III. THE WAR UPON GALILEO.
On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth. Against him, then, the war was long and bitter. The supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared his discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.(55)
(55) A very curious example of this sham science employed by theologians
is seen in the argument, frequently used at that time, that, if the
earth really moved, a stone falling from a height would fall back of a
point immediately below its point of starting. This is used by Fromundus
with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the
matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. Bezenburg has
mathematically demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies,
as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See
Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, 389, second edition, 1877.
I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language, since the whole history was placed in a new light by the revelations of the trial documents in the Vatican Library, honestly published for the first time by L'Epinois in 1867, and since that by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and others.
The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter. The enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. As to his method, professors bred in the "safe science" favoured by the Church argued that the divinely appointed way of arriving at the truth in astronomy was by theological reasoning on texts of Scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that Aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that the Bible showed by all applicable types that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia; that from Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive to Christian truth. Bishops and priests therefore warned their flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.(56)
(56) See Delambre on the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter as
the turning-point with the heliocentric doctrine. As to its effects
on Bacon, see Jevons, p. 638, as above. For argument drawn from the
candlestick and the seven churches, see Delambre, p. 20.
In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that "to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them." In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than Luther or Calvin."
The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua, by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other."(57)
(57) For principle points as given, see Libri, Histoire des Sciences
mathematiques en Italie, vol. iv, p. 211; De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 26,
for account of Father Clavius. It is interesting to know that Clavius,
in his last years, acknowledged that "the whole system of the heavens is
broken down, and must be mended," Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol.
xv, p. 478. See Th. Martin, Galilee, pp. 34, 208, and 266; also Heller,
Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, p. 366. For the original
documents, see L'Epinois, pp.34 and 36; or better, Gebler's careful
edition of the trial (Die Acten des Galileischen Processes, Stuttgart,
1877), pp. 47 et seq. Martin's translation seems somewhat too free. See
also Gebler, Galileo Galilei, English translation, London, 1879, pp.
76-78; also Reusch, Der Process Galilei's und die Jesuiten, Bonn, 1879,
chaps. ix, x, xi.
But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, and another revelation was announced—the mountains and valleys in the moon. This brought on another attack. It was declared that this, and the statement that the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, directly contradict the statement in Genesis that the moon is "a great light." To make the matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious picture in its usual position beneath the feet of the Blessed Virgin, outlined on its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a sacrilege logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy.