Of the two most recent serious works on Galileo, Stillman Drake maintains that it was Orsini's urging the Pope to rule in favour of Galileo's views that resulted in their prohibition (op. cit., p. 152 n), whereas Santillana opines that the Orsini story was deliberately "leaked" by the Inquisition to the Tuscan Ambassador to deceive him, "whereas the decision had already been taken in secret session many days before. In this way the informers were shielded; things were made to look as though only Galileo's impatience and indiscretion had goaded the long-suffering authorities to action; and with Guiccardini's co-operation the best way had been found to discredit Galileo with the Grand Duke" (op. cit., p. 120). But the reference to "shielding informers" makes no sense in the context, and the intention to discredit Galileo with the Grand Duke is hardly compatible with the fact that a week after issuing the decree, Pope Paul V received Galileo in gracious audience, and Bellarmine issued a certificate of honour to him. The showdown provoked by Galileo had become unavoidable; once it was over, soothing honours were paid to the Grand Duke's Mathematician.
42
Transl. Santillana, p. 121.
43
Ibid., p. 123.
44
To Picchena, 6.3. 1616, quoted by Drake, p. 218 f.
45
Cath. Ency., Article on "Galileo".
45 a
Santillana, op. cit., p. 90 n.
46
Ibid., p. 88.
47
Burtt, op. cit., p. 25.
48
Santillana, op. cit., p. 124.
49>
To Picchena, 6.3. 1616.
50
Ut omnino absfineat ... docere aut defendere seu de ea tractare ( L'Epinois, Les Pièces du Procès de Galilée, Rome, Paris, 1877, p. 40).
51
Non si possa difendere, ne tenere (ibid., pp. 72, 75).
52
Quovis modo teheat, doceat, aut defendat, verbo aut scriptis. (Ibid., p. 40 f.)
52a
The latest contribution to the controversy is Santillana's The Crime of Galileo, which I have quoted frequently and to which my indebtedness is evident. It is all the more regrettable that on this crucial issue he omits to mention some relevant facts, which to a large extent vitiates his conclusions on the Galileo trial. On p. 128 he says about the controversial minute of 26 February that "it was a very Catholic historian, but a distinguished one, Professor Franz Reusch, who in the 1870's drew attention" to certain suspicions concerning the form in which the minute of 26 February was written. On p. 131, n., he repeats: "We have said earlier, and we must emphasise it here, that the first Catholic historian, to our knowledge, to have found that there is something strange about the document is Professor Reusch." Actually, the first suspicion on the document was cast not by Reusch, but by Emil Wohlwill in Der Inquisitionsprocess des Galileo Galilei, published in 1870. This could be regarded as a minor lapsus (though the whole Galileo controversy echoes with the name of Wohlwill, who started this particular hare); but since Santillana professes such respect for Reusch it is incomprehensible why he omits to say that it was in fact Reusch who, notwithstanding his initial suspicions about the document, adduced some important arguments in favour of its authenticity. The principal argument of Wohlwill and his followers ( Gebler, Cantor, Scartazzini, and others) against the authenticity of the minute had turned on three words: "successive ac incontinenti". The minute said that after Bellarmine had admonished Galileo to abandon his Copernican opinions, successive ac incontinenti the Commissary of the Inquisition "commanded and enjoined" on Galileo the absolute injunction. But, the argument runs, the Holy Office had decreed that the absolute injunction should only be served in case of Galileo's refusal to submit, and the words successive ac incontinenti indicate that the injunction was served immediately after the admonition without giving Galileo an opportunity to refuse; in other words, that the procedure described by the minute of 26 February contradicted the procedure ordered by the decree of the previous day.
Against this argument Reusch proved that the words "succussive ac incontinenti" meant in the Vatican usage of the time not "immediately afterwards" or "without pause," but simply "in the sequel" or "later on". * The passage is impossible to miss as it is specially marked in the list of contents of Reusch's book (p. ix) and it once and for all settled this particular argument. H. Grisar, a Jesuit, dotted the i's by proving that the expression in question was even used to refer to events several days apart. † Yet Santillana (p. 26), ignoring all this (in the same chapter in which he twice quotes Reusch), translates the words "successive ac incontinenti" by "immediately thereafter".
The auxiliary arguments about the form of the minute, the absence of the notary's signature, etc., which have also been exhaustively dealt with by Reusch and others, are listed by Santillana as if he were unaware of the long and complicated controversy on the subject. He fails to mention that the minute of the meeting of 25 February and the minute of the procedure of 26 February were written by the hand of the same notary. Not the least omission is Santillana's failure to point out that the terms of the injunction
____________________
* F. H. Reusch, Der Process Galilei's und die Jesuiten, Bonn, 1879, p. 136 f.
†H. S. J Grisar, Galileistudien, Regensburg, New York und Cincinnati, 1882, pp. 50-51.
as served according to the minute of A February, were actually less harsh than those foreseen in the meeting of 25 February. On 15 February, the Holy Office had ordered that in case of Galileo's refusal to obey he should be commanded "to abstain altogether from teaching or defending this opinion and doctrine and even from discussing it." But the injunction according to the minute of 26 February, only forbade him to "hold, teach or defend in any way whatsoever verbally or in writing" the Copernican doctrine; the words "and even from discussing it" are omitted in the minute of 26 February. If that minute had been a fabrication aimed at framing Galileo, why did the fabricator omit precisely those words which would have provided a cast-iron reason for convicting him? It was this last point which convinced Reusch that the charge of a fabrication was logically untenable (op. cit., pp. 144-5).
What are we to conclude? (a) The possibility of a technical forgery has been eliminated by careful analysis of the paper and ink (cf. Gebler, op. cit., pp. 90, 334seq.). (b) The possibility of a mala fide fabrication which the notary wrote down on the instructions of some high-placed enemy or enemies of Galileo in the Holy Office is logically untenable on the grounds just explained, and a number of other reasons. (c) Yet certain discrepancies between the minutes of the decision of 25 February, the procedure on 26 February, and Bellarmine's certificate remain. The fact that the notary did not record Galileo's refusal to acquiesce in Bellarmine's admonition is one; but the shortness and summary nature of the minute (twenty lines in all in L'Epionois' Pièces du Procès) might explain this; besides, Galileo may not have formally refused to obey, but merely argued, as was his wont. The watering down of the text of the injunction, and the face-saving testimonial which Bellarmine gave Galileo at his request might perhaps be explained, again with Reusch, by Bellarmine's diplomacy, who, on the one hand, wanted to put an end to the Galilean agitation and, on the other hand, wished to spare his and Duke Cosmo's feelings. This at least seems to be the most plausible assumption, particularly if we remember Bellarmine's letter to Foscarini in which he praised Galileo for acting "prudently" by treating Copernicus merely as a working hypothesis, when Bellarmine knew the opposite to be the case. But certainty will only become possible when the complete Vatican file is at last made accessible to scholars.
Part V Chapter II. THE TRIAL OF GALILEO
1
Santillana, op. cit., p. 136.
2
Dialogue on the Great World Systems, p. 425seq.
3
Apart from gravity, of course, which does not enter Galileo's picture.
4
Second letter to Mark Welser, transl. Drake, p. 118 f.
5
 
; Transl. Drake, p. 266.
6
Ibid., p. 272.
7
Ibid., p. 276 f.
8
Santillana, p. 233.
9
Ibid., p. 162 f.
10
Gebler, op. cit., p. 115.
10a
Some parts of the Dialogue were actually written as far back as 1610.
11
Dialogue, p. 68 f.
12
Ibid., p. 24.
13
Ibid., p. 200seq.
14
Ibid., p. 178seq.
15
This is not expressly stated, but clearly implied in pp. 458-60.
16
Ibid., p. 350.
17
Santillana, in a footnote to Dialogue, p. 349.
18
Ibid., p. 354.
19
Ibid., p. 357.
20
Ibid., p. 364.
21
Ibid., p. 365.
22
Ibid., p. 407.
23
Ibid., pp. 362-4.
24
Owing to the moon's revolutions round the earth, the centre of gravity of these two bodies travels in a smaller or larger orbit, and by analogy with an isochronous pendulum, its velocity must also vary. Dialogue, pp. 458-60. By the same analogy the tangential velocity of all planets ought to be the same (see above, note 15).
24a
Ibid., p. 469. The word (which Salusbury translates by "trifles") is fanciullezze.
25
Ibid., p. 342 f.
26
Ibid., p. 462.
27
Santillana, op. cit., p. 183.
28
Loc. cit.
29
Ibid., p. 184.
30
Gebler, op. cit., p. 161.
31
Ibid., p. 183.
32
Santillana, p. 241.
33
Ibid., p. 252 ff.
34
Ibid., p. 255 f.
35
Ibid., p. 256.
36
Ibid., pp. 258-60.
37
Ibid., p. 292 f.
38
Ibid., p. 302.
39
Ibid., p. 303.
40
Loc. cit.
41
Loc. cit.
42
"Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the Sun is the centre of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled "On the Sunspots", wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning: and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a document in the form of a letter, purporting to be written by you to one formerly your disciple, and in this divers propositions are set forth, following the position of Copernicus, which are contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture:
This Holy Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Holy Faith, by command of His Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:
The proposition that the Sun is the centre of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.
The proposition that the Earth is not the centre of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith.
