The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe/Part 2/Chapter 2

by Dorothy Stimson

 

CHAPTER II.

Bruno and Galileo.

WHEN the Roman Catholic authorities awoke to the dangers of the new teaching, they struck with force. The first to suffer was the famous monk-philosopher, Giordano Bruno, whose trial by the Holy Office was premonitory of trouble to come for Galileo.^[1]

After an elementary education at Naples near his birth-place, Nola,^[2] Filippo Bruno^[3] entered the Dominican monastery in 1562 or 1563 when about fourteen years old, assuming the name Giordano at that time. Before 1572, when he entered the priesthood, he had fully accepted the Copernican theory which later became the basis of all his philosophical thought. Bruno soon showed he was not made for the monastic life. Various processes were started against him, and fleeing to Rome he abandoned his monk's garments and entered upon the sixteen years of wandering over Europe, a peripatetic teacher of the philosophy of an infinite universe as deduced from the Copernican doctrine and thus in a way its herald.^[4] He reached Geneva in 1579 (where he did not accept Calvinism as was formerly thought),^[5] but decided before many months had passed that it was wise to depart elsewhere because of the unpleasant position in which he found himself there. He had been brought before the Council for printing invectives against one of the professors, pointing out some twenty of his errors. The Council sent him to the Consistory, the governing body of the church, where a formal sentence of excommunication was passed against him. When he apologized it was withdrawn. Probably a certain stigma remained, and he left Geneva soon thereafter with a warm dislike for Calvinism. After lecturing at the University of Toulouse he appeared in Paris in 1581, where he held an extraordinary readership. Two years later he was in England, for he lectured at Oxford during the spring months and defended the Copernican theory before the Polish prince Alasco during the latter's visit there in June.^[6]

To Bruno belongs the glory of the first public proclamation in England of the new doctrine,^[7] though only Gilbert^[8] and possibly Wright seem to have accepted it at the time. Upon Bruno's return to London, he entered the home of the French ambassador as a kind of secretary, and there spent the happiest years of his life till the ambassador's recall in October, 1585. It was during this period that he wrote some of his most famous books. In La Cena de la Ceneri he defended the Copernican theory, incidentally criticising the Oxford dons most severely,^[9] for which he apologized in De la Causa, Principio et Uno. He developed his philosophy of an infinite universe in De l'Infinito e Mondi, and in the Spaccio de la Bestia Trionphante "attacked all religions of mere credulity as opposed to religions of truth and deeds."^[6] This last book was at once thought to be a biting attack upon the Roman Church and later became one of the grounds of the Inquisition's charges against him. During this time in London also, he came to know Sir Philip Sydney intimately, and Fulk Greville as well as others of that brilliant period. He may have known Bacon;^[7] but it is highly improbable that he and Shakespeare met,^[10] or that Shakespeare ever was influenced by the other's philosophy. ^[11]

Leaving Paris soon after his return thither, Bruno wandered into southern Germany. At Marburg he was not permitted to teach, but at Wittenberg the Lutherans cordially welcomed him into the university. After a stay of a year and a half, he moved on to Prague for a few months, then to Helmstadt, Frankfort and Zurich, and back to Frankfort again where, in 1591, he received an invitation from a young Venetian patrician, Mœcenigo, to come to Venice as his tutor. He re-entered Italy, therefore, in August, much to the amazement of his contemporaries. It is probable that Mœcenigo was acting for the Inquisition.^[12] At any rate, he soon denounced Bruno to that body and in May, 1592, surrendered him to it.^[13]

In his trial before the Venetian Inquisition,^[14] Bruno told the story of his life and stated his beliefs in answer to the charges against him, based mainly on travesties of his opinions. In this statement as well as in La Cena de le Ceneri, and in De Immenso et Innumerabilis,^[15] Bruno shows how completely he had not merely accepted the Copernican doctrine, but had expanded it far beyond its author's conception. The universe according to Copernicus, though vastly greater than that conceived by Aristotle and Ptolemy, was still finite because enclosed within the sphere of the fixed stars. Bruno declared that not only was the earth only a lesser planet, but "this world itself was merely one of an infinite number of particular worlds similar to this, and that all the planets and other stars are infinite worlds without number composing an infinite universe, so that there is a double infinitude, that of the greatness of the universe, and that of the multitude of worlds."^[16] How important this would be to the Church authorities may be realized by recalling the patristic doctrine that the universe was created for man and that his home is its center. Of course their cherished belief must be defended from such an attack, and naturally enough, the Copernican doctrine as the starting point of Bruno's theory of an infinite universe was thus brought into question;^[17] for, as M. Berti has said,^[18] Bruno's doctrine was equally an astro-theology or a theological astronomy.

