Not to speak of Kepler, we might mention Raimarus, Maestlin, Vieta, and many others who wrote or lectured on the subject of the theory of Copernicus previous to the year 1610.
And yet we now reach a period when a professor of this same Copernican theory, in its home in Italy, was to be subjected to what are called the terrors of the Inquisition!
Whence The Change?
How came it about? Were there elements in the controversy other than scientific? And was it, or not, the fault of Galileo that the question was shifted from the safe repose of the scientific basis in which it had remained undisturbed more than four-score years?
Second Visit To Rome.
In 1615, Galileo was denounced to the Inquisition by Lorini for having asserted, in a letter to Castelli, the consistency of his theories with the Scriptures. Lorini produced a copy of the letter in support of his charge. The officials demanded the original, which the complainant could not produce, although every one in Rome knew where it was. Galileo's denunciator was, so to speak, non-suited, and there the matter ended. Meantime, through Ciampoli, Cardinal Barberini, afterward Pope Urban VIII., conveyed to Galileo the advice "not to travel out of the limits of physics and mathematics, but confine himself to such reasonings as Ptolemy and Copernicus used; because, declaring the views of Scripture the theologians maintain to be their particular province." This advice, together with the opinion of the eminent Bellarmine, shows precisely the condition of opinion and feeling in Rome at the period in question.
Galileo did not leave Rome after the inquiry of 1615, and then writes to Picchena Feb. 16th, 1616: "My affair has been brought to a close, so far as I am individually concerned; the result has been signified to me by all their eminences the cardinals, who manage these affairs in the most liberal and kind manner, with the assurance that they had felt, as it were with their own hands, no less my own candor and sincerity, than the diabolical malignity and iniquitous purposes of my persecutors. So that, so far as I am concerned, I might return home at any moment."
But he did not choose to return, and remained in order to obtain a decision that should declare his scientific opinion in accordance with Scripture. His friend Cardinal Orsini entered warmly into his views, and after having failed in having the question taken up by the cardinals, had the imprudence to force it (arreptâ potius quam captâ occasione) upon the attention of the pope and the cardinals while in deliberation upon matters of weighty concern in one of their largest meetings. On a second interruption the pope, naturally impatient, declared he would send the matter before the Inquisition. He kept his word, and eleven consultative theologians had orders from him to report, which they did, February 24th, 1616. By virtue of an order, said to have been written by the pope himself upon this report, and notified on the 25th February, to the Commissary of the Holy Office by Cardinal Mellini, Galileo was summoned the next day to the palace of the Inquisition, where he was brought before Cardinal Bellarmine. The decree was not one of utter condemnation, but a declaration that the system appeared to be contrary to the sacred Scripture. Galileo was enjoined by the decree to abandon the opinion of terrestrial motion, and neither to teach nor treat of it. Nor was this a discrimination against Galileo merely because he was a layman. A few days afterward the congregation condemned the work of Foscarini, a Carmelite friar and professor of philosophy, who published a letter defending the systems of Copernicus and Galileo. It is important here to remark that the decree of 26th February, 1616, forbidding Galileo to teach the doctrine of the immobility of the sun was scientifically correct, even tried by our modern scientific standard. "Ut supradictam opinionem quod sol sit centrum mundi et immobilis … omnino relinquat, nec eam de cetero quovis modo teneat, doceat, aut defendat." Will any man of modern science undertake to say that Galileo was right in denying the rotation of the sun? Nevertheless, Galileo writes to Picchena: "The result has not been favorable to my enemies, the doctrine of Copernicus not having been declared heretical, but only as not consonant with sacred Scripture; whence, the whole prohibition is of those works in which that consonance was maintained."
Meantime these proceedings, imperfectly known abroad, doubtless gave rise to reports which the "diabolical malignity" of Galileo's enemies (as he styled it) did not fail to exaggerate. Hence, the certificate which he procured shortly after from Cardinal Bellarmine. The enemies Galileo speaks of were at first not in Rome but in Tuscany, as Libri, in his Histoire des Sciences, (p. 231,) is at some pains to explain. The sermon of Caccini, who took for his text Josue x. 12, "Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon; nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon," quoting from the Acts of the Apostles, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand you here looking up to heaven?"—was preached in Florence, and the friar-preacher was called to severe account for it by his superior at Rome, the general of the Dominicans. Here is the estimate in which Caccini's performance was held at the time in Rome: "All to whom I have spoken," writes an eminent ecclesiastic, Castelli, "think it great impertinence in preachers to mount their pulpits to treat of such high, professor-like matters, (matterie di cattedra e tanto elevate,) before women and people where there are so few to understand them." And really Castelli's sentiment is not without its salt, even when we transfer it from the 17th to the 19th century. Cardinal Bellarmine's opinion as to Galileo appears in an extract from a letter of Ciampoli, March 21st, 1615, who states the conclusion of a long conversation between Cardinal del Monte and Cardinal Bellarmine on the subject of the new opinions to be as follows: "By confining himself to the system AND IT'S DEMONSTRATION, without interfering with the Scriptures, the interpretation of which they wish to have confined to theological professors approved and authorized for the purpose, Galileo would be secure against any contradiction; but that otherwise explanations of Scripture, however ingenious, will be admitted with difficulty when they depart from the common opinion of the fathers."
The sensation and consequent discussion resulting from Galileo's discoveries had induced Bellarmine to submit them to four of the most scientific fathers of his order (Jesuits) for their opinion. One of these fathers was the renowned Clavius. Their answer is published in Venturi, part I, p. 167, and shows that they approved the discoveries. As to Cardinal Bellarmine himself, it would take us too far out of our way to show from overwhelming testimony that he never questioned the truth of Galileo's doctrine, but only his imprudent manner of propounding it. His position, in his own words, was this, and his words are full of wisdom: "When a demonstration shall be found to establish the earth's motion, it will be proper to interpret the sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have been hitherto in those passages where mention is made of the stability of the earth and movements of the heavens." So ended the first judicial inquiry, and these two great men, Cardinals Barberini and Bellarmine, thus appear to have providentially left on record a sufficient answer to modern misrepresentation, while showing themselves to be the true friends of science. "Prove your system"—"Demonstrate it," they substantially say to Galileo—"and give yourself no concern about the Scriptures!—the theologians will take care of them." Indeed, the sentiments of these cardinals of the 17th seem to anticipate the language of the Holy Father in the 19th century. "This most tender mother, the Catholic Church, recognizes and justly proclaims," says Pius IX. as cited by Father Hecker in his Aspirations of Nature, "that among the gifts of Heaven the most distinguished is that of reason, by means of which we raise ourselves above the senses, and present in ourselves a certain image of God. Certainly, the church does not condemn the labors of those who wish to know the truth, since God has placed in human nature the desire of laying hold of the true; nor does she condemn the effort of sound and right reason, by which the mind or cultivated nature is searched and her more hidden secrets brought to light." (Pius IX.'s letter to the bishops of Austria.) The Holy Father, in his various encyclicals, has repeatedly given eloquent expression to the necessity and true use of reason and of science; and these are the worldly arms whose skilful use by our priests and missionaries will most avail where worldly arms are needed to carry the outposts of intrenched positions in which there are conversions to make or souls to be saved.