Part 9 (2/2)

[Footnote 284: Fahie: 402.]

[Footnote 285: Doc. in Favaro: 138; and Fahie: 402.]

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.[286]

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.[287] He evidently intended to leave no ground for a remark like that of Fromundus about the earlier condemnation.

[Footnote 286: Doc. in Favaro: 101, 103.]

[Footnote 287: Ibid: 104-132.]

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.[288] 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 a.n.a.logy 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 a.n.a.logy of the axial rotation of the earth.

Yet he swore the Ptolemaic conception was the true one.

[Footnote 288: Fahie: 325, note.]

The abjuration of Galileo makes a pitiful page in the history of thought and has been a fruitful source of controversy[289] 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.[290]

[Footnote 289: For full statement, see Martin: 133-207.]

[Footnote 290: Gebler: 263.]

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.[291] 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[292] and partly by his belief that this heresy was more dangerous even than that of Luther and Calvin.[293] 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.[294] 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,[295]--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[296] that theoretically the Congregations could punish Galileo only for disobedience of the secret order,--but even so his book had been examined and pa.s.sed by the official censors.

[Footnote 291: See Gebler: 244-247; White: I, 159-167; also Martin.]

[Footnote 292: Martin: 136; and Salusbury: _Math. Coll._ ”To the reader.”]

[Footnote 293: Galileo: _Opere_, XV, 25.]

[Footnote 294: Putnam: I, 310.]

[Footnote 295: De Morgan: I, 98.]

[Footnote 296: Martin: 140.]

When the Index was revised under Pope Benedict XIV in 1757, largely through the influence of the Jesuit astronomer Boscovich, so it is said,[297] the phrase prohibiting all books teaching the immobility of the sun, and the mobility of the earth was omitted from the decrees.[298] But in 1820, the Master of the Sacred Palace refused to permit the publication in Rome of a textbook 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.[299] The next edition of the _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ (1835) did not contain the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, a Stunica and Kepler which had appeared in every edition up to that time since their condemnation in 1616, (Kepler's in 1619).

[Footnote 297: _Cath. Ency._: ”Boscovich.”]

[Footnote 298: Doc. in Favaro: 159.]

[Footnote 299: Ibid: 30, 31.]

CHAPTER III.

THE OPPOSITION AND THEIR ARGUMENTS.

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