The Roman Inquisition was not content to let the Venetian court deal with this arch heretic, but wrote in September, 1592, demanding his extradition. The Venetian body referred its consent to the state for ratification which the Doge and Council refused to grant. Finally, when the Papal Nuncio had represented that Bruno was not a Venetian but a Neapolitan, and that cases against him were still outstanding both in Naples and in Rome, the state consented, and in February of the next year, Bruno entered Rome, a prisoner of the Inquisition. Nothing further is known about him until the Congregations took up his case on February 4th, 1599. Perhaps Pope Clement had hoped to win back to the true faith this prince of heretics.^[19] However Bruno stood firm, and early in the following year he was degraded, sentenced and handed over to the secular authorities, who burned him at the stake in the Campo di Fiori, February 17, 1600.^[20] All his books were put on the Index by decree of February 8, 1600, (where they remain to this day), and as a consequence they became extremely rare. It is well to remember Bruno's fate, when considering Galileo's case, for Galileo^[21] was at that time professor of mathematics in the university of Padua and fully cognizant of the event.

Galileo's father, though himself a skilled mathematician, had intended that his son (born at Pisa, February 15, 1564), should be a cloth-dealer, but at length permitted him to study medicine instead at the university of Pisa, after an elementary education at the monastery of Vallombrosa near Florence. At the Tuscan Court in Pisa, Galileo received his first lesson in mathematics, which thereupon became his absorbing interest. After nearly four years he withdrew from the university to Florence and devoted himself to that science and to physics. His services as a professor at this time were refused by five of the Italian universities; finally, in 1589, he obtained the appointment to the chair of physics at Pisa. He became so unpopular there, however, through his attacks on the Aristotelian physics of the day, that after three years he resigned and accepted a similar position at Padua.^[22] He remained here nearly eighteen years till his longing for leisure in which to pursue his researches, and the patronage of his good friend, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, brought him a professorship at the university of Pisa again, this time without obligation of residence nor of lecturing. He took up his residence in Florence in 1610; and later (1626), purchased a villa at Arcetri outside the city, in order to be near the convent where his favorite daughter "Suor Maria Celeste" was a religious.^[23]

During the greater part of his lectureship at Padua, Galileo taught according to the Ptolemaic cosmogony out of compliance with popular feeling, though himself a Copernican. In a letter to Kepler (August 4, 1597)^[24] he speaks of his entire acceptance of the new system for some years; but not until after the appearance of the New Star in the heavens in 1604 and 1605, and the controversy that its appearance aroused over the Aristotelian notion of the perfect and unchangeable heavens, did he publicly repudiate the old scheme and teach the new. The only information we have as to how he came to adopt the Copernican scheme for himself is the account given by "Sagredo" Galileo's spokesman in the famous Dialogue on the Two Principal Systems (1632):

"Being very young and having scarcely finished my course of Philosophy which I left off, as being set upon other employments, there chanced to come into these parts a certain foreigner of Rostock, whose name as I remember, was Christianus Vurstitius, a follower of Copernicus, who in an Academy made two or three lectures upon this point, to whom many flock't as auditors; but I thinking they went more for the novelty of the subject than otherwise, did not go to hear him; for I had concluded with myself that that opinion could be no other than a solemn madnesse. And questioning some of those who had been there, I perceived they all made a jest thereof, except one, who told me that the business was not altogether to be laugh't at, and because this man was reputed by me to be very intelligent and wary, I repented that I was not there, and began from that time forward as oft as I met with anyone of the Copernican persuasion, to demand of them, if they had always been of the same judgment; and of as many as I examined, I found not so much as one, who told me not that he had been a long time of the contrary opinion, but to have changed it for this, as convinced by the reasons proving the same: and afterwards questioning them, one by one, to see whether they were well possest of the reasons of the other side, I found them all to be very ready and perfect in them; so that I could not truly say that they had took up this opinion out of ignorance, vanity, or to show the acuteness of their wits. On the contrary, of as many of the Peripateticks and Ptolemeans as I have asked (and out of curiosity I have talked with many) what pains they had taken in the Book of Copernicus, I found very few that had so much as superficially perused it; but of those whom, I thought, had understood the same, not one; and moreover, I have enquired amongst the followers of the Peripatetick Doctrine, if ever any of them had held the contrary opinion, and likewise found that none had. Whereupon considering that there was no man who followed the opinion of Copernicus that had not been first on the contrary side, and that was not very well acquainted with the reasons of Aristotle and Ptolemy; and on the contrary, that there is not one of the followers of Ptolemy that had ever been of the judgment of Copernicus, and that had left that to embrace this of Aristotle, considering, I say, these things, I began to think, that one, who leaveth an opinion imbued with his milk, and followed by very many, to take up another owned by very few, and denied by all the Schools, and that really seems a very great Parodox, must needs have been moved, not to say forced, by more powerful reasons. For this cause I am become very curious to dive, as they say, into the bottom of this business … and bring myself to a certainty in this subject."^[25]

