Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia / From Authentic Sources

by Karl von Gebler

Urban VIII. heaped favours of all sorts on Galileo before his departure. He promised him a pension for his son,[201] three days afterwards he sent him a splendid picture, then again two medals—one of silver, the other of gold, and quite a number of Agnus Dei[202]; poor consolation, it is true, for the disappointment of the great expectations with which he came to Rome. However, he did not return to Florence entirely without hope. Although there could be no longer any expectation of a public revocation of the famous decree, he was fain to believe that it would not be rigidly kept to, and thought that, supported by his papal patron, he should be able ingeniously to circumvent it. He was far from thinking that the fetters placed by the ecclesiastical power on the free course of the Copernican doctrine were removed, but he was of opinion that they were considerably loosened. And ensuing events, as well as all the news which Galileo received from his friends at Rome, were calculated to confirm the idea. The Pope, wishing to give a strong official proof of his favour, had himself addressed a letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in which, to the no small chagrin of Galileo’s enemies, he had not only done full justice to his services to science, but had laid special stress on his religious sentiments. In this letter of 7th June, 1624, Urban first mentioned Galileo’s great discoveries, “the fame of which will shine on earth so long as Jupiter and his satellites shine in heaven.” And after declaring that he felt a true fatherly affection for so great a man, his Holiness continued:—

“We have observed in him not only the literary distinction, but also the love of religion and all the good qualities worthy of the papal favour. When he came to congratulate us on our accession, we embraced him affectionately, and listened with pleasure to his learned demonstrations which add fresh renown to Florentine eloquence. We desire that he should not return to his native country without having received by our generosity manifold proofs of our papal favour.... And that you may fully understand to what extent he is dear to us, we wish to give this brilliant testimony to his virtues and piety. We are anxious to assure you that we shall thank you for all the kindness that you can show him, by imitating or even surpassing our fatherly generosity.”[203]

With his hopes raised still higher by these unusually gracious words of his papal patron, Galileo ventured, soon after his return from Rome, to reply to a refutation of the Copernican system, which in 1616 had been addressed to him as its most distinguished advocate in the then favourite form of a public letter, by a certain Ingoli, then a lawyer at Ravenna, and afterwards secretary of the Propaganda at Rome. Ingoli, though an adherent of the old system, was at the same time a sincere admirer of Galileo, so that his arguments against the theory of the double motion of the earth were characterised by great objectivity. After the events of 1616, Galileo had wisely refrained from answering it; in 1618, however, it had been done by another corypheus of science, Kepler, in his “Extracts from the Astronomy of Copernicus,”[204] in which he valiantly combated Ingoli’s objections. But the latter did not consider himself beaten, and replied in a letter addressed to a chamberlain of Paul V.

Now, after the lapse of eight years, Galileo thought that, protected by the favour of Urban VIII., he might venture on a reply to Ingoli. But he again took care in writing it not to come into collision with the decree of 5th March. With the assumed imperious prohibition of February, 1616, this step of Galileo’s can be no more made to agree than his sending his treatise on the tides to the Archduke Leopold of Austria, 1618, or the publication of “Il Saggiatore.” Galileo undertakes, in the reply to Ingoli, to defend the Copernican doctrine under a double pretext. On the one hand, he says he wishes to show that, as he had given currency to the new system of the universe before it was condemned by ecclesiastical authority, he had not been the defender of an improbable or unreasonable idea; on the other hand, he wishes to prove to the Protestant Copernicans in Germany, that in Catholic Italy the views of their great countryman had not been rejected from ignorance of their great probability, “but from reverence for Holy Scripture, as well as zeal for religion and our holy faith.” After this ingenious introduction, and an assurance that he had no intention whatever of representing the forbidden doctrine as true, he proceeds with equal politeness and vigour to refute all Ingoli’s objections.[205]

In spite of this diplomatic introduction, however, his friends at Rome, well aware of the malice of his enemies, and having had but a few months before to defend “Il Saggiatore,” urgently dissuaded him from having this rather warm defence of a forbidden doctrine printed.[206] He gave heed to their warnings, and so this reply was only circulated in numerous copies among the learned world in Italy.

