These can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are burning arrows. They set fire to great masses of popular prejudices; smoke rises to obscure the real questions, fire bursts forth at times to destroy the attacked party. They are poisoned weapons. They go to the hearts of loving women, they alienate dear children. They injure the man after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best—fears for his eternal happiness—dread of the divine displeasure.
Of course, in these days, these weapons, though often effective in disturbing good men, and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted. Indeed, they not unfrequently injure assailants more than assailed; so it was not in the days of Galileo. These weapons were then in all their sharpness and venom.
The first champion who appears against him is Bellarmin, one of the greatest of theologians, and one of the poorest of scientists. He was earnest, sincere, learned, but made the fearful mistake for the world, of applying to science, direct, literal interpretation of Scripture.[1]
The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the doctrine to prevail that the heavenly bodies revolve about the sun, and not about the earth. Their most tremendous theologic engine against Galileo was the idea that his pretended discovery vitiated the whole Christian plan of salvation. Father Le Gazrée declared that it "cast suspicion on the doctrine of the Incarnation." Others declared that it "upset the whole basis of theology; that if the earth is a planet, and one among several planets, it cannot be that any such great things have been done especially for it, as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can these inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?"[2]
Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks upon the ideas of Copernicus and his school.[3]
In addition to this prodigious engine of war, there was kept up a terrific fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural extracts. Some samples of these weapons may be interesting.
When Galileo had discovered the four satellites of Jupiter,[4] the
- ↑ For Bellarmin's view see Quinet, "Jesuits," vol. ii., p. 189. For other objectors and objections, see Libri, "Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie," vol. iv., pp. 233, 234; also, "Private Life of Galileo," compiled from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter, Boston, 1870 (an excellent little book).
- ↑ See Trouessart, cited in Flammarion, "Mondes Imaginaires et Réels," sixième édition, pp. 315, 316.
- ↑ "Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ," pp. 220, 221.
- ↑ See Delambre as to the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter being the turning-point