Galileo's brilliant work in mechanics and his great popularity—for his lectures were thronged—combined with his skilled and witty attacks upon the accepted scientific ideas of the age, embittered and antagonized many who were both conservative and jealous.^[26] The Jesuits particularly resented his influence and power, for they claimed the leadership in the educational world and were jealous of intruders. Furthermore, they were bound by the decree of the fiftieth General Congregation of their society in 1593 to defend Aristotle, a decree strictly enforced.^[27] While a few of the Jesuits were friendly disposed to Galileo at first, the controversies in which he and they became involved and their bitter attacks upon him made him feel by 1633 that they were among his chief enemies.^[27]

Early in 1609, Galileo heard a rumor of a spy-glass having been made in Flanders, and proceeded to work one out for himself according to the laws of perspective. The fifth telescope that he made magnified thirty diameters, and it was with such instruments of his own manufacture that he made in the next three years his famous discoveries: Jupiter's four satellites (which he named the Medicean Planets), Saturn's "tripartite" character (the rings were not recognized as such for several decades thereafter), the stars of the Milky Way, the crescent form of Venus, the mountains of the moon, many more fixed stars, and the spots on the sun. Popular interest waxed with each new discovery and from all sides came requests for telescopes; yet there were those who absolutely refused even to look through a telescope lest they be compelled to admit Aristotle was mistaken, and others claimed that Jupiter's moons were merely defects in the instrument. The formal announcement of the first of these discoveries was made in the Sidereus Nuncius (1610), a book that aroused no little opposition. Kepler, however, had it reprinted at once in Prague with a long appreciative preface of his own.^[28]

The following March Galileo went to Rome to show his discoveries and was received with the utmost distinction by princes and church dignitaries alike. A commission of four scientific members of the Roman College had previously examined his claims at Cardinal Bellarmin's suggestion, and had admitted their truth. Now Pope Paul V gave him long audiences; the Academia dei Lincei elected him a member, and everywhere he was acclaimed. Nevertheless his name appears on the secret books of the Holy Office as early as May of that year (1611).^[29] Already he was a suspect.

His Delle Macchie Solari (1611) brought on a sharp contest over the question of priority of discovery between him and the Jesuit father, Christopher Scheiner of Ingolstadt, from which Galileo emerged victorious and more disliked than before by that order. Opposition was becoming active; Father Castelli, for instance, the professor of mathematics at Pisa and Galileo's intimate friend, was forbidden to discuss in his lectures the double motion of the earth or even to hint at its probability. This same father wrote to his friend early in December, 1613, to tell him of a dinner-table conversation on this matter at the Tuscan Court, then wintering at Pisa. Castelli told how the Dowager Grand Duchess Cristina had had her religious scruples aroused by a remark that the earth's motion must be wrong because it contradicted the Scriptures, a statement that he had tried to refute.^[30] Galileo wrote in reply (December 21, 1613), the letter^[31] that was to cause him endless trouble, in which he marked out the boundaries between science and religion and declared it a mistake to take the literal interpretation of passages in Scripture that were obviously written according to the understanding of the common people. He pointed out in addition how futile the miracle of the sun's standing still was as an argument against the Copernican doctrine for, even according to the Ptolemaic system, not the sun but the primum mobile must be stayed for the day to be lengthened.

Father Castelli allowed others to read and to copy this supposedly private letter; copies went from hand to hand in Florence and discussion ran high. On the fourth Sunday in December, 1614, Father Caccini of the Dominicans preached a sermon in the church of S. M. Novella on Joshua's miracle, in which he sharply denounced the Copernican doctrine taught by Galileo as heretical, so he believed.^[32] The Copernicans found a Neapolitan Jesuit who replied to Caccini the following Sunday from the pulpit of the Duomo.^[33]

In February (1615), came the formal denunciation of Galileo to the Holy Office at Rome by Father Lorini, a Dominican associate of Caccini's at the Convent San Marco. The father sent with his "friendly warning," a copy of the letter to Castelli charging that it contained "many propositions which were either suspect or temerarious," and, he added, "though the Galileisti were good Christians they were rather stubborn and obstinate in their opinions."^[34] The machinery of the Inquisition began secretly to turn. The authorities failed to get the original of the letter, for Castelli had returned that to Galileo at the latter's request.^[35] Pope Paul sent word to Father Caccini to appear before the Holy Office in Rome to depose on this matter of Galileo's errors "pro exoneratione suæ conscientiæ."^[36] This he did "freely" in March and was of course sworn to secrecy. He named a certain nobleman, a Copernican, as the source of his information about Galileo, for he did not know the latter even by sight. This nobleman was by order of the Pope examined in November after some delay by the Inquisitor at Florence. His testimony was to the effect that he considered Galileo the best of Catholics.^[37]

Meanwhile the Consultors of the Holy Office had examined Lorini's copy of the letter and reported the finding of only three objectionable places all of which, they stated, could be amended by changing certain doubtful phrases; otherwise it did not deviate from the true faith. It is interesting to note that the copy they had differed in many minor respects from the original letter, and in one place heightened a passage with which the Examiners found fault as imputing falsehood to the Scriptures although they are infallible.^[38] Galileo's own statement ran that there were many passages in the Scriptures which according to the literal meaning of the words, "hanno aspetto diverse dal vero …" The copy read, "molte propositioni falso quanto al nudo senso delle parole."

