Part 8 (1/2)
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.[239] The Copernicans found a Neapolitan Jesuit who replied to Caccini the following Sunday from the pulpit of the Duomo.[240]
[Footnote 239: Doc. in Favaro: 48-49.]
[Footnote 240: Doc. in Favaro: 49.]
In February (1615), came the formal denunciation of Galileo to the Holy Office at Rome by Father Lorini, a Dominican a.s.sociate 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.”[241] 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.[242] 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 suae conscientiae.”[243] This he did ”freely” in March and was of course sworn to secrecy. He named a certain n.o.bleman, a Copernican, as the source of his information about Galileo, for he did not know the latter even by sight. This n.o.bleman 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.[244]
[Footnote 241: Ibid: 38: ”amorevole avviso.”]
[Footnote 242: Ibid: 46, 47, 51.]
[Footnote 243: Ibid: 47.]
[Footnote 244: Ibid: 49.]
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 pa.s.sage with which the Examiners found fault as imputing falsehood to the Scriptures although they are infallible.[245] Galileo's own statement ran that there were many pa.s.sages in the Scriptures which according to the literal meaning of the words, ”hanno aspetto diverso dal vero....” The copy read, ”molte propositioni falso quanto al nudo senso delle parole.”
[Footnote 245: Ibid: 43-45, see original in Galileo: _Opere_, V, 281-285.]
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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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.[246] It came as a decided surprise to him to receive an order to appear before Cardinal Bellarmin on February 26, 1616,[2] 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.”[247]
[Footnote 246: Doc. in Favaro: 78.]
[Footnote 247: Ibid: 61.]
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.[248] 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, ”nec eam de caetero, quovis modo, teneat, doceat aut defendat, verbo aut scriptis,” and that Galileo promised to obey.[249] 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 ne 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.”[250]
[Footnote 248: Ibid: 61.]
[Footnote 249: Doc. in Favaro: 61-62.]
[Footnote 250: Ibid: 88.]
Galileo's defense sixteen years later[251] 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 doc.u.ment, 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.[252]
[Footnote 251: Ibid: 80-86.]
[Footnote 252: Ibid: 145.]
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.[253] The Congregation then reported its decree suspending ”until corrected” ”Nicolai Copernici De Revolutionibus...o...b..um Coelestium, et Didaci Astunica in Job,” and prohibiting ”Epistola Fratris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitae,”
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.[254]
But this prohibition could not have been widely known for two or three years; the next year Mulier 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;[255] 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.”[256]