the earth’s spin on its axis and revolution around the sun agitates the waters: and, more aggressively, only if the earth so moved could there be tides at all. Galileo wrote out this theory for the first time in January 1616 as a letter to a young cardinal who was to deliver it in time to influence the deliberations of Peter Lombard’s committee. Although it probably did not reach its destination, like the letter to the Grand Duchess it circulated widely in manuscript. It raised universal interest and puzzlement, since the theory had no place for the moon in generating diurnal tides. That disagreed with the experience of all mariners and also of Shakespeare’s witch, the mother of Caliban, “one so strong ǀ That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs [of the sea].”71
England’s Sarpi
Like Sarpi, Francis Bacon, Attorney General and Lord Chancellor, revolved in the highest circles of government. They also shared political views and interests in natural knowledge and enjoyed reputations for superior wisdom and learning. Through Micanzio and the apostate Tobie Matthew, a relative of Bacon, they knew about one another’s thinking, which, in respect of Galileo’s claims, differed fundamentally.72 Sarpi approached physics as a mathematician and accepted Galileo’s astronomical observations and deductions; they were obvious enough, he held, and urged Galileo to return to the important traditional philosophical problems of motion, gravity, and levity, which the Copernican system had made more difficult and pressing.73 Bacon approached knowledge claims as a lawyer and welcomed Galileo’s discoveries as so many proofs of the poverty of the physics taught in the schools. He also regarded the problem of gravity, of “the heavy and the light,” as important, and wrote a little tract about them that would excite the interest of Maurice Williams. But, whereas Sarpi expected that Galileo would find a science of motion capable of handling the Copernican system, Bacon was almost as certain as Bellarmine that he would not.
Bacon’s method recommended caution. Does the universe have more than one center? “Those little wandering stars discovered around Jupiter by Galileo” would confirm the concept, “if the report can be trusted.” The old problem of the nature of the Milky Way seemed to be nearing resolution, “if we are to believe what Galileo has reported.” We are not far from Foolania: Galileo’s ongoing observations have raised “some suspicion” that the sun’s face has spots.74 Bacon soon discovered that, although Galileo’s observations passed muster, his way of reasoning did not. The proof was in the tides. In an unpublished tract of 1611, Bacon supposed that the seas circulate from east to west in sympathy with the diurnal motion of the heavens; that the moon’s position modulates the circulation and the continents obstruct it; and that the combination produces two high and two low tides a day synchronized to the moon’s passage. In contrast, Galileo derived the ebb and flow from the rotation of the earth, “a supposition arbitrary enough, as far as physical reasons are concerned.” Indeed, altogether false.75
While Galileo was chuckling over Bacon’s tidal theory, his own came under fire from another Englishman, Richard White, a student of mathematics at Pisa. Clever enough to argue with Galileo, or, as Matthew judged, “too soft” to know his limitations, White observed, correctly, that Galileo’s theory could not easily deliver more than one high and one low tide a day. Galileo seems to have hesitated over this criticism, but only briefly; and when White returned to England via Matthew in Belgium, he had with him several of Galileo’s published books, including Sidereus nuncius, and a few of his unpublished manuscripts, including “On the Tides.” Matthew sent this last item to Bacon.76 The chancellor was then putting the final touches on his Novum organum (1620), which ruled out Galileo’s tides on two counts: in theory, because “devised upon an assumption which cannot be allowed, viz., that the earth moves;” and by observation, by “the sex-horary motion of the tide.”77
When Wotton returned to Venice for his third stint as ambassador in 1621, he had several copies of his kinsman Bacon’s Novum organum in his baggage. He thought that this famous diagnosis of the ills of received learning would be very nourishing for his Venetian friends. “[I]t is not a banquet that men may superficially taste…but in truth, a solid feast, which requireth due mastication.” Micanzio had the teeth for Bacon.
[I]f he brings his worke to the perfection he promiseth [thus Micanzio], Philosophy would be more beholding to him than it was ever yett to any, nor can I compare him to any…For the philosophy of theis tymes is but a Logick full of words, but that singular witt, truly singular, peirceth into the rootes of the defects thereof.
Another cracker of tough nuts, Kepler, received a copy of Novum organum from Wotton’s own hands. Knowing Kepler’s difficulties as a Protestant in a Catholic country and as an Imperial Mathematician living more on his title than his salary, Wotton invited him to England. Alas, Kepler was as irrationally attached to the Empire as Sarpi was to Venice.78
Like Galileo, Bacon advertised the innovative character of his “new instrument” for exploring the world. Unhappily, he had no practicable plan of execution. Where would he have found staff? Galileo had not met his standard, nor could other mathematicians, owing to their “daintiness and pride,” their reliance on fictions, and their tendency to domineer over other cultivators of science.79 Oxbridge dons could not fill the bill either, for reasons given in Novum organum. Even so devoted a follower as Micanzio recognized that Novum organum was a collection of axioms, “food so substantiall that it must be taken by littles, and converted by study into nature,” and not a blueprint for collective action.80 Not until the end of his life did Bacon indicate, and only in the form of a utopia, how his vision might be achieved.
Bacon compiled human as well as natural histories, from which, and his own rich experience, he extracted such wisdom as is found in his popular Essays on moral matters. Both Matthew and Micanzio tried to exploit the Essays for cultural warfare in Italy. Matthew hoped that an edition addressed to the Grand Duke of Tuscany might persuade him that not all English Protestants were savages and that closer ties with Bacon’s master, King James, were practicable. An Italian translation of the Essays was at hand. The translator, William Cavendish, soon to be the second Earl of Devonshire, had learned his Italian in Venice with the help of Micanzio; his errors in rendering Bacon were corrected by De Dominis; whence arose a reliable text that would have suited Matthew’s purpose perfectly had it not contained two obnoxious articles. One ridiculed disputes over indi
fferent religious beliefs and another charged the Catholic Church with “sensual rites and ceremonies, excess of outward and pharasiatical holiness, [and] over-great reverence for tradition.”81 At Matthew’s request Bacon agreed to remove the offensive essays and the Italian text intended for Florence came forth from London in 1618 without them. It also lacked the preface Matthew had added describing his author’s high status in England.82 Mention of Bacon’s name and distinctions would have triggered the general ban against books by heretics. Micanzio had the book reprinted in freer Venice with the author’s name, “Francesco Bacchon,” but otherwise left it alone. Even in the Serenissima it would have been dangerous to include the anti-Roman essays of a heretic.83
Italian Attractions
Many Englishmen had hands-on experience of the art, architecture, and courtesans of Venice. Guidebooks warned against visiting these last attractions while allowing that discussing religion might be riskier. Another great draw was the ghetto. Most Englishmen had never knowingly set eyes on a Jew at home since few lived there openly between their expulsion in 1290 and their readmission in 1655. The well-traveled Thomas Coryate, who published his observations as Crudities, attempted the double feat of converting a courtesan to chastity and a rabbi to Christianity. His attempt on the rabbi almost ended his crudities. Ben Jonson described the adventures.
The Ghost of Galileo Page 4