Galileo's Dream

  This was a real blow, for Cesarini had been perhaps the leading figure in all the competing intellectual circles of the city—known to everyone, high up in the Vatican, and at the same time very much a Lynx, a true Galilean. No one had expected his death, despite his slight frame; but these things happened.

  His vacant position at the Holy Office was soon given to the enormously fat Fra Niccolo Riccardi—a priest who seemed sympathetic to the Lynxes, and who loved Galileo’s new book, but who was also anxious to please everybody. He would be little help to them.

  Conjunctions and disjunctions; there was nothing for it but to get to Rome as soon as possible, and do what he could. So it was back into the litter to endure again the jounce and squeak of the ruined springtime roads.

  On the day of his arrival in the sprawling smoky city, Galileo stayed up late with his host Guiducci, and was brought up to date on the situation. As Galileo had seen in the tight crowded streets, the capital of the world was in a state of high excitement because of the new order of things. For the first time in decades, a pope with ambition was on the Throne of Peter, calling for new building projects, clearing whole quarters of the city, staging gigantic festivals for the populace, and encouraging literary societies and new organizations like the Linceans. No one remembered a time quite like it; it was not just the Lynxes who had felt the miraculous. To have the Borgias out of power (and the Medicis), all replaced by a vigorous, curious intellectual—it was springtime for everyone.

  The next morning, therefore, Galileo’s hopes were high as he went to the Vatican to pay his respects. The familiar buildings and gardens had been recently washed. They looked bigger and more imposing, the gardens more luxuriant and beautiful. Giovanni Ciampoli, beaming happily, led him through the papal foyer and the outer salons to the inner garden, now bursting with flowers. There, taking a walk with his brother Cardinal Antonio Barberini, was the new pope, God’s envoy on Earth.

  In the first second of the audience, Galileo saw that Maffeo Barberini was a changed man. It was not just the white robes, the surplice, the red vestment over his shoulders framing his elegant goateed head, the ermine-lined red cap, nor the deferent retainers on all sides, and the Vatican itself, although all these things were of course new. It was the look in his eye. Gone was the gleam of mischief Galileo remembered so well, and the look of open admiration for Galileo’s achievements, and the desire to be admired in return. Urban VIII was not present in the same way. His skin was smooth and pink, his domed forehead and long nose shiny. His eyes, round rather than oval, were now like watchful dark pebbles, alert even though his gaze angled away from Galileo’s as if looking at something else. He expected obedience, even obeisance, and already he was used to getting it. He was not even suspicious that he might not get it.

  And of course Galileo gave it in full, kneeling and bowing to kiss the sandaled feet, which were perfectly clean and white.

  “Rise, my Galileo. Speak to us standing upright.”

  As he did so Galileo bit his tongue, checking the congratulations he had prepared. There was no question now of suggesting there had been anything won, or that the matter could have turned out any other way; one had to act as if things had always been like this. Referring to the past would have been a faux pas, even an impertinence. Silently Galileo kissed the big ring on the pontiff’s offered hand. Urban nodded coolly. He let Ciampoli speak for him, only nodding to indicate his approval of what was said, and occasionally murmuring things Galileo could barely hear. One curious glance was sharp, then he returned to the contemplation of some inner landscape. Even for Galileo, his favored scientist, he could not be bothered to be entirely present. It was as if the carapace of power he now wore was so heavy that he needed to attend to it always, and so thick that he did not believe anyone could penetrate it. Now he lived alone, at all times and in all places. Even his brother Antonio watched him as if observing a new acquaintance.

  Ciampoli—always one of Galileo’s most peculiar and unhelpful advocates, a man boundless in enthusiasm but shaky in everything else—now spoke eagerly of Galileo’s accomplishments, in ways that pitched them too high, that caused Urban’s gaze at the flowers to sharpen again for a second as he tilted his head to listen. Barberini knew Galileo’s story already, and clearly this was not the moment to rehearse it. Why Ciampoli had been named Urban’s secretary was beyond Galileo to tell.