But whereas it was desired at that time to deal leniently with you, it was decreed at the Holy Congregation held before His Holiness on the twenty-fifth of February, 1616, that his Eminence the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine should order you to abandon altogether the said false doctrine and, in the event of your refusal, that an injunction should be imposed upon you by the Commissary of the Holy Office to give up the said doctrine and not to teach it to others, not to defend it, nor even discuss it; and failing your acquiescence in this injunction, that you should be imprisoned. And in execution of this decree, on the following day, at the Palace, and in the presence of his Eminence, the said Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, after being gently admonished by the said Lord Cardinal, the command was enjoined upon you by the Father Commissary of the Holy Office of that time, before a notary and witnesses, that you were altogether to abandon the said false opinion and not in future to hold or defend or teach it in any way whatsoever, neither verbally nor in writing; and, upon your promising to obey, you were dismissed.
And, in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.
And whereas a book appeared here recently, printed last year at Florence, the title of which shows that you were the author, this title being: "'Dialogue of Galileo Galilei on the Great World Systems'"; and whereas the Holy Congregation was afterward informed that through the publication of the said book the false opinion of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun was daily gaining ground, the said book was taken into careful consideration, and in it there was discovered a patent violation of the aforesaid injunction that had been imposed upon you, for in this book you have defended the said opinion previously condemned and to your face declared to be so, although in the said book you strive by various devices to produce the impression that you leave it undecided, and in express terms as probable: which, however, is a most grievous error, as an opinion can in no wise be probable which has been declared and defined to be contrary to divine Scripture.
Therefore by our order you were cited before this Holy Office, where, being examined upon your oath, you acknowledged the book to be written and published by you. You confessed that you began to write the said book about ten or twelve years ago, after the command had been imposed upon you as above; that you requested license to print it without, however, intimating to those who granted you this license that you had been commanded not to hold, defend, or teach the doctrine in question in any way whatever.
You likewise confessed that the writing of the said book is in many places drawn up in such a form that the reader might fancy that the arguments brought forward on the false side are calculated by their cogency to compel conviction rather than to be easy of refutation, excusing yourself for having fallen into an error, as you alleged, so foreign to your intention, by the fact that you had written in dialogue and by the natural complacency that every man feels in regard to his own subtleties and in showing himself more clever than the generality of men in devising, even on behalf of false propositions, ingenious and plausible arguments.
And, a suitable term having been assigned to you to prepare your defense, you produced a certificate in the handwriting of his Eminence the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, procured by you, as you asserted, in order to defend yourself against the calumnies of your enemies, who charged that you had abjured and had been punished by the Holy Office, in which certificate it is declared that you had not abjured and had not been punished but only that the declaration made by His Holiness and published by the Holy Congregation of the Index had been announced to you
, wherein it is declared that the doctrine of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun is contrary to the Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended or held. And, as in this certificate there is no mention of the two articles of the injunction, namely, the order not 'to teach' and 'in any way', you represented that we ought to believe that in the course of fourteen or sixteen years you had lost all memory of them and that this was why you said nothing of the injunction when you requested permission to print your book. And all this you urged not by way of excuse for your error but that it might be set down to a vainglorious ambition rather than to malice. But this certificate produced by you in your defense has only aggravated your delinquency, since, although it is there stated that said opinion is contrary to Holy Scripture, you have nevertheless dared to discuss and defend it and to argue its probability; nor does the license artfully and cunningly extorted by you avail you anything, since you did not notify the command imposed upon you.
And whereas it appeared to us that you had not stated the full truth with regard to your intention, we thought it necessary to subject you to a rigorous examination at which (without prejudice, however, to the matters confessed by you and set forth as above with regard to your said intention) you answered like a good Catholic. Therefore, having seen and maturely considered the merits of this your case, together with your confessions and excuses abovementioned, and all that ought justly to be seen and considered, we have arrived at the underwritten final sentence against you:
Invoking, therefore, the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His most glorious Mother, ever Virgin Mary, by this our final sentence, which sitting in judgment, with the counsel and advice of the Reverend Masters of sacred theology and Doctors of both Laws, our assessors, we deliver in these writings, in the cause and causes at present before us between the Magnificent Carlo Sinceri, Doctor of both Laws, Proctor Fiscal of this Holy Office, of the one part, and you Galileo Galilei, the defendant, here present, examined, tried, and confessed as shown above, of the other part –
We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in trial, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine-which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures – that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world; and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to the Holy Scripture; and that consequently you have incurred all the censures and penalties imposed and promulgated in the sacred canons and other constitutions, general and particular, against such delinquents. From which we are content that you be absolved, provided that, first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, you abjure, curse, and detest before us the aforesaid errors and heresies and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church in the form to be prescribed by us for you.