Rumors of trouble reached Galileo and, urged on by his friends, in 1615 he wrote a long formal elaboration of the earlier letter, addressing this one to the Dowager Grand Duchess, but he had only added fuel to the fire. At the end of the year he voluntarily went to Rome, regardless of any possible danger to himself, to see if he could not prevent a condemnation of the doctrine.^[39] It came as a decided surprise to him to receive an order to appear before Cardinal Bellarmin on February 26, 1616,^[40] and there to learn that the Holy Office had already condemned it two days before. He was told that the Holy Office had declared: first, "that the proposition that the sun is the center of the universe and is immobile is foolish and absurd in philosophy and formally heretical since it contradicts the express words of the Scriptures in many places, according to the meaning of the words and the common interpretation and sense of the Fathers and the doctors of theology; and, secondly, that the proposition that the earth is not the center of the universe nor immobile receives the same censure in philosophy and in regard to its theological truth, it at least is erroneous in Faith."^[40]

Exactly what was said at that meeting between the two men became the crucial point in Galileo's trial sixteen years later, hence a somewhat detailed study is important. At the meeting of the Congregation on February 25th, the Pope ordered Cardinal Bellarmin to summon Galileo and, in the presence of a notary and witnesses lest he should prove recusant, warn him to abandon the condemned opinion and in every way to abstain from teaching, defending or discussing it; if he did not acquiesce, he was to be imprisoned.^[40] The Secret Archives of the Vatican contain a minute reporting this interview (dated February 26, 1616), in which the Cardinal is said to have ordered Galileo to relinquish this condemned proposition, "nee eam de cætero, quovis modo, teneat, doceat aut defendat, verbo aut scriptis," and that Galileo promised to obey.^[41] Rumors evidently were rife in Rome at the time as to what had happened at this secret interview, for Galileo wrote to the Cardinal in May asking for a statement of what actually had occurred so that he might silence his enemies. The Cardinal replied:

 

"We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmin, having heard that Signor Galileo was calumniated and charged with having abjured in our hand, and also of being punished by salutary penance, and being requested to give the truth, state that the aforesaid Signor Galileo has not abjured in our hand nor in the hand of any other person in Rome, still less in any other place, so far as we know, any of his opinions and teachings, nor has he received salutary penance nor any other kind; but only was he informed of the declaration made by his Holiness and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, in which it is stated that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus,—that the earth moves around the sun and that the sun stands in the center of the world without moving from the east to the west, is contrary to the Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended nor held (non si possa difendere né tenere). And in witness of this we have written and signed these presents with our own hand, this 26th day of May, 1616.

Robert Cardinal Bellarmin."^[42]

 

Galileo's defense sixteen years later^[43] was that he had obeyed the order as given him by the Cardinal and that he had not "defended nor held" the doctrine in his Dialoghi but had refuted it. The Congregation answered that he had been ordered not only not to hold nor defend, but also not to treat in any way (quovis modo) this condemned subject. When Galileo disclaimed all recollection of that phrase and produced the Cardinal's statement in support of his position, he was told that this document, far from lightening his guilt, greatly aggravated it since he had dared to deal with a subject that he had been informed was contrary to the Holy Scriptures.^[44]

To return to 1616. On the third of March the Cardinal reported to the Congregation in the presence of the Pope that he had warned Galileo and that Galileo had acquiesced.^[45] The Congregation then reported its decree suspending "until corrected" "Nicolai Copernici De Revolutionibus Orbium Cælestium, et Didaci Astunica in Job," and prohibiting "Epistola Fratris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitæ," together with all other books dealing with this condemned and prohibited doctrine. The Pope ordered this decree to be published by the Master of the Sacred Palace, which was done two days later.^[46] But this prohibition could not have been widely known for two or three years; the next year Muller published his edition of the De Revolutionibus at Amsterdam without a word of reference to it; in 1618 Thomas Feyens, professor at Louvain, heard vague rumors of the condemnation and wondered if it could be true;^[47] and the following spring Fromundus, also at Louvain and later a noted antagonist of the new doctrine, wrote to Feyens asking:

"What did I hear lately from you about the Copernicans? That they have been condemned a year or two ago by our Holy Father, Pope Paul V? Until now I have known nothing about it; no more have this crowd of German and Italian scholars, very learned and, as I think, very Catholic, who admit with Copernicus that the earth is turned. Is it possible that after a lapse of time as considerable as this, we have nothing more than a rumor of such an event? I find it hard to believe, since nothing more definite has come from Italy. Definitions of this sort ought above all to be published in the universities where the learned men are to whom the danger of such an opinion is very great."^[48]

Galileo meanwhile had retired to Florence and devoted himself, to mechanical science, (of which his work is the foundation) though constantly harassed by much ill health and many family perplexities. At the advice of his friends, he allowed the attacks on the Copernican doctrine to go unanswered,^[49] till

A "Corrected" Page from the De Revolutionibus.

