Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia / From Authentic Sources

by Karl von Gebler

In the clause of the sentence referring to the attestation, a passage is dexterously interwoven, which ascribes the decree of 5th March, 1616, to the Pope; while, as we know, it belongs officially to the Congregation alone. The words are these: “But merely that the declaration made by his Holiness (fatta da nostro Signore), and published by the Holy Congregation of the Index, had been announced to you.”

Undoubtedly Pope Paul V. wished the decree made and privately instigated it, as Urban VIII. did the sentence against Galileo; and in this sense the former may be attributed to the one and the latter to the other, and the condemnation of the Copernican theory to both. But in this they acted as private persons, and as such they were not (nor would they now be), according to theological rules, “infallible.” The conditions which would have made the decree of the Congregation, or the sentence against Galileo, of dogmatic importance, were, as we have seen, wholly wanting. Both Popes had been too cautious to endanger this highest privilege of the papacy by involving their infallible authority in the decision of a scientific controversy; they therefore refrained from conferring their sanction, as heads of the Roman Catholic Church, on the measures taken, at their instigation, by the Congregation “to suppress the doctrine of the revolution of the earth.” Thanks to this sagacious foresight, Roman Catholic posterity can say to this day, that Paul V. and Urban VIII. were in error “as men” about the Copernican system, but not “as Popes.” For us there remains the singular deduction, that the sentence on Galileo rests again and again, even on the principles of the ecclesiastical court itself, on an illegal foundation.

After a brief mention of the rigid examination of 21st June, the sentence comes to formulate the judgment more particularly. According to this Galileo is, (1) “in the judgment of this Holy Office, vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures ... and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to Holy Scripture;” (2) and that consequently he has incurred all the censures and penalties imposed in the sacred canons against such delinquents. “From which we are content that you be absolved, provided that first you abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies in the form to be supplied by us.”

Point 1, according to Romish regulations about making an opinion an article of faith, in its relation to heresy appears to be illegal and incorrect. Galileo had not laid himself open to suspicion of heresy because he had inclined to a doctrine discovered to be contrary to Scripture by the fallible Congregation of the Index. Point 2 must also, therefore, be illegal, which says that Galileo had “consequently” incurred all the censures and penalties adjudged to such criminals by the canon law.

Galileo could never have been legally condemned on suspicion of heresy from his “Dialogues.” In the first place, because neither he nor any other Catholic was bound by the decree of 5th March, 1616, to regard the confirmation of the old system or the rejection of the new as an article of faith; in the second place, because the imprimatur of the ecclesiastical authorities relieved him from all responsibility. But he could be condemned for disobedience to the assumed special prohibition of 26th February, 1616. In the sentence this forms the only legal basis of the indictment and condemnation. How far this prohibition is historically credible, we think we have sufficiently demonstrated in the course of our work.

And when we consider the penalties which follow from this sentence, based partly upon incorrect, and partly upon false accusations, we find that the Inquisition, by compelling Galileo to recant with a threat of other and severer penalties, far exceeded its powers. The Holy Tribunal was empowered to punish the “disobedience” of the philosopher with imprisonment and ecclesiastical penances, and to forbid him to discuss the opinion in writing or speaking, but it had no authority to extort from Galileo, or any one else, such a confession on an opinion which had not been defined by “infallible” authority.

This is openly admitted even by high theological authority: “In fact an excess of authority and an injustice did take place;” “but,” the reverend gentleman hastens to add, “certainly not from malice, but from a mistake,”[400]—a lenient opinion which we are unable to share.

Whether any scruples were expressed, or any dissentient voices heard in this ecclesiastical court about the manifold illegalities in the proceedings against the famous accused, we do not know, no notes having come down to us of the private discussions and transactions of the Holy Tribunal. But there is one fact which leads us to conclude that all the judges did not consent to this procedure, and that the sentence was not unanimous: at the head of the sentence ten Cardinals are enumerated as judges, but the document is signed by seven only, and besides this there is the express remark: “So we, the undersigned cardinals, pronounce”! Singularly enough, two hundred and thirty-one years passed by, during which much that is valuable was written about Galileo, and a great deal more that was fabulous, before this significant circumstance was noticed by any author. The merit of having first called attention to it belongs to Professor Moritz Cantor, in 1864.[401] The three cardinals who did not sign were, Caspar Borgia, Laudivio Zacchia, and Francesco Barberini, the Pope’s nephew, whom we have repeatedly found to be a warm patron and protector of Galileo.

Professor Berti offers as an explanation of the absence of the three signatures, that the Congregation in the name of which the sentence was passed consisted of ten members, but that at the last sitting seven only were present, so that seven only could sign, and adds, as it appears to us unwarrantably, “that it by no means follows that the three absentees were of a contrary opinion.”[402]

Pieralisi does not find the matter so simple, and devotes seven large pages to account for the absence of the three prelates from the Congregation. “Cardinal Borgia,” he says, “was on very bad terms with Urban VIII., because he had addressed the Pope in a loud voice in a consistory, and the Pope had imperiously told him to be quiet and to go away.”[403] But it has been proved that even after this scene the cardinal appeared at the consistories up to 12th February, 1635, although there were complaints that he took walks in Rome instead of attending the sittings of the Propaganda and the Holy Office. But it is not likely that this cardinal, whose name stands at the head of the sentence, would have absented himself from the final sitting without some good reason. Pieralisi thinks that he was more friendly to Galileo than the other cardinals, an opinion for which there is no evidence and which proves nothing. Even Pieralisi confesses that he can find no reason for the absence of Cardinal Zacchia, but assigns the following motive for that of Cardinal Francesco Barberini: “He probably wished to uphold the right enjoyed by the cardinal nephews, and afterwards by the secretaries of state, of sometimes abstaining from voting in order to reserve to themselves greater freedom in the treatment of public, private, and political affairs.” The insufficiency of this explanation is too obvious to need comment. Pieralisi himself comes to the conclusion that these dignitaries did not wish to append their signatures to the famous sentence, which is much the same thing as the conjecture that they did not agree to it.