Galileo and His Judges

by F. R. Wegg-Prosser

The accusation was that he had openly violated the order given him not to maintain Copernicanism; that he had unfairly extorted permission to print his book, without showing the prohibition received in 1616; that he had maintained the condemned opinion, although he alleged that he had left it undecided and as simply probable—which, however, was still a grave error, since an opinion declared contrary to Scripture could not in any way be probable.

His sentence was to the effect that he had rendered himself strongly suspected of heresy in believing and maintaining a doctrine false and opposed to Holy Scripture in respect of the motion of the Sun and the Earth, and in believing that one might maintain and defend any opinion after it had been declared to be contrary to Holy Scripture. He had, therefore, incurred the censures in force against those who offend in such ways; from which, however, he would be absolved provided that, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, he would abjure the said errors and heresies; but, as a penance and as a warning to others, he was to undergo certain inflictions. The book was henceforth to be prohibited, he himself was to be condemned to the ordinary prison of the Holy Office for a time the Holy Office would itself limit, and he was to recite the seven Penitential Psalms once a week for three years. The Holy Office reserved to itself the power to remit or change part or all of the above-named penances. Galileo abjured, accordingly, as directed.

The well-known legend that after his abjuration he stamped on the ground with his foot, saying: “E pur si muove” (And yet it, i.e. the Earth, does move), is not found in any contemporary author, and first appears towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is also to the last degree improbable; Galileo was in far too great dread of his judges to provoke them by openly perpetrating such an action; and if he did it sotto voce, who heard it, and who testified to it? The late Dr. Whewell in his “History of the Inductive Sciences,” suggests that it was “uttered as a playful epigram in the ear of a Cardinal’s secretary, with a full knowledge that it would be immediately repeated to his master.” This writer is eminently fair, though naturally he writes from a Protestant point of view; but he takes the extraordinary line of maintaining what I think no one who knows all the facts could possibly suppose, namely, that the whole thing was a kind of solemn farce, and that the Inquisitors did not believe Galileo’s abjuration to be sincere, or even wish it to be so; thus he says: “though we may acquit the Popes and Cardinals of Galileo’s time of stupidity and perverseness in rejecting manifest scientific truths, I do not see how we can acquit them of dissimulation and duplicity.” That is, he thinks the process was a piece of decorous solemnity, adopted to hoodwink the ecclesiastical public. I do not think it necessary to discuss so improbable a theory. And the story of “E pur si muove,” as also that of bodily torture or any personal cruelty being inflicted on Galileo, may, I venture to think, be dismissed into the realm of fable.

The Pope, without delay, commuted the sentence of imprisonment to one of seclusion in the Palace of the Tuscan Ambassador, on the Monte Pincio, after which Galileo was allowed to retire to Sienna, to the Palace of the Archbishop of that place, Piccolomini, one of his warmest friends, from whom he received every possible attention. Indeed, the Archbishop seems to have gone beyond the limits of prudence, considering the peculiar circumstances of the case and the temper of the times, in the enthusiasm of his admiration for the great astronomer, and to have hinted to various persons that, in his opinion, he had been unjustly condemned, that he was the greatest man in the world and would always live in his writings, even those that had been prohibited; such, at least, was the report that found its way to Rome, and it caused great prejudice to Galileo. He had received permission to go to his country house at Arcetri, near Florence, on condition that he lived there quietly, receiving only the visits of his friends and relatives, in such a way as not to give umbrage; and the report, to which allusion has just been made, coupled with the accusation that, under the encouragement of his host the Archbishop, he had spread opinions that were not soundly Catholic in the city of Sienna, caused some additional strictness to be enforced as to the manner of his seclusion.

Thus he was detained for four years in his villa, and was refused permission to go to Florence for medical treatment, it being, however, apparent that the villa was sufficiently near to the city to enable physicians and surgeons to go to him when required. Later on, in 1638, when his sufferings had increased, and he had become (wholly or partially) blind, permission was given him to reside in Florence, on condition that he should not speak to his visitors on the subject of the movement of the Earth. Of this concession he availed himself, and lived for his few remaining years in Florence, occupying himself with scientific pursuits. In this same year he published at Leyden a work entitled, “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze”; this, in fact, was his last work of importance, and he died on the 8th January, 1642, in his seventy-eighth year.

It is not easy to form an accurate estimate of the character of Galileo, so far, at least, as affected by the proceedings just related. By some he has been called a “Martyr of Science”; but a martyr, unless the word be used in a loose and inaccurate sense, ought, above all things, to have the courage of his convictions, and as we have seen, that was hardly the case with Galileo. I will here again quote Dr. Whewell’s work on the “History of the Inductive Sciences,” and this time in agreement with his words: “I do not see with what propriety Galileo can be looked upon as a martyr of science. Undoubtedly he was very desirous of promoting what he conceived to be the cause of philosophical truth; but it would seem that, while he was restless and eager in urging his opinions, he was always ready to make such submissions as the spiritual tribunals required.... But in this case (i.e. the case of his refusing to abjure) he would have been a martyr to a cause of which the merit was of a mingled character; for his own special and favourite share in the reasonings by which the Copernican system was supported, was the argument drawn from the flux and reflux of the sea, which argument is altogether false.”

Yet though we deny him the credit of having been a hero or a martyr, we must not be too severe in condemning him. He was old and enfeebled by bad health; moreover, his friends had advised him to submit fully and unreservedly to the tribunal of the Inquisition. And to this we may add the following considerations. There can be little doubt that he held the Copernican theory as a very probable opinion; how, indeed, with his knowledge of astronomy, and with his own discoveries before his eyes, could it be otherwise? But it is very possible that he had no fixed, absolute conviction on the subject; he was a sincere Catholic, and had a deep respect for the Pope and for the Church, and, unlike modern scientific men, he probably allowed some weight to the decisions of ecclesiastical authorities. Remembering all this, we may well admit that there is much to palliate his conduct, though not fully to justify it.

But his want of candour evidently prejudiced his judges against him. They accepted his reiterated denials of belief, even a qualified belief, in Copernicanism, but they did not credit them as being true. I incline to hold that he would have done as well and given more satisfaction to the tribunal if he had made a straightforward defence in some such way as this: that he could not help believing Copernicanism to be a probable hypothesis on purely scientific grounds, and more than this, the then-existing state of astronomical knowledge would not have justified him in saying: that he left to the ecclesiastical authorities henceforth the entire question of reconciling the theory with Holy Scripture, and that he would not in future teach it even as a hypothesis, or publish any work so teaching it, without permission. A statement of this nature, coupled with an apology for any indiscretion connected with the publication of the Dialogue, might have availed him better than the line he adopted, and would at least have had the merit of candour.

A few words may here be added on the scientific character of Galileo; in this respect he was, with the exception of Kepler, the first man of his age.

He has the credit of being the discoverer of the first law of motion; but whether he fully realised this all-important law, or whether it was one of those happy guesses which we sometimes find to have been made by men who are the precursors of great discoverers, but who do not perceive the full scope and the ultimate bearing of the truths on which they have lighted, I need not here discuss. He did, however, state the law in a Dialogue on mechanics, published in 1638, in these words: