


Saturday, September 7, 2013


Previously on the Smackdown...


order to deceive the authorities!"  
-- Letter: Galileo to Peiresc (22 Feb 1635)

Flashback: 2 Nov. 1612. 

 Old Niccolò Lorini (67) denounces Galileo's views at a private meeting.  Word gets out and his Dominican superiors force him to apologize to Galileo.  He says he never mentioned such things in his All Souls sermon, but "it was only later, in a discussion, and in order not to stand there like a log, that I said a couple of words to the effect that Ipernicus, or whatever his name is, was against Holy Scripture."  Ipernicus?  Whatever.  Lorini is not exactly up to speed on these things.  But preachers are not supposed to use the H-word unless the matter has been settled in Rome.  It's just a 'boo'-word, like calling someone "un-American" in the 1940s or 50s, and should not be used when an actual heresy has not been defined.  Galileo accepts Lorini's apology and laughs the matter off.

Lorini is a humanist scholar of some repute, and is well-thought of by the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine (47) and the Archduchess Mary Madeleine (23), the mother and wife, resp., of Galileo's boss.  So what Lorini says sorta kinda matters.

The Stage Setting

The main locales: 1. Padua in the Republic, where Galileo had taught Castelli and
where he had made most of his telescopic observations. 
2. Florence and 3. Pisa in the Grand Duchy. Galileo lives and works in the former
and Castelli lives and teaches in the latter. 
4. Rome in the Papal State, which is where they keep the Pope.  Also Maffeo
Barberini, Roberto Bellarmino, Prince Cesi, and other Playahs. 
The Republic is hostile to the Papal State and maintains its own independent
Inquisition.  Tuscany is allied with Hapsburg interests and politically at odds with
the Papal State, on some of whose territories she has claims. 

Plan A

Benny Castelli, Galileo's fair-haired boy.
Fall Term, 1613.  While Galileo is paid on the budget of the University of Pisa, he has no intention of actually lecturing.  He considers himself what we would call a "research professor"  and wangles an appointment for Fr. Benedetto Castelli, his favorite student from Padua, to do the teaching instead. It was Benny who suggested to Galileo the use of a camera obscura for observing the sun.  He is an ardent Copernican; but when Castelli arrives in Pisa, the Overseer of the University, tells him not to discuss the motion of the earth in his lectures.  Castelli says No Problemo, adding that Galileo never did so at Padua.*   -- The Galileo Affair
(*) Galileo's defended Ptolemy's geocentric model in his Padua lectures, falsifying the earth's motion using  the traditional arguments. (E.g., if the earth moved, the clouds would be left behind.) (See here, footnotes 16 and 18)
Old Lady Medici
Don't mess with Italian Mamas.
12 Dec. 1613.  The Tuscan court blows into town for their annual visit.  "Hey," said the Duke, "let's all go out for Pisa!"  Cosimo invites Castelli to a big feed at the palace. The other guests include his mama (Christina of Lorraine), his wife (Maria Maddalena), and Prof. Cosimo Boscaglia (a philosophy prof at Pisa U.), plus sundry relatives and courtiers.  The Grand Duke asks Castelli if he has a telescope and Castelli says yes, and tells them about his latest observations of the moons of Jupiter the Medicean planets, "whereupon the talk turned to the reasons for their being real objects and not illusions produced by the telescope."  This was a genuine concern in those early days, but everyone, even Boscaglia, agrees these new things are real.

Madama Christina's porter fetches Castelli back as he is leaving and he finds some of the guests are still there, including Professor Boscaglia, Paolo Giordano Orsini, a cousin of the Grand Duke (who will soon be named cardinal), and Antonio de Medici, an adopted son of the Duke’s grandfather (which makes him a step-uncle, TOF supposes.)  Boscaglia had been telling the Grand Duchess that the motion of the Earth could not take place mainly because (Cue ominous music) it goes against Holy Scripture.*  Castelli writes to Galileo afterward:
(*) Notice, it is once more a layman who is playing the Scripture card.  Galileo had tried it in Letters of Sunspots. 
"The Grand Duchess began to argue Holy Scripture against me. Thereupon, having made suitable disclaimers, I began to play the theologian with such assurance and dignity that it would have done you good to hear me. Don Antonio assisted me, giving me such heart that instead of being dismayed by the majesty of Their Highnesses I carried things off like a paladin. I quite won over the Grand Duke and his Archduchess, while Don Paolo came to my assistance with a very apt quotation from Scripture. Only Madama Christina remained against me, but from her manner I judged that she did this only to hear my replies. Professor Boscaglia never said a word."  

(Letter: Castelli to Galileo, 14 December 1613)
Galileo, typically, decides Castelli has not answered as well as Galileo would have in his place, so he writes to Castelli and explains how Scripture could be reinterpreted in the light of Copernicanism.  Big mistake.
Not that Galileo is wrong about Scripture, BTW.  He's just repeating stuff that churchmen from Augustine of Hippo to his friend Cardinal Conti and others have said. The problem is, it's the middle of the Protestant Revolution and the Church is like super-touchy about amateurs interpreting Scripture. 
Castelli thinks Galileo's letter is so rad kool that he makes copies and passes them around.  Second big mistake.  At least one ends up in the wrong hands; viz., those of the aforesaid Dominican Fr. Niccolò Lorini.  Remember: Galileo had been feted by the Jesuits, and the Jesuits and Dominicans are playing for the Stanley Cup of Intellectual Chops, so the "Hounds of God"* might take a swipe at Galileo just for the sake of intramural rivalry.
(*) The Latin plural for Dominicans is Dominicanes, which can be read as Domini canes, "the Lord's hounds."

14 Dec. 1613.  The Jesuit turtle pulls in its head.  Intent on keeping the Order out of controversy, Fr. Claudio Acquaviva, general-poobah of the Jesuits, circulates an instruction to adhere to strict Aristotelianism in their lectures, re-iterating an earlier instruction (24 May 1611) to ensure uniformity in the curriculum (Ratio Studiorum).  They are not to include "novelties" or personal hobby horses in their lectures without clearing it through the curriculum committee, i.e., their superiors.  Otherwise, they might get reassigned out of teaching.  For a comparable mind-set, imagine someone getting fired as editor of a scientific journal by, oh say, the Smithsonian Institution, because he published non-Darwinian papers in the journal.

Simon Mayr: libeled by Galileo
1614.  Simon Marius up in the boonies of Franconia finally publishes his Mundus Iovialis, describing the planet Jupiter and its moons.  Due to his longer and more careful observations, he has derived more accurate orbital elements than had rush-to-publish Galileo.  And not having to brown-nose the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he is free to follow Kepler's suggestion and names the moons: Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto.  To his dying day, Galileo will not use these names.

But Simon claims to have observed the Jovian moons several days before the Tuscan.  Galileo's head explodes.  He has proprietary feelings about everything in the sky*, and starts flaming Marius and accusing him of plagiarism.  Since Galileo is famous and has powerful friends, he manages to trash the poor German's reputation for the next 200 years.  Not until the end of the 19th century, will Marius' data be examined objectively, and found to be independently derived.  But the Protestant North was still using the Julian calendar while Galileo and the Catholic South were using the cool new Gregorian calendar.  At first glace, the notebook dates give Marius the priority of discovery, as he claimed.  But when corrections are made for the difference in calendars, we find that Simon saw the moons of Jupiter one freaking day later than Galileo.
The Roman College is now a high school.
From these roofs, Galileo's discoveries
were verified.

June 1614.  Fr. Christoph Grienberger (53), who has succeeded Clavius as head of the Roman College, tells Giovanni Bardi (who then writes to Galileo) that as a result of Fr. Acquaviva's directive, he [Grienberger] must adhere to strict Aristotelianism, even though he would gladly have spoken up for Galileo.  The Jesuits had been teaching Copernicanism from an instrumentalist viewpoint: that is, as a way of calculating reasonably correct predictions, with no presumption that the gimmicks in the model are physically real. 

Remember: If the Copernican (or Keplerian) model is physically real, it will require an entirely new physics to accommodate it.  No one has such a physics handy, and everyone is anxious for Newton to be born so they can get on with it.

Merry Christmas, Galileo

21 Dec 1614.  The Dominican preacher, Tommaso Caccini preaches a sermon from the pulpit of S. Maria Novella, in Florence, on the text, "Men of Galilee, why do ye stand here looking into the sky?" (Acts 1:11).  Viri Galilei ("men of Galilee") can also translate as "Men of [Galileo] Galilei."  Some people just cannot pass up a pun.  Caccini, a member of the Pigeon League, tells his audience that mathematicians, being spreaders of heretical ideas, should be banished from the Italian states.

Sounds weird.  But keep in mind that in the Renaissance the words astrologus, astronomus and mathematicus are synonymous.  Unlike the 14th century, the Renaissance is more into mystical woo-woo, and everyone supposes there must be something to it.  Galileo, Kepler, and all the rest cast horoscopes, and not just because they needed the money.  But astrology does remain officially heretical, so "mathematicians" really are suspect of heresy.  There is no doubt that Galileo is in Caccini's cross-hairs.  "The name of 'provocateur' had not been invented yet, says de Santillana, but the dodge is as old as the world."  (De Santillana, Giorgio. p.44)

Thus begins what Galileo will in later years describe as the slanders, frauds, stratagems, and trickeries that were used ... to deceive the authorities. Let the mud-wrassle begin.

What shocks the Florentine public now is that this mere friar has attacked a popular member of the ruling class, a personal friend of the Grand Duke, and a renowned scholar whose discoveries have been applauded by the Pope and the cardinals.  Either Caccini has just made a dangerous faux pas -- an attack on Galileo is by implication an attack of Cosimo deMedici -- or he has powerful backers lurking in the shadows.  Had the Internet been invented then, the boards and blogs would have exploded with speculations and conspiracy theories.  (De Santillana, Giorgio. p.44-45)

Winter 1614/1615Fr. Luigi Maraffi, Preacher-General of the Dominicans, who is friendly with Galileo, writes a letter of apology over Caccini.  "Unfortunately, I have to answer for all the idiocies that thirty or forty thousand brothers may and do actually commit."  Galileo describes Caccini as a person "of very great ignorance, no less a mind full of venom and devoid of charity."  Caccini's own brother shares this appraisal, calling his sibling "a dreadful fool" whose "ugly drives" and "performance...makes no sense in heaven or earth." 

But  Prince Federico Cesi (29), Galileo's friend and leader of the Lyncean Academy, who is savvy in all ways Renaissance and Italian, advises Galileo to button his lip.  So does Cardinal Piero Dini (44), another friend.  "It is very easy to proscribe a book or suspend it," Cesi writes, and "this is done even in case of doubt."  So if Galileo makes a big stink over this, he might provoke Bellarmino into suspending Copernicus' book just to make everything go away.  This may actually be the Pigeon League's objective!  Galileo agrees to play possum. 

 The Pigeon League grumbles.  Time for...

Plan B

Late 1614.  Lorini -- remember him? -- meets Caccini in Pisa and tells him like, what were you thinking, dude?  Hearing of this, Benedetto Castelli thinks Lorini's seen the light, but it is likely more a tactical critique.  Don't piss off the Grand Duke by slandering his fair-haired boy, you moron.  If you charge someone with heresy, you have to have evidence of actual heresy -- and only the Holy Office can make a ruling on something like that, not Friar No-Name from Podunk. Caccini  ponders this. 

While Lorini is in Pisa, someone slips him a copy of Galileo's Letter to Castelli.  Lorini is horrified to read Galileo pontificating on Scriptural exegesis, and makes a copy of the letter for himself.  In the process, Lorini changes:
  • "...which, taken in the strict literal meaning, look as if they differ from the truth""...which are false in the literal meaning" and
  • "Scripture does not refrain from overshadowing its most essential dogmas...""...perverting its most essential dogmas"
He does not alter the basic sense of the passages, but rewords them in more provocative ways.  By accident, we are sure.  Right.  

7 Feb. 1615.  Returning to Florence, Lorini sends the letter to Cardinal Paolo Sfondrati (54), prefect of the Congregation of the Index, with a cover letter denouncing "the Galileists" for "taking upon themselves to expound the Holy Scriptures according to their private lights."  Notice that the charge is scriptural interpretation, not heliocentrism.  The Copernican theory is simply the Galileists' occasion for ad libbing on Scripture, much as States' Rights will be the occasion for defending slavery and wind up being attacked simply because it is "annexed" to something else. 
Johnny Ciampoli, Galileo's BFF
on the make in the Curia
Early 1615.  Meanwhile down in Rome... Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite professor of theology at the university of Messina, comes to Rome on what we may as well call a book tour for his Letter on the opinion of the Pythagoreans and of Copernicus.  He sends a copy to Bellarmino and offers to take on all comers in debate, arguing that Scripture is expressed in the language of common people, not in the language of astronomy.  Prince Cesi thinks the timing great.  Galileo asks Giovanni Ciampoli (26), a long-time friend from the Medici court now working his way up the Curia, what's shaking.  
The Index.  Prince Cesi did not worry about Copernicanism being condemned, but was concerned that the book might be placed on the Index.  The Index was a tool for controlling the spread of heresy, which had been facilitated by the Internet printing press.  Books with ambiguous passages that could be interpreted in a heretical manner were often suspended until corrections and clarifications could be made.  One of Bellarmino's own books had been placed on the Index by Sixtus V.
16 Feb. 1615.  Galileo sniffs the wind and asks Castelli to return the original letter and, when he has received it, makes a new copy, perhaps with his own alterations.  He asks his friend Cardinal Dini to show it to Fr. Grienberger and (if possible) Cardinal Bellarmino.  He tells Dini that the Castelli letter had been written in haste and that he is busy revising it.  (The revision will become the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.)