  Soon Urban lifted a hand, and Ciampoli saw, well after Galileo, that the interview was over. Nervously, Ciampoli thanked Galileo for coming, speaking for Urban just as he had a moment before been speaking for Galileo. He was enunciating both halves of the conversation! Then he led Galileo away. No more than five minutes had passed.

  Out in the vast antechamber Ciampoli repeated what he had written already in his letters, that he had been reading Il Saggiatore aloud to the pope during meals, and that Urban had laughed and called for more. “I am sure you are now free to write anything you want, about astronomy or anything else.”

  But Ciampoli was a fool. He had speculated aloud that he was Virgil reincarnated, or perhaps Ovid. He wrote verses making fun of Urban behind Urban’s back, then distributed these verses to friends like Cesi and Galileo and others, as if the poems would not then eventually circulate and land in the hands of his enemies—and more important, in the hands of Galileo’s enemies.

  So now Galileo merely nodded at him and murmured sounds of agreement, deeply irritated and uneasy. That his audience with Urban had gone less well than the ones he had had with Paul! It was startling, disturbing—hard to believe.

  Thinking it over intensively in the days that followed, it finally occurred to him that old friends and favored ones were precisely the people that a new pope had to put in their place, which was at the same distance as everyone else: below. A very great distance below.

  Clearly he would need another meeting with Urban, without Ciampoli on hand to get in the way. But how to get that was not obvious. Possibly no one ever met privately with this pope.

  The next morning he visited Cardinal Francesco Barberini. They met in the little courtyard just inside the wall of the Villa Barberini, overlooking the brown Tiber.

  It could be honestly said at this point that Galileo had helped Francesco more than Francesco had helped him. Francesco seemed perfectly willing to acknowledge this; he was gracious, he was grateful, he was without the slightest tinge of that resentment that gratitude so often contains. It was a truly enjoyable meeting rather than the pretense of one, full of laughter and shared memories. Francesco was taller than Urban and more handsome, sanguine and affable, with a big head like a Roman statue’s. His cardinal’s robes and regalia had been made in Paris, where he had lived for several years. That he had been one of the least effective diplomats in Vatican history was not so widely known.

  He sounded encouraging when Galileo gingerly brought up the subject of Copernicanism. “My uncle once told me,” he said, “that if it had been up to him in 1616, you would not have been forbidden to write on this subject. That was Paul’s issue, or Bellarmino’s.”

  Galileo nodded thoughtfully. “That seems right,” he said as he unpacked a microscope he had brought with him to show people—a kind of telescope of the small, which gave observers new and astounding views of the unsuspected detail and articulation of all the smallest things, including flies and moths, and now, because a trio of bees formed the Barberini family emblem, bees.

  Francesco looked into the eyepiece and grinned. “The sting is like a little sword! And those eyes!” He held Galileo by the shoulder. “You always have something new. His Holiness my uncle likes that. You should show it to him.”

  “I will if I can. Maybe you can help me?”

  But before he next met with the pope, Galileo gave the device to Cardinal Frederick Eutel von Zollern, in the hope of gaining more support from Catholics north of the Alps. The first meeting with Urban had thrown him off his stride. He complained of the endless procession of meetings and banquets, and wrote back to Flore
nce that being a courtier was a young man’s business.

  Indeed, in his monomaniacal focus on his own affairs, he did not even seem to notice the matter that was consuming everyone else in Rome at this time, which was the war between Catholic France and Catholic Spain. This conflict was beginning to engulf all of Europe, with no end in sight. The Barberini were closely associated with the French court, as Francesco’s history made clear; but France recently had developed Protestant allies. Their foes, the Spanish Hapsburgs, still controlled both Naples and several duchies in northern Italy, squeezing Rome between them. They had immediate power in Rome as well, being the Church’s principal financial support. So despite his French sympathies, Urban could not openly oppose the Spaniards. In theory he could as pope tell all the Catholic crowns what to do, but in practice that hadn’t been true for centuries, if it ever had been, and now the two Catholic countries ignored him as they fought—or worse, threatened him for not supporting their side. Despite his wealth and the authority of St. Peter, in his foreign relations Urban was finding he had to walk a line even finer than the one on which Paul had balanced: a kind of thread across the abyss, with war waiting below if he fell off.

