Historical difficulties and contested events

by Octave Delepierre

The whole of his correspondence proves the weakness of his character. In Italy, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the most dangerous accusations that could be brought against any man were deism and infidelity. To doubt was punished with death. Galileo was so imprudent as to address a long letter to Castelli, in which he sought to reconcile the words of scripture with the rotation of the earth as discovered by Copernicus. Copernicus had proved the fact previous to Galileo, but he had used the wise precaution to give his opinion only as an hypothesis, and in his work on the motion of the heavenly bodies, dedicated to Pope Paul III., he avoided wounding any susceptibilities, taking especial care to separate theology from science.

Galileo went even further in a second letter, in which he not only attempted to reconcile his principles of astronomy with scripture, but he endeavoured to make the words of scripture subservient to the axioms he laid down. Some powerful friends tried to bring him to a sense of his indiscretion. Cardinal Bellarmini sent him a written remonstrance, urging him to confine himself to mathematics and astronomy, and to avoid the field of theology.

Monsignor Dini, the friend of Galileo, wrote to him thus, 2nd May 1615: “Theologians allow mathematical discussion, but only when the subject is treated as a simple hypothesis, which is alleged to have been the case with Copernicus. The same liberty will be accorded to you if you keep clear of theology.” Cardinal Barberini, also on terms of friendship with Galileo, sent word to him by Ciampoli on the 28th February of the same year, “that he was not to pass the physical and mathematical limits of the question, because the theologians maintain that it appertains to them alone to elucidate scripture.” They all advised him openly and explicitly to refrain from quoting the bible, and his pertinacity might have excited admiration had it been based on firmness of character, but his timidity and innumerable self-contradictions when directly accused of heresy gave the lie to his apparent determination and adhesion to his principles. When Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was elected pope, under the name of Urbanus, Galileo, who had long been on terms of friendship with him, went to Rome to offer his congratulations, and soon after published his celebrated work: Dialogo intorno ai due massimi sistemi del mondo.

Unfortunately, instead of limiting himself to astronomy in this work, he enters again upon questions of theology utterly irrelevant to the main subject; but, strangely enough, in the preface to the Dialogo he has the weakness to disguise his real opinions. “I come,” says he, “to defend the system of Ptolemy. As the friend of the cardinals who have condemned the doctrines of Copernicus, I highly approve their decision; a most excellent decision; a most salutary decision. They who have murmured against it, have been to blame. If I take up my pen it is out of excess of catholic zeal; this it is that moves me to reappear before the public after many years of silence.”

The reader cannot but feel compassion in observing so much feeble-mindedness, unworthy of so great a genius. It may be said in his excuse that the counsels of his best friends forced him to play the miserable part with which he has been reproached, that of servile submission and the abandonment of his convictions. While expressing the liveliest interest in his works, his principal patron, the ambassador of Tuscany, thus advises him in letters of the 16th February and 9th April 1633: “Submit yourself to whatever may be demanded of you, as the only means of appeasing the rancour of him who in the excess of his anger has made this persecution a personal affair. Never mind your convictions, do not defend them, but conform to all that your enemies may assert on the question of the earth’s movement.”

Galileo was ordered to Rome to explain himself before the tribunal of the Inquisition. After remaining a month in the palace of the ambassador of Tuscany, he was removed to the palace of the Inquisition, but so far from being imprisoned there, he himself informs one of his friends that he has the use of three spacious apartments, and the services of his own servant, and that he can roam at pleasure through the whole building. On the 12th April 1633 Galileo underwent his first examination. He declares that in his dialogue upon the systems of the world, he neither maintains nor defends the opinion of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun; that he even demonstrates the contrary opinion, shewing that the arguments of Copernicus are without weight, and are inconclusive. On his second examination, on the 30th April, he says plainly: “I do not actually entertain the opinion of the movement of the earth and the immobility of the sun; I will add to my Dialogo two or three colloquies, and I promise to take up one by one the arguments in favour of the assertions which you condemn, and to refute them unanswerably.”

Certainly the humiliation this great man underwent was profound. He had carried submission so far as to renounce the strongest convictions of the man of science. His persecutors were culpable and cruel, but our business here is only to examine carefully and truthfully the two following propositions: Was Galileo thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition? and Was he subjected to torture?

A valuable opportunity has been lost of clearing up the doubts which surround the trial of Galileo. In 1809 all the original documents relating to this suit were transmitted from Rome to Paris with the papal archives, and it was intended to publish the whole in the form of a volume consisting of seven or eight hundred pages. Delambre, the historian of modern astronomy, while sending several extracts from these deeds to Venturi, one of Galileo’s biographers, attributes the oblivion into which this intention was suffered to fall, entirely to political motives. Delambre informs us, moreover, that in 1820 the original deeds were no longer forthcoming. Monsignor Morrini, who had been commissioned to claim from the French government whatever appertained to the Holy See, endeavoured in vain to obtain the papers relating to the trial of Galileo. At length the manuscript was restored to Gregory XVI., it was not known how, or by whom, and it was deposited by Pius IX., in 1848, in the archives of the Vatican; since which date no full details have been published. It is now, however, positively affirmed that Galileo was never thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition.

After the second examination to which Galileo was subjected, Cardinal Barberini suffered him to return to his apartments at the embassy of the grand Duke of Tuscany, where the ambassador Nicolini, his family and household, continued to treat him with much affectionate consideration.

He was again summoned before the Inquisition on the 10th May and on the 21st June, when he repeated that he held as true and indisputable the opinion of Ptolemy, that is to say the immobility of the earth and the mobility of the sun. This was the close of the trial. The next day, Wednesday, 22nd June, 1633, he was brought before the cardinals and prelates of the congregation to hear his sentence and to make his recantation.