ca. 25 Feb. 1615.  Dini meets with Bellarmino and the next day with Grienberger.  The meetings likely took place ca. 25 Feb.  Dini writes back to Galileo on 7 Mar. 
“As to Copernicus, [Cardinal Bellarmino] said that he could not believe his [Copernicus'] work would be forbidden, and that the worst possibility, in his opinion, would be the insertion of a note stating that the theory was introduced to save the celestial appearances, or some similar expression, in the same way as epicycles had been introduced without thereafter believing in their existence.  With this reservation, he continued, you would be at liberty to speak freely on these matters whenever you liked…  [Regarding Scriptural passages] I [Dini] answered that the Holy Scriptures might be considered in this place as simply employing our usual form of speech, but the Cardinal said that in dealing with such a question we must not be too hasty, just as it would not be right to rush into condemnation of anyone for holding the [Copernican] views which I had put before him …  He told me that he intended to invite Father Grienberger to his house that he might discuss the question with him, and this very morning I have been to visit the Father, to see if there were any further news.  I found that there was nothing fresh except that Father Grienberger would have been better pleased if you had first given your proofs before beginning to speak about the Holy Scriptures…”  Letter: Dini to Galileo, 7 Mar. 1615
Let’s not be hasty, Bellarmino has told Dini, either to embrace or condemn the theory.  But while Bellarmino has no problem with interpreting Scripture should Copernicanism be demonstrated with certainty, he does have a problem so long as it remains merely a supposition.  Exegesis certainly evolves as new knowledge is grasped, but it has to be knowledge and not just hypothesis.

 25 Feb. 1615.  Since the letter Lorini has given them is not in print, the Index decides it has no jurisdiction and passes it on Cardinal Giovanni Millini (52), Secretary of the Holy Office.  The Office meets in Bellarmino's residence: six other cardinals, the commissary, the assessor, and the notary.  But all they have is Lorini's cover letter -- which is not a judicial deposition, and hence has no legal standing -- and the copy of the Letter to Castelli.  An Inquisitor has examined it and found "such words as 'false' and 'perverting' sound very bad," but since the letter is otherwise orthodox, they might be construed innocently in context.  (Galileo's version of the text is already in Dini's hands at this point, but the Office cannot take official notice of it.  Whether Dini met with Bellarmino shortly before or after the Official meeting is unclear)

Knowing that Lorini is ill-disposed to Galileo, the Office decides to have Allesandro Marzi de'Medici (57), archbishop of Florence, tactfully* obtain and submit the signed original.  Millini also writes to Francesco Bonciani, newly-ordained archbishop of Pisa (where Castelli lives) to expedite matters.
(*) tactfully.  Official proceedings are secret so that no one is exposed to scandal based
on mere accusation.  False accusations are themselves punishable by the Inquisition.

12 Mar. 1615.  Archbishop Bonciani tells Castelli to give up these impossible opinions about the earth being in motion.  Castelli blandly asks for rational reasons why he should do so, but the archbishop's answer seems senseless to him.  Then the archbishop says that it was "soon to be made known"* to everyone, "including His Serene Highness" (Cosimo II) that these ideas are silly, and by the way do you have a copy of that letter Galileo wrote you, I'd really like to see it.  Castelli says he does not (he had returned it to Galileo last month) and the archbishop tells him to ask for another copy.  Castelli says sure thing and tells Galileo everything that went down.  (Letter: Castelli to Galileo, 12 Mar 1615)  
 (*) soon to be made known.  How does he know?  Maybe he adds 2+2 when
the Holy Office asks to see the letter; but maybe Bonciani is a Pigeon!

13 Mar. 1615.  The Holy Office closes out the complaint file with a routine notation.  Nothing to see here.  Move along. 

Cardinal Matt (30) in 1598
14 Mar. 1615.  Dini meets with Galileo BFF Maffeo Barberini, who has heard of no problems but wishes Galileo would stick to mathematics and not try to tell theologians how to do their job.  Maffeo is a member of the Index, and Lorini's denunciation had been passed over by the prefect of that committee, so he is not cognizant of it.  The Holy Office, which has the matter, does not talk out of school, so Maffeo will not learn of this affair until several years after he is elected Pope. 

