_THE CONTROVERSY ON COMETS._
Studious Seclusion.—Waiting for the Correction of the Work of
Copernicus.—Treatise on Tides.—Sends it to Archduke Leopold
of Austria.—The Letter which accompanied it.—The three Comets
of 1618.—Galileo’s Opinion of Comets.—Grassi’s Lecture on
them.—Guiducci’s Treatise on them inspired by Galileo.—Grassi’s
“Astronomical and Philosophical Scales.”—Galileo’s Reply.—Paul
V.—His Death.—Death of Cosmo II.—Gregory XV.—“Il Saggiatore”
finished.—Riccardi’s “Opinion” on it.—Death of Gregory
XV.—Urban VIII.
Seven years passed by, during which Galileo lived a secluded and studious
life in the Villa Segni, at Bellosguardo, near Florence, without
publishing any new work. How could he do so? The acceptance and further
application of the Copernican system was the mainspring of all his
scientific pursuits, of which, multifarious as they were, the principle
of the double motion of the earth was both foundation and keystone. The
general permission to employ the theory as a working hypothesis was of
little service to him. The lofty structure of correct knowledge of our
universe could not be raised on a pedestal of sand; it required the
imperishable marble of truth. Galileo was compelled to withhold the
results of his researches until, perchance, some altered state of things
should change the mind of the papal court, at present so inimical to the
Copernican cause. The publication of any researches in accordance with
the Copernican system appeared especially dangerous, until the promised
corrections had been made in the famous work of the Canon of Frauenburg,
which had been temporarily placed on the Index. These corrections would
give more precise information as to how they wished the new doctrine
handled at Rome, what limits had been set by ecclesiastical despotism to
researches into nature. Galileo watched with great anxiety the labours
of the papal censors, and tried to hasten them through his friend Prince
Cesi.[159] This eager interest in the earliest possible publication of
the corrections is another thing which does not accord with the assumed
stringent prohibition of February 26th. What difference would it have
made to Galileo whether any facilities were offered for the discussion of
the Copernican theory or not, if absolute silence on the subject had been
enjoined on him?
During this period, when he could not venture to have the results of his
various researches published, he was careful to make them known to some
friends of science by means of long letters, numerous copies of which
were then circulated in Europe. Very few of them, unfortunately, have
come down to us, but there is one of them that deserves special notice.
It indicates precisely Galileo’s position: on the one hand he feels
constrained to make way for the recognition of the truth; but on the
other, as a good Catholic, and from regard to his personal safety, he
does not wish to clash with ecclesiastical authority. This letter, too,
adds weight to the conclusion _that there was no prohibition enjoining
absolute silence on the Copernican theory on Galileo_.
During his last stay at Rome, at the suggestion of Cardinal Orsini, he
had written a treatise on the tides in the form of a letter to that
dignitary, dated January 8th,[160] in which he expressed his firm
conviction, erroneously as we now know, that this phenomenon could
only be explained on the theory of the double motion of the earth. He
represented it as an important confirmation of the truth of it. In May,
1618, he sent a copy of this treatise to the Archduke Leopold of Austria,
who was friendly to him, and was a brother of the Grand Duchess. But as
since it was written the decree of March 5th had been issued, which only
permitted discussion of the subject as a hypothesis, Galileo thought it
advisable to add a sort of accompaniment to his treatise, in which he
took the utmost pains to comply with the conditions imposed by the Church
on her dutiful and orthodox son. He wrote:—
“With this I send a treatise on the causes of the tides, which
I wrote rather more than two years ago at the suggestion of
his Eminence Cardinal Orsini, at Rome, at the time when the
theologians were thinking of prohibiting Copernicus’s book and
the doctrine enounced therein of the motion of the earth, which
I then held to be true, until it pleased those gentlemen to
prohibit the work, and to declare that opinion to be false and
contrary to Scripture. Now, knowing as I do, that it behoves
us to obey the decisions of the authorities, and to believe
them, since they are guided by a higher insight than any to
which my humble mind can of itself attain, I consider this
treatise which I send you merely to be a poetical conceit, or
a dream, and desire that your Highness may take it as such,
