The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler

by David Brewster

CHAPTER V.

Urban VIII., Galileo’s friend, raised to the Pontificate—Galileo goes to Rome to offer his congratulations—The Pope loads Galileo with presents, and promises a Pension to his Son—Galileo in pecuniary difficulties, owing to the death of his patron, Cosmo—Galileo again rashly attacks the Church, notwithstanding the Pope’s kindness—He composes his System of the World, to demonstrate the Copernican System—Artfully obtains a license to print it—Nature of the work—Its influence on the public mind—The Pope resolves on suppressing it—Galileo summoned before the Inquisition—His Trial—His Defence—His formal abjuration of his opinions—Observations on his conduct—The Pope shews great indulgence to Galileo, who is allowed to return to his own house at Arcetri, as the place of his confinement.

The succession of the Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to the papal throne, under the name of Urban VIII., was hailed by Galileo and his friends as an event favourable to the promotion of science. Urban had not only been the personal friend of Galileo and of Prince Cesi, the founder of the Lyncæan Academy, but had been intimately connected with that able and liberal association; and it was therefore deemed prudent to secure his favour and attachment. If Paul III. had, nearly a century before, patronised Copernicus, and accepted of the dedication of his great work, it was not unreasonable to expect that, in more enlightened times, another Pontiff might exhibit the same liberality to science.

The plan of securing to Galileo the patronage of Urban VIII. seems to have been devised by Prince Cesi. Although Galileo had not been able for some years to travel, excepting in a litter, yet he was urged by the Prince to perform a journey to Rome, for the express purpose of congratulating his friend upon his elevation to the papal chair. This request was made in October 1623; and though Galileo’s health was not such as to authorise him to undergo so much fatigue, yet he felt the importance of the advice, and, after visiting Cesi at Acqua Sparta, he arrived at Rome in the spring of 1624. The reception which he here experienced far exceeded his most sanguine expectations. During the two months which he spent in the capital he was permitted to have no fewer than six long and gratifying audiences of the Pope. The kindness of his Holiness was of the most marked description. He not only loaded Galileo with presents,[32] and promised him a pension for his son Vincenzo, but he wrote a letter to Ferdinand, who had just succeeded Cosmo as Grand Duke of Tuscany, recommending Galileo to his particular patronage. “For we find in him,” says he, “not only literary distinction, but the love of piety; and he is strong in those qualities by which Pontifical good-will is easily obtained. And now, when he has been brought to this city to congratulate us on our elevation, we have very lovingly embraced him; nor can we suffer him to return to the country whither your liberality recalls him, without an ample provision of Pontifical love. And that you may know how dear he is to us, we have willed to give him this honourable testimonial of virtue and piety. And we further signify, that every benefit which you shall confer upon him, imitating or even surpassing your father’s liberality, will conduce to our gratification.”

Not content with thus securing the friendship of the Pope, Galileo endeavoured to bespeak the good-will of the Cardinals towards the Copernican system. He had, accordingly, many interviews with several of these dignitaries; and he was assured, by Cardinal Hohenzoller, that in a representation which he had made to the Pope on the subject of Copernicus, he stated to his Holiness, “that as all the heretics considered that system as undoubted, it would be necessary to be very circumspect in coming to any resolution on the subject.” To this remark his Holiness replied—“that the church had not condemned this system; and that it should not be condemned as heretical, but only as rash;” and he added, “that there was no fear of any person undertaking to prove that it must necessarily be true.”

The recent appointment of the Abbé Castelli, the friend and pupil of Galileo, to be mathematician to the Pope, was an event of a most gratifying nature; and when we recollect that it was to Castelli that he addressed the famous letter which was pronounced heretical by the Inquisition, we must regard it also as an event indicative of a new and favourable feeling towards the friends of science. The opinions of Urban, indeed, had suffered no change. He was one of the few Cardinals who had opposed the inquisitorial decree of 1616, and his subsequent demeanour was in every respect conformable to the liberality of his early views. The sincerity of his conduct was still further evinced by the grant of a pension of one hundred crowns to Galileo, a few years after his visit to Rome; though there is reason to think that this allowance was not regularly paid.

The death of Cosmo, whose liberality had given him both affluence and leisure, threatened Galileo with pecuniary difficulties. He had been involved in a “great load of debt,” owing to the circumstances of his brother’s family; and, in order to relieve himself, he had requested Castelli to dispose of the pension of his son Vincenzo. In addition to this calamity he was now alarmed at the prospect of losing his salary as an extraordinary professor at Pisa. The great youth of Ferdinand, who was scarcely of age, induced Galileo’s enemies, in 1629, to raise doubts respecting the payment of a salary to a professor who neither resided nor lectured in the university; but the question was decided in his favour, and we have no doubt that the decision was facilitated by the friendly recommendation of the Pope, to which we have already referred.

Although Galileo had made a narrow escape from the grasp of the Inquisition, yet he was never sufficiently sensible of the lenity which he experienced. When he left Rome in 1616, under the solemn pledge of never again teaching the obnoxious doctrine, it was with a hostility against the church, suppressed but deeply cherished; and his resolution to propagate the heresy seems to have been coeval with the vow by which he renounced it. In the year 1618, when he communicated his theory of the tides to the Archduke Leopold, he alludes in the most sarcastic manner to the conduct of the church. The same hostile tone, more or less, pervaded all his writings, and, while he laboured to sharpen the edge of his satire, he endeavoured to guard himself against its effects, by an affectation of the humblest deference to the decisions of theology. Had Galileo stood alone, his devotion to science might have withdrawn him from so hopeless a contest; but he was spurred on by the violence of a party. The Lyncæan Academy never scrupled to summon him from his researches. They placed him in the forlorn hope of their combat, and he at last fell a victim to the rashness of his friends.

But whatever allowance we may make for the ardour of Galileo’s temper, and the peculiarity of his position; and however we may justify and even approve of his past conduct, his visit to Urban VIII., in 1624, placed him in a new relation to the church, which demanded on his part a new and corresponding demeanour. The noble and generous reception which he met with from Urban, and the liberal declaration of Cardinal Hohenzoller on the subject of the Copernican system, should have been regarded as expressions of regret for the past, and offers of conciliation for the future. Thus honoured by the head of the church, and befriended by its dignitaries, Galileo must have felt himself secure against the indignities of its lesser functionaries, and in the possession of the fullest license to prosecute his researches and publish his discoveries, provided he avoided that dogma of the church which, even in the present day, it has not ventured to renounce. But Galileo was bound to the Romish hierarchy by even stronger ties. His son and himself were pensioners of the church, and, having accepted of its alms, they owed to it, at least, a decent and respectful allegiance. The pension thus given by Urban was not a remuneration which sovereigns sometimes award to the services of their subjects. Galileo was a foreigner at Rome. The sovereign of the papal state owed him no obligation; and hence we must regard the pension of Galileo as a donation from the Roman Pontiff to science itself, and as a declaration to the Christian world that religion was not jealous of philosophy, and that the church of Rome was willing to respect and foster even the genius of its enemies.

Galileo viewed all these circumstances in a different light. He resolved to compose a work in which the Copernican system should be demonstrated; but he had not the courage to do this in a direct and open manner. He adopted the plan of discussing the subject in a dialogue between three speakers, in the hope of eluding by this artifice the censure of the church. This work was completed in 1630, but, owing to some difficulties in obtaining a license to print it, it was not published till 1632.