This was the impulse to Galileo’s letter of 29th March, 1641,[585] which, as Alfred Von Reumont truly says,[586] whether jest or mask, had better never have been written. There is no doubt that it must not be taken in its literal sense. Precisely the same tactics are followed as in the letter which accompanied the “Treatise on the Tides,” to the Grand Duke of Austria in 1618, and in many passages of the “Dialogues on the Two Systems.” Galileo conceals his real opinions behind a thick veil, through which the truth is only penetrable by the initiated. The cautious course he pursued in this perilous answer to Rinuccini is as clever as it is ingenious, and appears appropriate to his circumstances; but it does not produce a pleasant impression, and for the sake of the great man’s memory, one would prefer to leave the subject untouched.
We will now examine this interesting letter more closely. When we call to mind the disquisitions on the relation of Scripture to science, which Galileo wrote to Castelli in 1613, and to the Grand Duchess Christine in 1615, the very beginning is a misrepresentation only excusable on the ground of urgent necessity. He says: “The incorrectness of the Copernican system should not in any case be doubted, especially by us Catholics, for the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture is opposed to it, as interpreted by the greatest teachers of theology, whose unanimous declaration makes the stability of the earth in the centre, and the revolution of the sun round it, a certainty. The grounds on which Copernicus and his followers have maintained the contrary fall to pieces before the fundamental argument of the Divine omnipotence. For since this is able to effect by many, aye, endless means, what, so far as we can see, only appears practicable by one method, we must not limit the hand of God and persist obstinately in anything in which we may have been mistaken.[587] And as I hold the Copernican observations and conclusions to be insufficient, those of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and their followers appear to me far more delusive and mistaken, because their falsity can clearly be proved without going beyond the limits of human knowledge.”[588]
After this introduction Galileo proceeds to answer Rinuccini’s question. He treats that argument against the Copernican system as delusive, and says that it originates in the assumption that the earth stands still in the centre, and by no means from precise astronomical observation. He refutes, therefore, the scientific objection to the new doctrine. Speaking of the assumed discovery of Pieroni, he says, that if it should be confirmed, however small the parallax may be, human science must draw the conclusion from it that the earth cannot be stationary in the centre. But in order to weaken this dangerous sentence, he hastens to add, that if Pieroni might be mistaken in thinking that he had discovered such a parallax of a few seconds, those might be still more mistaken who think they can observe that the visible hemisphere never varies, not even one or two seconds; for such an exact and certain observation is utterly impossible, partly from the insufficiency of the astronomical instruments, and partly from the refraction of the rays of light.
As will be seen, Galileo takes great care to show the futility of the new arguments brought into the field against the Copernican system. It therefore seems very strange that some writers, and among them the well-known Italian historian, Cesare Cantu, suppose from this letter that at the close of his life Galileo had really renounced the prohibited doctrine from profound conviction![589] The introduction, and many passages thrown in in this cautious refutation, must, as Albèri and Henri Martin justly observe, be regarded as fiction, the author having the Inquisition in view; it had recently given a striking proof of its watchfulness by forbidding the author of a book called “De Pitagorea animarum transmigratione,” to apply the epithet “clarissimus” to Galileo, and it had only with great difficulty been persuaded to permit “notissimus Galileus”![590]
A short time before the close of Galileo’s brilliant scientific career, in spite of age, blindness, and sickness, he once more gave striking evidence of the genius which could only be quenched by death. It will be remembered that the inadequacy of his proposed chronometer had been the chief obstacle to the acceptance by the States-General of his method of taking longitudes at sea. Now, in the second half of the year 1641, it occurred to him, as is confirmed beyond question by Viviani, who was present,[591] though the idea is generally ascribed to Christian Huyghens, of adding a pendulum to the then very imperfect clocks, as regulator of their motion. As this was sixteen years before Huyghens made known his invention of pendulum clocks, priority indisputably belongs to Galileo. But it was only permitted to the blind master to conceive the great idea—he was not to carry it out. It was his intention to employ the eyes and hands of his son Vincenzo, a very clever mechanician, to put his idea in practice, and he told him of his plan. Vincenzo was to make the necessary drawings according to his father’s instructions, and to construct models accordingly. But in the midst of these labours Galileo fell ill, and this time he did not recover.[592] His faithful pupil, Castelli, who probably foresaw the speedy dissolution of the revered old man, came to see him about the end of September, 1641. In October, on the repeated and urgent invitation of Galileo, Torricelli joined Castelli and Viviani, not to leave the Villa Arcetri until they left it with Galileo’s coffin. Torricelli was then thirty-three, and the old master had discerned his eminent talents from a treatise on the theory of motion which he had sent him.[593] Castelli was not permitted to stay till the close. At the beginning of November he had to return to Rome, leaving Galileo, Torricelli, and Viviani eagerly occupied with the completion of the “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze.”