inasmuch as it is based on the double motion of the earth, and
indeed contains one of the arguments which I have adduced in
confirmation of it. But even poets sometimes attach a value to
one or other of their fantasies, and I likewise attach some
value to this fancy of mine. Now, having written the treatise,
and having shown it to the Cardinal above-mentioned, and a few
others, I have also let a few exalted personages have copies,
in order that in case any one not belonging to our Church
should try to appropriate my curious fancy, as has happened
to me with many of my discoveries, these personages, being
above all suspicion, may be able to bear witness that it was
I who first dreamed of this chimera. What I now send is but
a fugitive performance; it was written in haste, and in the
expectation that the work of Copernicus would not be condemned
as erroneous eighty years after its publication. I had intended
at my convenience, and in the quiet, to have gone more
particularly into this subject, to have added more proofs, to
have arranged the whole anew, and to have put it into a better
form. But a voice from heaven has aroused me, and dissolved all
my confused and tangled fantasies in mist. May therefore your
Highness graciously accept it, ill arranged as it is. And if
Divine love ever grants that I may be in a position to exert
myself a little, your Highness may expect something more solid
and real from me.”[161]
On reading such passages one really does not know which to be the most
indignant at,—the iron rule by which a privileged caste repressed the
progress of science in the name of religion, or the servility of one
of the greatest philosophers of all times in not scorning an unworthy
subterfuge in order to disseminate a grain of supposed truth in the world
without incurring personal danger.
But in spite of all precautions, in spite of “chimeras,” “fictions,”
“fantasies,” and even “the voice from heaven,” the circulation of this
treatise, based upon the theory of the double motion, would have been
an infringement of the assumed absolute prohibition to Galileo, while,
thanks to the ingenious accompaniment, it in no way clashed with the
decree of 5th March. Galileo’s conduct shows plainly enough that he
humbly submitted to the ecclesiastical ordinance, but there is not a
trace of the prohibition to discuss the doctrine “in any way.”
Little, however, as Galileo desired to engage, thus hampered, in any
perilous controversies, the next time it was nature herself who enticed
him into the field in which his genius and his polemical ingenuity
acquired for him both splendid triumphs and bitter foes.
In August, 1618, three comets appeared in the heavens, and the brilliant
one in the constellation of the Scorpion strongly attracted the attention
of astronomers. Although it was visible until January, 1619, Galileo
had very little opportunity of observing it, as he was confined to his
bed by a severe and tedious illness.[162] But he communicated his views
on comets to several of his friends, and among others to the Archduke
Leopold of Austria, who had come to see the sick philosopher.[163] He
did not consider them to be real heavenly bodies, but merely atmospheric
appearances, columns of vapour which rise from earth to the skies, to a
very considerable height, far beyond the moon, and become temporarily
visible to the inhabitants of the earth, in the well-known form of a
comet, by the refraction of the sun’s rays. As he judged comets to be
without substance, and placed them on a par with mock suns and the aurora
borealis, he concluded that they could have no parallax determinations.
In the same year, 1619, a Jesuit, Father Grassi, delivered a lecture on
the three comets in the Roman College, in which he gave out that such
phenomena were not mere appearances, but real heavenly bodies; copies of
this lecture were widely circulated, and Galileo was strongly urged by
his adherents to publish his opinion. He was prudent enough to evade for
the time a fresh controversy, which, in the existing critical state of
affairs, might bring him into danger, and apparently took no part in the
scientific feud which was brewing. But he induced his learned friend and
pupil, Mario Guiducci, consul of the Academy at Florence, to publish a
treatise on comets. Numerous alterations and additions, however, which
are found in the original MS. in the Palatina Library at Florence, attest
that he had a direct share in the editorship.[164] The opinions hitherto
held by philosophers and astronomers on this subject were discussed,
and the author’s own—that is Galileo’s—expounded. Grassi’s views were
sharply criticised, and he was reproachfully asked why he had passed over
Galileo’s recent astronomical discoveries in silence.
