GALILEO AND THE INQUISITION
One sinister event occurred while Galileo was at Padua, some time before the era we have now arrived at, before the invention of the telescope—two years indeed after he had first gone to Padua; an event not directly concerning Galileo, but which I must mention because it must have shadowed his life both at the time and long afterwards. It was the execution of Giordano Bruno for heresy. This eminent philosopher had travelled largely, had lived some time in England, had acquired new and heterodox views on a variety of subjects, and did not hesitate to propound them even after he had returned to Italy.
The Copernican doctrine of the motion of the earth was one of his obnoxious heresies. Being persecuted to some extent by the Church, Bruno took refuge in Venice—a free republic almost independent of the Papacy—where he felt himself safe. Galileo was at Padua hard by: the University of Padua was under the government of the Senate of Venice: the two men must in all probability have met.
Well, the Inquisition at Rome sent messengers to Venice with a demand for the extradition of Bruno—they wanted him at Rome to try him for heresy.
In a moment of miserable weakness the Venetian republic gave him up, and Bruno was taken to Rome. There he was tried, and cast into the dungeons for six years, and because he entirely refused to recant, was at length delivered over to the secular arm and burned at the stake on 16th February, Anno Domini 1600.
This event could not but have cast a gloom over the mind of lovers and expounders of truth, and the lesson probably sank deep into Galileo's soul.
In dealing with these historic events will you allow me to repudiate once for all the slightest sectarian bias or meaning. I have nothing to do with Catholic or Protestant as such. I have nothing to do with the Church of Rome as such. I am dealing with the history of science. But historically at one period science and the Church came into conflict. It was not specially one Church rather than another—it was the Church in general, the only one that then existed in those countries. Historically, I say, they came into conflict, and historically the Church was the conqueror. It got its way; and science, in the persons of Bruno, Galileo, and several others, was vanquished.
Such being the facts, there is no help but to mention them in dealing with the history of science.
Doubtless now the Church regards it as an unhappy victory, and gladly would ignore this painful struggle. This, however, is impossible. With their creed the Churchmen of that day could act in no other way. They were bound to prosecute heresy, and they were bound to conquer in the struggle or be themselves shattered.
But let me insist on the fact that no one accuses the ecclesiastical courts of crime or evil motives. They attacked heresy after their manner, as the civil courts attacked witchcraft after their manner. Both erred grievously, but both acted with the best intentions.