The learned and semi-learned world of Italy had not yet had time to become reconciled to the surprising discoveries announced in the “Sidereus Nuncius” of March in the same year, when the asserted triple nature of Saturn contravened the prevailing idea that there was nothing new to be discovered in the heavens. The recognition of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries made way very slowly. From the first he spared no pains in popularising them. He did this repeatedly in public lectures, and with so much success that he could write to Vinta: “even the most exalted personages, who have been most vehement in attacking my doctrines, at length gave up the game for lost, and acknowledged, coram populo, that they were not only convinced but ready to defend them against those philosophers and mathematicians who ventured to attack them.”[52]
But it was only at the University of Padua that Galileo could report such rapid progress; and until the Maginis, Clavios, and others were convinced by their own eyes, and confirmed to their own party the truth of Galileo’s disclosures, he had to sustain a hard struggle with incredulity, malice, and peripatetic fanaticism. Some rabid Aristotelians went so far as to say that Galileo’s telescope was so constructed as to show things that did not exist! Nor did it mend the matter much when he offered 10,000 scudi to any one who should construct so cunning an instrument.[53] Others resolutely refused even to look through the telescope, giving it as their firm conviction that they would not be able to see appearances which Aristotle had not said a word about in all his books! The answer that Aristotle was not acquainted with the telescope, and could not have known anything of telescopic appearances, rebounded without effect from the petrified infallibility of Aristotelian wisdom. Nor must it be supposed that these short-sighted conservatives only numbered a few would-be savans of the Peripatetic school; on the contrary, celebrities like Cesare Cremonino da Cento, and Julius Libri, denied Galileo’s discoveries a priori.[54] When Libri died in December, 1610, without having been willing to look through a telescope, and protesting against Galileo’s “absurdities,” Galileo wrote in a letter of 17th December that this rigid opponent of his “absurdities,” as he was never willing to look at them from earth, might perhaps see them on his way to heaven![55]
Some passages from a letter of Galileo’s to Kepler, of 19th August, 1610, will best show how some of these men of science turned away with a righteous awe from the inconvenient recognition of the truth. Galileo writes among other things:—
“You are the first and almost the only person who, even after but a cursory investigation, has, such is your openness of mind and lofty genius, given entire credit to my statements.... We will not trouble ourselves about the abuse of the multitude, for against Jupiter even giants, to say nothing of pigmies, fight in vain. Let Jupiter stand in the heavens, and let the sycophants bark at him as they will.... In Pisa, Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua many have seen the planets; but all are silent on the subject and undecided, for the greater number recognise neither Jupiter nor Mars and scarcely the moon as planets. At Venice one man spoke against me, boasting that he knew for certain that my satellites of Jupiter, which he had several times observed, were not planets because they were always to be seen with Jupiter, and either all or some of them, now followed and now preceded him. What is to be done? Shall we side with Democritus or Heraclitus? I think, my Kepler, we will laugh at the extraordinary stupidity of the multitude. What do you say to the leading philosophers of the faculty here, to whom I have offered a thousand times of my own accord to show my studies, but who with the lazy obstinacy of a serpent who has eaten his fill have never consented to look at planets, nor moon, nor telescope? Verily, just as serpents close their ears, so do these men close their eyes to the light of truth. These are great matters; yet they do not occasion me any surprise. People of this sort think that philosophy is a kind of book like the Æneid or the Odyssey, and that the truth is to be sought, not in the universe, not in nature, but (I use their own words) by comparing texts! How you would laugh if you heard what things the first philosopher of the faculty at Pisa brought against me in the presence of the Grand Duke, for he tried, now with logical arguments, now with magical adjurations, to tear down and argue the new planets out of heaven.”[56]
CHAPTER III.
REMOVAL TO FLORENCE.
Galileo’s Fame and Pupils.—Wishes to be freed from Academic Duties.—Projected Works.—Call to Court of Tuscany.—This change the source of his Misfortunes.—Letter from Sagredo.—Phases of Venus and Mercury.—The Solar Spots.—Visit to Rome.—Triumphant Reception.—Letter from Cardinal del Monte to Cosmo II.—The Inquisition.—Introduction of Theology into the Scientific Controversy.—“Dianoja Astronomica.”—Intrigues at Florence.
Galileo’s fame, especially through his telescopic discoveries, and partly also through the exertions of his noisy opponents, had long extended beyond the narrow bounds of Italy, and the eyes of all central Europe were directed to the great astronomer. Numbers of pupils flocked to him from all countries, so that no lecture room in Padua was large enough to hold them. There were some distinguished personages among them, such as the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the princes of Alsace, Mantua, etc., who mostly came to attend the lectures of the versatile master on fortification. It is, however, another fable of over zealous biographers to state that even Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the thirty years’ war, went to school for some months to Galileo.[57]
This close occupation, with lectures and private lessons of all kinds, took him too much away from his own studies, and after twenty years’ professorship Galileo longed for a post in which he could prosecute his own researches, and devote himself to the completion of his works, free from academic duties. A letter from Padua, even in the spring of 1609,[58] shows his longing for this salaried leisure. But he is aware that the republic can never offer him such a post, “for it would not be suitable to receive a salary from a free state, however generous and magnanimous, without serving the public for it; because if you derive benefit from the public, you have the public to please, and not a mere private person.” He also mentions that he can only hope for such a favour from some absolute sovereign; but it must not be supposed that he wishes for an income without doing anything for it; he was in possession of various inventions, was almost daily making new ones, and should make more if he had the necessary leisure. Galileo adds that it has always been his intention “to offer them to his own sovereign and natural lord before any other, that he may dispose of them and the inventor according to his pleasure; and if it seemed good to his serene highness to accept it, to present him not only with the jewel but with the casket also.”