A photographic facsimile (reduced) of a page from Mulier's edition (1617) of the De Revolutionibus as "corrected" according to the Monitum of the Congregations in 1620. The first writer underlined the passages to be deleted or altered with marginal notes indicating the changes ordered; the second writer scratched out these passages, and wrote out in full the changes the other had given in abbreviated form. The Notæ are Mulier's own, and so were not affected by the order. The effect of the page is therefore somewhat contradictory!

with the accession to the papacy in 1623 of Cardinal Barberini, as Urban VIII, a warm admirer and supporter of his, he thought relief was in sight. He was further cheered by a conversation Cardinal di Zollern reported having had with Pope Urban, in which his Holiness had reminded the Cardinal how he (the Pope) had defended Copernicus in the time of Paul V, and asserted that out of just respect owed to the memory of Copernicus, if he had been pope then, he would not have permitted his opinion to be declared heretical.^[50] Feeling that he now had friends in power, Galileo began his great work, Dialogo sopra i Due Sistemi Massimi del Mondo, a dialogue in four "days" in which three interlocutors discuss the arguments for and against the Copernican theory, though coming to no definite conclusion. Sagredo was an avowed Copernican and Galileo's spokesman, Salviati was openminded, and the peripatetic was Simplicio, appropriately named for the famous Sicilian sixth century commentator on Aristotle.^[51]

In 1630 he brought the completed manuscript to Riccardi, Master of the Sacred Palace, for permission to print it in Rome. After much reading and re-reading of it both by Ricardi and his associate, Father Visconti, permission was at length granted on condition that he insert a preface and a conclusion practically dictated by Riccardi, emphasizing its hypothetical character.^[52] The Pope's own argument was to be used: "God is all-powerful; all things are therefore possible to Him; ergo, the tides cannot be adduced as a necessary proof of the double motion of the earth without limiting God's omnipotence—which is absurd."^[53] Galileo returned to Florence in June with the permission to print his book in Rome. Meanwhile the plague broke out. He decided to print it in Florence instead, and on writing to Riccardi for that permission, the latter asked for the book to review it again. The times were too troublesome to risk sending it, so a compromise was finally effected: Galileo was to send the preface and conclusion to Rome and Riccardi agreed to instruct the Inquisitor at Florence as to his requirements and to authorize him to license the book.^[54] The parts were not returned from Rome till July, 1631, and the book did not appear till February of the following year, when it was published at Florence with all these licenses, both the Roman and the Florentine ones.

The Dialogo was in Italian so that all could read it. It begins with an outline of the Aristotelian system, then points out the resemblances between the earth and the planets. The second "day" demonstrates the daily rotation of the earth on its axis. The next claims that the necessary stellar parallax is too minute to be observed and discusses the earth's annual rotation. The last seeks to prove this rotation by the ebb and flow of the tides. It is a brilliant book and received a great reception.

The authorities of the Inquisition at once examined it and denounced Galileo (April 17, 1633) because in it he not merely taught and defended the "condemned doctrine but was gravely suspected of firm adherence to this opinion."^[55] Other charges made against him were that he had printed the Roman licenses without the permission of the Congregation, that he had printed the preface in different type so alienating it from the body of the book, and had put the required conclusion into the mouth of a fool (Simplicio), that in many places he had abandoned the hypothetical treatment and asserted the forbidden doctrine, and that he had dealt indecisively with the matter though the Congregation had specifically condemned the Copernican doctrine as contrary to the express words of the Scripture.^[56]

The Pope became convinced that Galileo had ridiculed him in the character of Simplicio to whom Galileo had naturally enough assigned the Pope's syllogistic argument. On the 23rd of September, he ordered the Inquisitor of Florence to notify Galileo (in the presence of concealed notary and witnesses in case he were "recusant") to come to Rome and appear before the Sacred Congregation before the end of the next month;^[57] the publication and sale of the Dialogo meanwhile being stopped at great financial loss to the printer.^[58] Galileo promised to obey; but he was nearly seventy years old and so much broken in health that a long difficult journey in the approaching winter seemed a great and unnecessary hardship, especially as he was loath to believe that the Church authorities were really hostile to him. Delays were granted him till the Pope in December finally ordered him to be in Rome within a month.^[59] The Florentine Inquisitor replied that Galileo was in bed so sick that three doctors had certified that he could not travel except at serious risk to his life. This certificate declared that he suffered from an intermittent pulse, from enfeebled vital faculties, from frequent dizziness, from melancholia, weakness of the stomach, insomnia, shooting pains and serious hernia.^[59] The answer the Pope made to this was to order the Inquisitor to send at Galileo's expense a commissary and a doctor out to his villa to see if he were feigning illness; if he were, he was to be sent bound and in chains to Rome at once; if were really too ill to travel, then he was to be sent in chains as soon as he was convalescent and could travel safely.^[60] Galileo did not delay after that any longer than he could help, and set out for Rome in January in a litter supplied by the Tuscan Grand Duke.^[61] The journey was prolonged by quarantine, but upon his arrival (February 13, 1633), he was welcomed into the palace of Niccolini, the warm-hearted ambassador of the Grand Duke.

