History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

But some time later came an investigator very different from Monsignor Marini. This was a Frenchman, M. L'Epinois. Like Marini, L'Epinois was devoted to the Church; but, unlike Marini, he could not lie. Having obtained access in 1867 to the Galileo documents at the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to be made.

And now came the most desperate effort of all. The apologetic army, reviving an idea which the popes and the Church had spurned for centuries, declared that the popes AS POPES had never condemned the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo; that they had condemned them as men simply; that therefore the Church had never been committed to them; that the condemnation was made by the cardinals of the inquisition and index; and that the Pope had evidently been restrained by interposition of Providence from signing their condemnation. Nothing could show the desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. The fact is, that in the official account of the condemnation by Bellarmin, in 1616, he declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope."(81)

(81) See the citation from the Vatican manuscript given in Gebler, p.
78.

Again, from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the seventeenth century the decision was always acknowledged to be made by the Pope and the Church. Urban VIII spoke of that of 1616 as made by Pope Paul V and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the Church. Pope Alexander VII in 1664, in his bull Speculatores, solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books affirming the earth's movement.(82)

(82) For references by Urban VIII to the condemnation as made by Pope
Paul V see pp. 136, 144, and elsewhere in Martin, who much against
his will is forced to allow this. See also Roberts, Pontifical decrees
against the Earth's Movement, and St. George Mivart's article, as above
quoted; also Reusch, Index der verbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii,
pp. 29 et seq.

When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decision against Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as such, an eminent theological authority, Father Lecazre, rector of the College of Dijon, publicly contradicted him, and declared that it "was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church," that had condemned Galileo; and to this statement the Pope and other Church authorities gave consent either openly or by silence. When Descartes and others attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt. Father Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church. Cardinal Querenghi, in his letters; the ambassador Guicciardini, in his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani, in his biography of Galileo—all writing under Church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time (Bellarmin), took the same view. Not only does he declare that he makes the condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope," but we have the Roman Index, containing the condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of the reigning Pope binding this condemnation on the consciences of the whole Church, and declaring year after year that "all books which affirm the motion of the earth" are damnable. To attempt to face all this, added to the fact that Galileo was required to abjure "the heresy of the movement of the earth" by written order of the Pope, was soon seen to be impossible. Against the assertion that the Pope was not responsible we have all this mass of testimony, and the bull of Alexander VII in 1664.(83)

(83) For Lecazre's answer to Gassendi, see Martin, pp. 146, 147. For the
attempt to make the crimes of Galileo breach of etiquette, see Dublin
Review, as above. Whewell, vol. i, p. 283. Citation from Marini:
"Galileo was punished for trifling with the authorities, to which
he refused to submit, and was punished for obstinate contumacy, not
heresy." The sufficient answer to all this is that the words of the
inflexible sentence designating the condemned books are "libri omnes
qui affirmant telluris motum." See Bertrand, p. 59. As to the idea
that "Galileo was punished for not his opinion, but for basing it on
Scripture," the answer may be found in the Roman Index of 1704, in which
are noted for condemnation "Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et
immobilitatem solis." For the way in which, when it was found convenient
in argument, Church apologists insisted that it WAS "the Supreme Chief
of the Church by a pontifical decree, and not certain cardinals," who
condemned Galileo and his doctrine, see Father Lecazre's letter to
Gassendi, in Flammarion, Pluralite des Mondes, p. 427, and Urban
VIII's own declarations as given by Martin. For the way in which,
when necessary, Church apologists asserted the very contrary of this,
declaring that it was "issued in a doctrinal degree of the Congregation
of the Index, and NOT as the Holy Father's teaching," see Dublin Review,
September, 1865.

This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergy man in England, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth's Movement, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doctrine of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull—Speculatores domus Israel—attached to the Index, condemning "all books which affirm the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth's movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.

Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the argument. Some, like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties; some, like Dr. Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with declamation. The only result was, that in 1885 came another edition of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work, even more cogent than the first; and, besides this, an essay by that eminent Catholic, St. George Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr. Roberts's position to be impregnable, and declaring virtually that the Almighty allowed Pope and Church to fall into complete error regarding the Copernican theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests with scientific investigators alone.(84)

(84) For the crushing answer by two eminent Roman Catholics to the
sophistries cited—an answer which does infinitely more credit to the
older Church that all the perverted ingenuity used in concealing the
truth or breaking the force of it—see Roberts and St. George Mivart, as
already cited.