  After about a month in Rome, Father Riccardi, whom Philip III of Spain had long ago nicknamed Father Monster, agreed to a meeting with Galileo to discuss the question of Holy Office censorship and the ban of 1616. This meeting was crucial to Galileo’s hopes, so he was pleased when it was scheduled.

  But in the meeting itself, Riccardi was very clear and unequivocal. His views were only Urban’s here, Riccardi said, and the pope wanted Copernicanism to remain theory only, with never a suggestion that it had any basis in physical fact. “I myself am sure that angels move all the heavenly bodies,” Riccardi added at the end of this warning. “Who else could do it, seeing that these things are in the heavens?”

  Galileo nodded unhappily.

  “Don’t concern yourself too much,” Riccardi advised. “We judge that Copernicanism is merely rash, rather than perverse or heretical. But the fact of the matter is, this is no time to be rash.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that the pope could say that the theory is permissible to be discussed as a hypothetical mathematical construct only, ex suppositione?”

  “Perhaps. I will ask him about that.”

  Galileo settled in to Guiducci’s house in Rome. He had begun to understand that his visit needed to be a campaign. Weeks passed, then months. Urban agreed to see him several times, although they were for the most part very formal and brief occasions, and in the company of others. At no time did Urban meet his eye.

  Only during his final audience of the visit did the matter of Copernicus come up, and even then, only accidentally. Ciampoli was the one who raised the subject, seizing a lull in the conversation to remark, “Signor Galilei’s fable concerning the cicada and the varying origins of music was both witty and profound, wasn’t it? I recall you said it was your favorite part when I read it to you.”

  Galileo, his face reddening, watched the pope closely. Urban continued to contemplate a bed of flowers, apparently still thinking of other things. Even in the months of Galileo’s stay, the carapace of papal power had thickened on him. His eyes were glazed; sometimes he stared at Galileo as if trying to remember who he was.

  But now he said, “Yes,” firmly, as if waking up. He shifted his absent gaze to Galileo, looked him straight in the eye for a second, then looked at the flowers again. “Yes, it seemed to refer to what we have spoken of before. A parable of God’s omnipotence, which is sometimes overlooked in philosophical discussions, it seems to us, although we see the power everywhere. As we are sure you will agree.”

  “Of course, Holiest Holiness.” Galileo gestured helplessly at the garden. “Everything illustrates that.”

  “Yes. And because God is omnipotent, there is no way for mankind to be sure of the physical cause of anything whatsoever. Isn’t that right.”

  “Yes….” But Galileo’s head tilted to the side, despite his efforts to stay motionless and deferent. “Although one has to remember that God created logic, too. And it is clear He is logical.”

  “But He is not confined by logic, because He is omnipotent. So, whether a physical explanation is logical or not, whether it conserves the appearances poorly or adequately, or even with perfect precision, all that makes no difference when it comes to determining that explanation’s actual truth in the physical world. Because if God had wanted to do it otherwise, He could have. If He wanted to do it one way while making it look like another way, He could do that too.”

  “I cannot imagine that God would want to deceive His—”

  “Not deceive! God does not deceive. That would be as if to say God lied. It is men who deceive themselves, by thinking they can understand God’s work by their own reasoning.” Another round-eyed quick look, sharp and dangerous. “If God had wanted to construct a world that looked like it ran one way, when actually it ran another way, even a supposedly impossible way, then that is perfectly within His abilities. And we have no way to judge His intentions or desires. For any mere mortal to assert otherwise would be an attempted restriction on God’s omnipotence. So any time we assert that a phenomenon has only a single cause, we offend Him. As your curious and beautiful fable makes so eloquently clear.”

  “Yes,” Galileo said, thinking hard. Again he thought, but could not say, But why would God lie to us? And so he had to think of something else. “We see through a glass darkly,” he admitted.