On 5th November Galileo was attacked by an insidious hectic fever, which slowly but surely brought him to the grave.[594] Violent pains in his limbs threw him on a sick bed, from which he did not rise again. In spite of all these sufferings, which were augmented by constant palpitation of the heart and almost entire sleeplessness, his active mind scarcely rested for a moment, and he spent the long hours of perpetual darkness in constant scientific conversation and discussions with Torricelli and Viviani, who noted down the last utterances of the dying man with pious care. As they chiefly related to the “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze,” they are to be found in the two supplementary Dialogues added to that work.
On 8th January, 1642, the year of Newton’s birth, having received the last sacraments and the benediction of Urban VIII., Galileo breathed his last, at the age of nearly seventy-eight years. His son Vincenzo, his daughter-in-law Sestilia Bocchineri, his pupils Torricelli and Viviani, and the parish priest, were around his bed.[595] And when Vincenzo closed his father’s sightless eyes for their last long sleep, they gave not a thought at Rome to the severe loss sustained by science by Galileo’s death, but only prepared in hot haste to guard the interests of the Church, and as far as it lay in their power, to persecute the Cæsar of science even beyond the grave. The aim was now, as far as possible, to extinguish his memory, with which so many perils for Rome were bound up.
Even around his bier the struggle began. Some pettifogging theologians went so far as to wish that Christian burial should be denied him, and that his will should be declared null and void, for a man condemned on suspicion of heresy, and who had died as a prisoner of the Inquisition, had no claim to rest in consecrated ground, nor could he possess testamentary rights. A long consultation of the ecclesiastical authorities in Florence, and two circumstantial opinions from them were required to put these fanatics to silence.
Immediately after Galileo’s death his numerous pupils and admirers made a collection for a handsome monument to the famous Tuscan. The Inquisitor, Fanano, at once sent word of this to Rome, and received a reply by order of the Pope, dated 23rd January, that he was to bring it in some way to the ears of the Grand Duke that it was not at all suitable to erect a monument to Galileo, who was sentenced to do penance by the tribunal of the Holy Office and had died during that sentence; good Catholics would be scandalised, and the reputation of the Grand Duke for piety might suffer. But if this did not take effect, the Inquisitor must see that there was nothing in the inscription insulting to the reputation of the holy tribunal, and exercise the same care about the funeral sermon.[596]
Besides this, Urban VIII. seized the next opportunity of giving the Tuscan ambassador to understand that “it would be a bad example for the world if his Highness permitted such a thing, since Galileo had been arraigned before the Holy Office for such false and erroneous opinions, had also given much trouble about them at Florence, and had altogether given rise to the greatest scandal throughout Christendom by this condemned doctrine.”[597] In the despatch in which Niccolini reported these remarks of the Pope to his Government, he advised that the matter be postponed, and reminded them that the Pope had had the body of the Duchess Matilda, of Mantua, removed from the Carthusian convent there, and buried at St. Peter’s at Rome, without saying a word to the Duke about it beforehand, excusing himself afterwards by saying that all churches were papal property, and therefore all the bodies buried in them belonged to the clergy! If, therefore, they did not wish to incur the danger of perhaps seeing Galileo’s bones dragged away from Florence, all idea must be given up for the present of suitably celebrating his memory.