Grassi, who recognised the real originator of the work, in the reply
which he issued a few months later entirely ignored the pupil, that he
might the more vigorously attack the master. Under the pseudonym of
_Lothario Sarsi Sigensano_, he published a pamphlet against Galileo,
entitled, “The Astronomical and Philosophical Scales.”[165] It is
written with caustic bitterness, and is a model of Jesuitical malice
and cunning. The comet question was for the time a secondary matter with
Grassi, and he begins with a personal attack on Galileo, by disputing the
priority of several of his most important discoveries and inventions, and
reproaching him, with pious indignation, with obstinate adherence to a
doctrine condemned by theologians. Up to this point he is only angry and
spiteful, but as he goes on he becomes cunning. He sets up for a warm
defender of the Peripatetic physics, and attacks the Copernican system,
and its advocate Galileo, to compel him either to ignominious silence or
dangerous demonstrations. Under pretext of meeting Guiducci’s reproach
that he (Grassi) had taken Tycho as his authority, he asks whether it
would have been better to follow the system of Ptolemy, which had been
convicted of error, or that of Copernicus, which every God-fearing
man must abhor, and his hypothesis, which had just been condemned? In
discussing the causes of the movements of comets, it seemed to him that
the arguments were insinuated on which the forbidden doctrines were
based. “Away!” he exclaims in righteous indignation, “with all such
words so offensive to truth and to every pious ear! They were prudent
enough certainly scarcely to speak of them with bated breath, and not to
blazon it abroad that Galileo’s opinion was founded upon this pernicious
principle.”
Thus attacked, Galileo prepared to defend himself. The greatest caution
was necessary, for Grassi was backed by the powerful party of the
Jesuits, who made a great boast of this work.[166] The letters of this
period from Prince Cesi and Galileo’s ecclesiastical friends at Rome
show that they were very anxious that he should not make the influential
order of Jesuits his enemies by a direct collision with them. But as they
saw the absolute necessity of a reply, they gave him all sorts of good
advice, how to parry the attack without incurring their hatred. They
were of opinion that he should not honour an adversary concealed behind
a pseudonym with a reply written by himself, but should depute the task
to a pupil, or, if he intended to conduct his defence in person, clothe
his reply in the form of a letter instead of a treatise, not addressed
to Sarsi himself, but to one of his own party.[167] He decided for the
latter; and adopting a hint from Mgr. Ciampoli,[168] he addressed the
reply to Mgr. Cesarini, one of his most devoted friends and dauntless
defenders.
But the completion of this afterwards famous rejoinder was delayed for
two years, and its publication, which, according to custom with all works
by members of the Accadémia dei Lincei, was undertaken by the Society,
was delayed fully another year owing to the scruples of Prince Cesi and
other “lynxes.” Galileo’s procrastination is to be explained partly by
his continued ill health, but more so by the position of affairs at Rome
as well as in Tuscany, which was by no means encouraging for a contest
with a Jesuit.
The imperious Paul V. was still the reigning Pope, and his good will
towards Galileo would certainly only have lasted so long as he was
entirely submissive. His dialectic reply, which was pervaded by cutting
irony aimed at a father of the order of Jesuits, even sometimes making
him appear ridiculous, could not have been much to the taste of a Pope to
whom the inviolability of the Church and her ministers was all in all. It
is characteristic of this pontiff that, as appears from the negotiations
with James I., he seriously claimed the right of deposing kings, and
called every attempt to make him relinquish this claim “a heretical
proceeding,” and pronounced the writings of some Venetian ecclesiastics
who disputed it, to be worse than Calvinistic. Just as this stern
pontiff was gathered to his fathers (16th January, 1621), in consequence
of an attack of apoplexy on the occasion of the celebration of the
victory on the Weissenberg, and the good-natured and infirm old man,
Gregory XV., ascended the papal chair, Galileo sustained a blow which was
most disastrous to him. This was the death, on 28th February, 1621, of
his kind protector and patron, Cosmo II. The protection of an energetic
prince who sincerely respected him, which he had hitherto enjoyed, was
replaced by the uncertain favour of a feminine government, as the widowed
Grand Duchess, whose tendencies were thoroughly Romish, assumed the
regency for Ferdinand II., who was still in his minority.