Meanwhile the reports which Galileo was constantly receiving from his friends at Rome tended to increase his confidence in the favourable influence which Urban’s personal liking for him, and his taste for art and science, were likely to exercise on tolerance of the Copernican system. Thus his devoted adherent Guiducci, in several letters of 6th, 13th and 24th September, 1624,[207] told him, that through the mediation of the Jesuit father, Tarquinio Galuzzi, he had had several interviews with Galileo’s former bitter adversary, Father Grassi, who had said that Galileo’s theory that the phenomena of the tides were to be attributed to the double motion of the earth “was very ingenious,” and that when the truth of these opinions was unanswerably established, the theologians would bestir themselves to alter the interpretation of those passages of Scripture which refer to the earth as being stationary! The guileless Guiducci added confidentially, quite taken with this Jesuit’s amiability, that he had not noticed any great aversion to the new system in Grassi, indeed he did not despair of estranging “Lothario Sarsi” from Ptolemy.

Two months later, however, the same correspondent told Galileo that a violent harangue had been delivered in the Jesuit College at Rome against the adherents of the new doctrine, by Father Spinola, and some time afterwards he sent him a copy of it;[208] but as it attacked all those who did not profess to be followers of an antiquated Peripateticism, it made but little impression on Galileo, and that little was entirely effaced when Mgr. Ciampoli wrote to him, on 28th December, 1625, that he had acquainted the Pope with several passages of his reply to Ingoli, and that he had highly approved them.[209]

Before long Guiducci found out how bitterly he had been deceived in Grassi, and what a miserable game he had been playing with him as Galileo’s friend. The memory of the favours by which the Pope had distinguished the great Tuscan when at Rome had scarcely died away when Grassi threw aside the mask, and “Lothario Sarsi” exhibited himself in a new and revised edition, fulminating rage and venom against Galileo and his system. Notwithstanding the hypocritical moderation exhibited to Guiducci, he had not forgotten the mortifying defeat which “Il Saggiatore” had subjected him to, and, though circumstances had prevented him from defending himself at once, he had by no means given up the intention of doing so. Two years having elapsed since Galileo’s visit to Rome, Grassi thought he might venture, under pretext of a reply to “Il Saggiatore,” to publish a new attack on its author. It was entitled, in bad Latin: “Ratio ponderum Libræ et Simbellæ, etc. Autore Lothario Sarsi Sigensano.” It contained many personal accusations against Galileo, and the work altogether was characterized by a blind hatred, which repeatedly led the author into very foolish statements. For instance, Grassi tried incidentally to prove by very ingenious arguments that Galileo’s physics would lead to the denial of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper![210] But the enraged Jesuit went still further, and gave his readers pretty plainly to understand that since Galileo agreed on many questions of physics with Epicurus, Telesius, and Cardanus, he must also approve their godlessness, which strange assertion, however, he did not venture to sustain by any evidence.

To Galileo it seemed an encouraging sign of the times that it was considered desirable to seek a publisher for these accusations from a member of the Roman College away from the papal residence. Grassi’s effusions came out at Paris in 1626, and at Naples in 1627. The very unfavourable reception of the work at Rome, except among a few pettifogging enemies of Galileo, also tended to confirm him in his unfortunately mistaken opinion that Rome, under the pontificate of Urban VIII., would have little or nothing to object to in the rich harvest promised by the researches of Copernicus and Kepler, as well as by his own discoveries in the field of science. He thought he could reckon on papal tolerance, if only the defence of the new system were so circumspectly handled as not to clash with the oft-mentioned decree of the Congregation.

On this assumption he had resolved, immediately after his return from Rome, to carry out the great work which he had long projected, and which, from the vast scientific knowledge it displayed, combined with a brilliant style, was to meet with greater success and favour than had ever been attained by any scientific work. This was his “Dialogues on the Two Principal Systems of the World.”