Four times was the old man summoned into the presence of the Holy Office, though never when the Pope was presiding. In his first examination held on the 12th of April, he told how he thought he had obeyed the decree of 1616 as his Dialogo did not defend the Copernican doctrine but rather confuted it, and that in his desire to do the right, he had personally submitted the book while in manuscript to the censorship of the Master of the Sacred Palace, and had accepted all the changes he and the Florentine Inquisitor had required. He had not mentioned the affair of 1616 because he thought that order did not apply to this book in which he proved the lack of validity and of conclusiveness of the Copernican arguments.^[62] With remarkable, in fact unique, consideration, the Holy Office then assigned Galileo to a suite of rooms within the prisons of the Holy Office, allowed him to have his servant with him and to have his meals sent in by the ambassador. On the 30th after his examination, they even assigned as his prison, the Ambassador's palace, out of consideration for his age and ill-health.

In his second appearance (April 30), Galileo declared he had been thinking matters over after re-reading his book (which he had not read for three years), and freely confessed that there were several passages which would mislead a reader unaware of his real intentions, into believing the worse arguments were the better, and he blamed these slips upon his vain ambition and delight in his own skill in debate.^[63] He thereupon offered to write another "day" or two more for the Dialogo in which he would completely refute the two "strong" Copernican arguments based on the sun's spots and on the tides.^[64] Ten days later, at his third appearance, he presented a written statement of his defence in which he claimed that the phrase vel quovis modo docere was wholly new to him, and that he had obeyed the order given him by Cardinal Bellarmin over the latter's own signature. However he would make what amends he could and begged the Cardinals to "consider his miserable bodily health and his incessant mental trouble for the past ten months, the discomforts of a long hard journey at the worst season, when 70 years old, together with the loss of the greater part of the year, and that therefore such suffering might be adequate punishment for his faults which they might condone to failing old age. Also he commended to them his honor and reputation against the calumnies of his ill-wishers who seek to detract from his good name."^[65] To such a plight was the great man brought! But the end was not yet.

Nearly a month later (June 16), by order of the Pope, Galileo was once again interrogated, this time under threat of torture.^[66] Once again he declared the opinion of Ptolemy true and indubitable and said he did not hold and had not held this doctrine of Copernicus after he had been informed of the order to abandon it. "As for the rest," he added, "I am in your hands, do with me as you please." "I am here to obey."^[67] Then by the order of the Pope, ensued Galileo's complete abjuration on his knees in the presence of the full Congregation, coupled with his promise to denounce other heretics (i.e., Copernicans).^[68] In addition, because he was guilty of the heresy of having held and believed a doctrine declared and defined as contrary to the Scriptures, he was sentenced to "formal imprisonment" at the will of the Congregation, and to repeat the seven penitential Psalms every week for three years.^[69]

At Galileo's earnest request, his sentence was commuted almost at once, to imprisonment first in the archiepiscopal palace in Siena (from June 30-December 1), then in his own villa at Arcetri, outside Florence, though under strict orders not to receive visitors but to live in solitude.^[70] In the spring his increasing illness occasioned another request for greater liberty in order to have the necessary visits from the doctor; but on March 23, 1634, this was denied him with a stern command from the Pope to refrain from further petitions lest the Sacred Congregation be compelled to recall him to their prisons in Rome.^[71]

The rule forbidding visitors seems not to have been rigidly enforced all the time, for Milton visited him, "a prisoner of the Inquisition" in 1638;^[72] yet Father Castelli had to write to Rome for permission to visit him to learn his newly invented method of finding longitude at sea.^[73] When in Florence on a very brief stay to see his doctor, Galileo had to have the especial consent of the Inquisitor in order to attend mass at Easter. He won approval from the Holy Congregation, however, by refusing to receive some gifts and letters brought him by some German merchants from the Low Countries.^[74] He was then totally blind, but he dragged out his existence until January 8, 1642 (the year of Newton's birth), when he died. As the Pope objected to a public funeral for a man sentenced by the Holy Office, he was buried without even an epitaph.^[75] The first inscription was made 31 years later, and in 1737, his remains were removed to Santa Croce after the Congregation had first been asked if such action would be unobjectionable.^[76]

Pope Urban had no intention of concealing Galileo's abjuration and sentence. Instead, he ordered copies of both to be sent to all inquisitors and papal nuncios that they might notify all their clergy and especially all the professors of mathematics and philosophy within their districts, particularly those at Florence, Padua and Pisa.^[77] This was done during the summer and fall of 1633. From Wilna in Poland, Cologne, Paris, Brussels, and Madrid, as well as from all Italy, came the replies of the papal officials stating that the order had been obeyed.^[78] He evidently intended to leave no ground for a remark like that of Fromundus about the earlier condemnation.