  “Exactly.”

  “And so, this line of argument suggests that anything can be supposed?” Galileo dared to ask. “Theories, or simply patterns seen, and only expressed ex suppositione?”

  “I am sure you will always, in all your studies and writing, continue to make our argument for omnipotence. This is the work God has sent you to do. When you make this ultimate point clear, then all your philosophy is blessed. There is no contradiction to our teaching.”

  “Yes, Sanctissimus.”

  Escorting Galileo out of the Vatican after the audience, Ciampoli was ecstatic. “That was His Holiness telling you to proceed! He said that if you included his argument then you can discuss any given theory you like! He has given you permission to write about Copernicus, do you see?”

  “Yes,” Galileo said shortly. He himself could not be sure what Urban had meant. Barberini had changed.

  Even with his telescope the lynx-eyed astrologer cannot look into the inner thoughts of the mind.

  —FRA ORAZIO GRASSI

  SO GALILEO RETURNED TO FLORENCE, willing to believe that Urban had given him permission to describe the Copernican explanation as a theoretical construct—a mathematical abstraction that could account for the observed planetary motions. And if he made the supposition convincing enough, the pope might then give it his approval, as he had the various arguments in Il Saggiatore. And then all would be well.

  And so, over the next several years, he wrote his Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems, which was known around the house as the Dialogo. He wrote it in fits and starts, between interruptions required by the grand duke, or by his family situation, or by illnesses; but always one way or another he kept at it, as if under some kind of compulsion.

  In those years, the first question every day was whether Galileo would be well enough to get up. Every time he was ill, it could be just a febbre efimera, a one-day fever, or on the other hand something that would fell him for a month or two. Everyone feared his illnesses as being little catastrophes in the household’s routine; but of course the plague also was abroad, and so his complaints could always be the harbinger of something much worse. One day, one of the workshop’s glassblowers died of plague, which gave them all a terrible fright. Galileo closed the workshop, so the artisans had nothing to do; they shifted out to the field, the barn and granary, the vineyard and cellar. Bellosguardo now served as farm to the convent of San Matteo, and that took a lot of work. And it was true that out in the open air, the plague
seemed less of a danger. Out under the sky, tall clouds billowing over the green hills, it looked safer.

  Some could not shake the plague fear, however. Galileo’s son Vincenzio and his new wife Sestilia, a wonderful woman, moved away from Florence for a time, leaving their infant behind in the care of La Piera and a wet nurse. Why they left the babe no one could understand, and everyone assumed it was yet more of Vincenzio’s spineless ditherings. No one could figure out why Sestilia Bocchineri had married him. There was a lot of gossip about it. Galileo’s household at this time numbered about fifty people, including still the family of his brother Michelangelo, who played on in Munich. Views on the explanation for Sestilia were split between the notion that Galileo had found her in Venice and paid her to marry his son, or that God had noticed Galileo’s uncharacteristic visit to the house of the Virgin Mary, in Loreto, the month before Sestilia had appeared in their lives, and had therefore rewarded his devotion. This sacred home of the Virgin Mary Casa Santa, had landed in Loreto during the Crusades, after flying across the Mediterranean from the Holy Land to escape destruction at the hands of the Saracens. Galileo on his return from his pilgrimage had been heard to remark that the place had a pretty good foundation, all things considered, but God could have ignored that impertinence and blessed his family anyway. There had to be some explanation for a girl as good as Sestilia going for a sponge like Vincenzio.

  Every morning, rain or shine, was punctuated by the awful sounds of the maestro waking up. He would groan no matter how he felt, then curse, then shout for breakfast, for wine, for help getting out of bed. “Come here!” he would bark, “I need to hit somebody.” After drinking several cups of tea or watered wine, he would get up and dress, go out and limp around his garden, inspecting the many varieties of citrons he had planted in big terra-cotta pots, on the way down to the jakes to relieve himself. On his way back up he would limp, moaning again, and often stop in the bean and wheat fields, fingering the stalks and leaves.