Under these circumstances Galileo was but little inclined to bring out
his reply; and perhaps the time when they were founding the Propaganda
at Rome, and enrolling Loyola and Xavier among the saints, did not seem
very opportune. From the new Pope personally there was nothing to fear.
The phlegmatic little man, who was so bowed down by age and sickness
that those about him often feared to lay complicated business matters
before him, lest he should entirely break down, was certainly not likely
to inspire awe; besides, Gregory had expressed himself to Ciampoli very
favourably of Galileo.[169] But the Pope’s infirmities made it all the
more necessary to proceed with caution; for they allowed the Romish
administration to exercise full sway. And the man who guided it with
almost sovereign authority was the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Lodovico
Lodovisi, a former pupil and therefore zealous friend of the Jesuits.
Nevertheless Galileo’s adherents, and especially his clerical friends at
Rome, considered it absolutely necessary to publish his reply as soon as
possible, with the precautions before mentioned, because his opponents
construed his silence into a triumph for Grassi and the Aristotelian
school.[170] Prince Cesi, Mgrs. Cesarini and Ciampoli—the latter of whom
meanwhile had become Secretary of the Papal Briefs to Gregory XV., a post
which he also held under his successor, Urban VIII., until he fell into
disgrace about Galileo—urged him repeatedly to finish his reply.[171]
Francesco Stelluti, a member of the Accadémia dei Lincei, a learned
friend of Galileo’s, did indeed at this time (June, 1622) bring out
a work against “Lothario Sarsi,” but he only defended Guiducci, and
studiously avoided touching on the reproaches cast on Galileo, in order
not to anticipate him.[172]
At length, in October of the same year, Galileo sent the MS. of his
celebrated work, “Il Saggiatore” (The Assayer), to Mgr. Cesarini, at
Rome.[173] For five months it passed from hand to hand among the members
of the Accadémia dei Lincei, who carefully criticised it, and with
Galileo’s consent, altered the passages which might possibly have been
taken advantage of by his enemies to renew their intrigues against him.
The Jesuits meanwhile had got wind of the completion of the reply, and
did their utmost to get hold of one of the numerous copies of the MS.;
but Cesarini, Cesi, Ciampoli, and the other “Lynxes,” took good care of
them, well knowing that if the Jesuits once made acquaintance with this
crushing reply, they would use every endeavour to prevent its receiving
the _imprimatur_.[174] This was granted on 2nd February, 1623, by the
supreme authorities of the censorship, not only without hesitation, but
they spoke of the work in very favourable and flattering terms. The
opinion—which was drawn up by Father Nicolo Riccardi, a former pupil of
Galileo’s, who will often be mentioned in the sequel, then examiner, and
afterwards even Magister Sacrii Palatii—was as follows:—
“By command of the Master of the Palace I have read the work,
‘Il Saggiatore,’ and not only have I detected nothing in it
which is contrary to good morals, or deviates from the divine
truth of our religion, but I have found in it such beautiful
and manifold observations on natural philosophy, that I think
our age will not have to boast merely of having been the
inheritor of the labours of earlier philosophers, but also of
having been the discoverer of many secrets of nature which they
were not able to penetrate, thanks to the subtle and solid
researches of the author, whose contemporary I think myself
happy to be, for now the gold of truth is no longer weighed
wholesale and with the steelyard, but with the delicate scales
used for gold.”[175]
The commencement of the printing was again delayed till the beginning
of May,[176] and then proceeded but slowly, for it was not until 27th
May that Ciampoli sent the first two sheets of the “Saggiatore” to
the author, in order to prove to him the falseness of a report which
had meanwhile gained currency, that the printing of the work had been
prohibited.[177]
An event then took place which seemed likely to produce a great change
in Galileo’s relations with Rome; indeed in the whole attitude of
ecclesiastical authority towards the free progress of science. At all
events, as we shall see, Galileo flattered himself with this hope, and
not without some justification. On 8th July, 1623, Gregory XV. succumbed
to age and infirmity in the second year of his pontificate. The man who
at the age of fifty-five was now elevated to the papacy, not only did
not in the least resemble his immediate predecessors, but his tendencies
were in striking contrast to theirs. He was previously Cardinal Maffeo
Barberini, and now ascended the papal throne as Urban VIII.