Galileo was thus brought so low that the famous remark, "Eppur si muove," legend reports him to have made as he rose to his feet after his abjuration, is incredible in itself, even if it had appeared in history earlier than its first publication in 1761.^[79] But his discoveries and his fight in defence of the system did much both to strengthen the doctrine itself and to win adherents to it. The appearance of the moon as seen through a telescope destroyed the Aristotelian notion of the perfection of heavenly bodies. Jupiter's satellites gave proof by analogy of the solar system, though on a smaller scale. The discovery of the phases of Venus refuted a hitherto strong objection to the Copernican system; and the discovery of the spots on the sun led to his later discovery of the sun's axial rotation, another proof by analogy of the axial rotation of the earth. Yet he swore the Ptolemaic conception was the true one.

The abjuration of Galileo makes a pitiful page in the history of thought and has been a fruitful source of controversy^[80] for nearly three centuries. He was unquestionably a sincere and loyal Catholic, and accordingly submitted to the punishment decreed by the authorities. But in his abjuration he plainly perjured himself, however fully he may be pardoned for it because of the extenuating circumstances. Had he not submitted and been straitly imprisoned, if not burned, the world would indeed have been the poorer by the loss of his greatest work, the Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze, which he did not publish until 1636.^[81]

Even more hotly debated has been the action of the Congregations in condemning the Copernican doctrine, and sentencing Galileo as a heretic for upholding it.^[82] Though both Paul V and Urban VIII spurred on these actions, neither signed either the decree or the sentence, nor was the latter present at Galileo's examinations. Pope Urban would prefer not so openly to have changed his position from that of tolerance to his present one of active opposition caused partly by his piqued self-respect^[83] and partly by his belief that this heresy was more dangerous even than that of Luther and Calvin.^[84] It is a much mooted question whether the infallibility of the Church was involved or not. Though the issue at stake was not one of faith, nor were the decrees issued by the Pope ex cathedra, but by a group of Cardinals, a fallible body, yet they had the full approbation of the Popes, and later were published in the Index preceded by a papal bull excommunicating those who did not obey the decrees contained therein.^[85] It seems to be a matter of the letter as opposed to the spirit of the law. De Morgan points out that contemporary opinion as represented by Fromundus, an ardent opponent of Galileo, did not consider the Decree of the Index or of the Inquisition as a declaration of the Church.^[86]—a position which Galileo himself may have held, thus explaining his practical disregard of the decree of 1616 after he was persuaded the authorities were more favorably disposed to him. But M. Martin, himself a Catholic, thinks^[87] that theoretically the Congregations could punish Galileo only for disobedience of the secret order,—but even so his book had been examined and passed by the official censors.

When the Index was revised under Pope Benedict XIV in 1757, largely through the influence of the Jesuit astronomer Boscovich, so it is said,^[88] the phrase prohibiting all books teaching the immobility of the sun, and the mobility of the earth was omitted from the decrees.^[89] But in 1820, the Master of the Sacred Palace refused to permit the publication in Rome of a text-book on astronomy by Canon Settele, who thereupon appealed to the Congregations. They granted his request in August, and two years later, issued a decree approved by Pope Pius VII ordering the Master of the Sacred Palace in future "not to refuse license for publication of books dealing with the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun according to the common opinion of modern astronomers" on that ground alone.^[90] The next edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1835) did not contain the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, à Stunica and Kepler which had appeared in every edition up to that time since their condemnation in 1616, (Kepler's in 1619).

