Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia / From Authentic Sources

by Karl von Gebler

Now for the reasons. The note of 26th February begins on the same page as that of the 25th, and they are in precisely the same ink and handwriting. As, however, in case of a forgery, the perpetrator would not have been so unskilful as to add a note in different ink and writing under another sixteen years old, but would have written both on another sheet, and carefully incorporated them with the Acts, we had to find out whether it was possible that the pages on which the notes are found (folios 378 vo. and 379 ro.), could have been afterwards added to the Acts. This was found to be impossible. It is excluded by two circumstances.

1. Folios 378 vo. and 379 ro. are second pages to existing documents; and folio 378 belongs to 377, on which is written the famous opinion of the Qualifiers of the Holy Office on the two propositions of Galileo, taken from the work on the Solar Spots. Folio 379 again belongs to folio 357, which is a page of the protocol of the examination of Caccini.

2. In this collection of the Acts of the trial, all the paper on which the documents of the Holy Office were written at Rome, bears the same watermark,—a dove in a circle,—which is not found on any of the paper of later date. This mark is distinctly visible on the folios bearing the notes of 25th and 26th February.

As from this evidence the idea of a later insertion of the papers had to be given up, there was still one suspicion left—that the two notes had been written in 1632 on blank sheets of Acts of 1616, of which there are so many, and the authentic notice of 25th February removed. But this hypothesis could not be maintained in face of the fact that, as a scrupulous comparison showed, several other annotations of 1616 are in the same hand as those of 25th and 26th February, while it is not to be found in any document of the later trial.

In the face of these decisive facts it seems no longer justifiable to maintain that the note of 26th February is a later falsification. Nevertheless, Professor Moritz Cantor, of Heidelberg, has conjectured, and Dr. Scartazzini has told us for certain, how the “falsifiers” went to work. In the Revista Europa, vol. iv. part v., 1st December, 1877, Dr. Scartazzini propounds his theory with an effrontery which is most convincing to a layman and astounding to the initiated. And yet it is entirely upset by one simple practical observation. His theory is that the page on which the genuine protocol of the proceedings of 26th February was written was cut out, that this was concealed by folding the edge the other way, while space was found for the existing forgery by transposing blank sheets. Now for our observation: Dr. Scartazzini quotes only the second paging, which was done after the assumed forgery, and it therefore permitted a transposition of pages according to the pleasure—not of the forger, but of Dr. Scartazzini. In 1632 there was a regular numbering from 949-992, originating in 1616, and no transposition of the Acts could have been made on Scartazzini’s plan, without entirely disturbing it. His theory therefore belongs to the realm of impossibilities.

But firmly as it is now established that the document of 26th February, 1616, is not a later forgery, it is equally certain that the proceedings did not take place in the rigid manner described in that annotation. In the course of this work we have become acquainted with the various reasons which conclusively prove that the annotation contains a downright untruth, exaggeration, or misrepresentation. To all these reasons one more may now be added. Had the course of events been that recorded in the annotation, so important an act would have been made into a protocol, and would have been signed by Galileo, the notary, and witnesses. Only a document of this kind would have afforded conclusive evidence on another trial. We learn from another document of the trial that such a proceeding was a part of the precautionary measures of the Inquisition, in order that the accused might not be able to deny what had happened. When on 1st October, 1632, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisitor at Florence, who issued the command to him to present himself at Rome in the course of the month, Galileo had to state in writing that he had received the order and would obey it; no sooner had he left the room than it was entered by a notary and witnesses who had been concealed in an adjoining apartment, and affirmed under Galileo’s signature that they had been present when he “promised, wrote, and signed the above.”[643]

If these measures were so strictly observed in the case of this much less important act, we may be tolerably certain that they would not have been omitted in the far more important one of 1616, if the stringent command had really been issued to Galileo by the Commissary-General in the name of the Pope and the Holy Congregation, before notary and witnesses, to maintain henceforth absolute silence, in speaking and writing, about the Copernican system. Such a document would have furnished the Holy Office with legal grounds for bringing Galileo to trial in case of his breaking his word, and for punishing his disobedience; in short, for subjecting him to the consequences of this categorical injunction.

Did such a protocol ever exist? As we doubted the fact of the stringent intimation, we did not believe that such a document ever had existed. Nevertheless, when at Rome, we eagerly sought to discover whether, contrary to all expectation, this most important document was extant, or to learn anything about it. It might perhaps be in the Archives of the Holy Inquisition, in which, in 1848, Professor Gherardi had found such valuable notes about the trial of Galileo. We therefore addressed a memorial to the then Secretary of State, Cardinal Simeoni, in which we made a concise statement of the present state of the researches relating to Galileo’s trial, remarking that though the suspicion of a falsification was not tenable, the correctness of the note of 26th February seemed doubtful, and could only be acknowledged as trustworthy if either the original protocol, or some confirmatory notice, were discovered in the Archives of the Inquisition. In the course of four weeks we received the following reply:—

“Illm̃o Signore,

In sequito della richiesta fattasi da V. S. Illm̃a di avere dei documenti relativi a Galileo, mi recai a premura di commetterne le opportune indagini. Praticatesi le più diligenti ricerche, vengo informato non esistere affatto negli Archivi i documenti che si desideravano.