1. Berti: 285.
2. McIntyre: 3-15.
3. Four lives of Bruno have been written within the last seventy-five years. The first is Jordano Bruno by Christian Bartholmèss (2 vol., Paris 1846). The next, Vita di Giordano Bruno da Nola by Domenico Berti (1868, Turin), quotes in full the official documents of his trial. Frith's Life of Giordano Bruno (London, 1887), has been rendered out of date by J. L. Mclntyre's Giordano Bruno (London, 1903), which includes a critical bibliography. In addition, W. R. Thayer's Throne Makers (New York, 1899), gives translations of Bruno's confessions to the Venetian Inquisition. Bruno's Latin works (Opera Latina Conscripta), have been republished by Fiorentino (3 vol., Naples, 1879), and the Opere Italiane by Gentile (3 vol., Naples, 1907).
4. Bartholmèss: I, 134.
5. Libri: IV, 144.
6. McIntyre: 16-40.
7. Bartholmèss: I, 134.
8. Gilbert: De Magnete (London, 1600).
9. Berti: 369, Doc. XIII.
10. Beyersdorf: Giordano Bruno und Shakespear, 8-36.
11. Such passages as Troilus and Cressida: Act I, sc. 3; King John, Act III, sc. 1; and Merry Wives, Act III, sc. 2, indicate that Shakespeare accepted fully the Ptolemaic conception of a central, immovable earth. See also Beyersdorf: op. cit.
12. McIntyre: 68.
13. Ibid: 47-72.
14. See official documents in Berti: 327-395.
15. Bruno: De Immenso et Innumerabilis: Lib. III, cap. 9 (vol. 1, pt. 1, 380-386).
16. Thayer: 268.
17. Berti: 285.
18. Ibid: 282.
19. Fahie: 82-89.
20. Thayer: 299.
21. The publication of A. Favaro's Galileo e l'Inquisizione: Documenti del Processo Galileiano … per la prima volta integralmente pubblicati, (Firenze, 1907), together with that of the National Edition (in 20 vols.) of Galileo's works, edited by Favaro (Firenze, completed 1909), renders somewhat obsolete all earlier lives of Galileo. The more valuable, however, of these books are: Martin's Galilée (Paris, 1868), a scholarly Catholic study containing valuable bibliographical notes; Anon. (Mrs. Olney): Private Life of Galileo, based largely on his correspondence with his daughter from which many extracts are given; and von Gebler's Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (trans, by Mrs. Sturge, London, 1879), which includes in the appendix the various decrees in the original. Fahie's Life of Galileo (London, 1903), is based on Favaro's researches and is reliable. The documents of the trial have been published in part by de l'Epinois, von Gebler and Berti, but Favaro's is the complete and authoritative edition.
22. Fahie: 20-40.
23. Ibid: 121.
24. Galileo: Opere, X, 68.
25. 'The Second Day' in Salusbury: Math. Coll. I, 110-111.
26. Fahie: 265.
27. Conway: 46-47.
28. Fahie: 77-126.
29. Doc. in Favaro: 13.
30. Fahie: 149
31. Galileo: Opere, V, 281-288.
32. Doc. in Favaro: 48-49.
33. Doc. in Favaro: 49.
34. Ibid: 38: "amorevole avviso."
35. Ibid: 46, 47, 51.
36. Ibid: 47.
37. Ibid: 49.
38. Ibid: 43-45, see original in Galileo: Opere, V, 281-285.
39. Doc. in Favaro: 78.
40. Ibid: 61.
41. Doc. in Favaro: 61-62.
42. Ibid: 88.
43. Ibid: 80-86.
44. Ibid: 145.
45. Ibid: 16.
46. Doc. in Favaro: 16.
47. Monchamp: 46.
48. Fromundus: De Cometa Anni 1618: chap. VII, p. 68. (From the private library of Dr. E. E. Slosson. A rare book which Lecky could not find. History of Rationalism in Europe, I, 280, note.)
49. In 1620 the Congregation issued the changes it required to have made in the De Revolutionibus. They are nine in all, and consist mainly in changing assertion of the earth's movement to hypothetical statement and in striking out a reference to the earth as a planet. Doc. in Favaro: 140-141. See illustration, p. 61.
50. Doc. in Favaro: 149.
51. Galileo: Dialogo: To the Reader.
52. Doc. in Favaro: 70.
53. Fahie: 230.
54. Ibid: 240.
55. Doc. in Favaro: 88-89.
56. Ibid: 66.
57. Ibid: 17-18.
58. Galileo: Opere, XV, 26.
59. Doc. in Favaro: 74.
60. Ibid: 75.
61. Ibid: 76.
62. Ibid: 80-81.
63. Doc. in Favaro: 83.
64. Ibid: 84.
65. Ibid: 85-87.
66. Ibid: 101.
67. Doc. in Favaro: 101.
68. Doc. in Favaro: 146.
69. Ibid: 145.
70. Ibid: 103, 129.
71. Ibid: 134.
72. Milton: Areopagitica: 35.
73. Doc. in Favaro: 135.
74. Ibid: 137.
75. Fahie: 402.
76. Doc. in Favaro: 138; and Fahie: 402.
77. Doc. in Favaro: 101, 103.
78. Ibid: 104-132.
79. Fahie: 325, note.
80. For full statement, see Martin: 133-207.
81. Gebler: 263.
82. See Gebler: 244-247; White: I, 159-167; also Martin.
83. Martin: 136; and Salusbury: Math. Coll. "To the reader."
84. Galileo: Opere, XV, 25.
85. Putnam: I, 310.
86. DeMorgan: I, 98.
87. Martin: 140.
88. Cath. Ency.: "Boscovich."
89. Doc. in Favaro: 159.
90. Ibid: 30, 31.