21 Mar. 1615.  Ciampoli tells Galileo that he and Dini have sussed out the Zeitgeist and found no great moves afoot, only the usual rumors one finds in Rome at any time.   Ciampoli thinks Foscarini's book,like any book dealing with Scripture, runs the risk of suspension by the Index.  It's best to "stay out of the sacristy."  

So it's All Clear, and Smooth Sailing Ahead.  

Except for what happened the day before.  


  1. Christie, Thony (2009) Astronomy and Astrology.
  2. Christie, Thony (2013) Refusing to look
  4. The Galilean Library.  Non-Intellectual Contexts.  
  5. The Galileo Project.  Chronology.  
  6. Linder, Douglas.  The Trial of Galileo.
  7. Rowland, Wade. Galileo's Mistake. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003.
  8. Sant, Joseph (2012). Jesuits and the Early Telescope: Scheiner and Grienberger.
  9. Shea, William R. & Mariano Artigas. Galileo in Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  10. Shea, William R. & Mariano Artigas.  The Galileo Affair.  A short summary of #9, with slides.


  1. Seriously. This could make a great movie ("Gallileo"). But I'd be worried what scenes they would leave out to make the time fit.

  2. Seems like the trouble with the amateurs interpreting scripture is not only the hostile environment caused by the Protestants' ad libbing, but that the suggestion of reinterpreting scripture because of any non-inspired text violated the principle of canonical interpretation. Luther's not my forte, but my understanding is that Luther's study of the then-current Jewish canon led him to jettison the Greek books. Seems like the canon itself being under siege would make them extra touchy about a threat to canonical interpretation, so it's really kicking the hornet's nest rather than just misreading the climate.

    The point about epicycles is a good one. It's probably more striking when we recall they had only a one yr. lectionary; one might suggest humorously that VII introduced an epicycle when they made Yr.A normative and Yrs. B & C derivative. I sometimes attend the EF Mass but chant a post-VII psalter & the disjunction on Sun. brings it to mind.

    1. Well, Luther's study of the Jewish canon would have given him support for his willingness to jettison Bible books that he wanted to jettison anyway. Since the determination among the relevant Jewish authorities was made AFTER the apostolic age, and was determined in a significant measure by a desire to undermine the Christian revelation (the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah, for instance, is much more easily susceptible to a Jesus-Christ-is-the-Messiah interpretation than even the original Hebrew), this would be a, how-you-say, 'perilous' approach.

  3. Very entertaining and edifying, MF^2.

    It's good to see that Sternberg's cutesy "heading out the door and slipping the Meyer manuscript -- that was never presented to the editorial board in the same manner as the rest of his managed submissions -- to the printers" has precedence in Galileo's slick tricks.

    Much infighting continues in today's "antiseptic" groves of scientific academia, a view that the Great Unwashed rarely bother to observe when it offers more fun than the WWF.

    Also -- since I'm on the subject of publications concerning invertebrate biology -- how 'bout those invertebrate punsters! :>)


  4. Oh, and regarding the traditions of scientific controversy in general, a recent epiphany of mine was reignited by this article (Statistics Incomprehension Fever strikes again!) --

    -- that Goodhart's Law sufficiently explains the Global-Warming Industry.


    At least some relevance to a heliocentricism/sunspot discussion.



    Is this your sly way of saying your account is as fictional as the this scenario you're describing?


    Truer would be "Like" and the removal of the word "more". Being into woo is a feature of human culture.

    1. No. If you want to feel in your get the way the ur-scientists of yore saw heliocentrism, you have to take some theory that is accepted uncritically by us Late Moderns and consider how we would regard someone who came along with an "alternative" but without any solid evidence. Darwinian theory is a good candidate because everyone has pretty much heard of it and how it Explains Everything, and also how dissenters are full of woo-woo. So imagine someone with purported credentials -- but not in the field -- who asserts that Darwin and his epigones are wrong-wrong-wrong but cannot prove it, and you have a taste of how it seemed to the scientific consensus of that era for a mere mathematician to come along and say the physicists had gotten it wrong-wrong-wrong.

      The hardest thing in history is to regard the past without back-projecting the present. (I came across a website recently that called Galileo the "Father of Modern Science"! LOL.) "When you study Salamis," John Lukacs used to say, "it must be with the attitude that the Persians might still win."

    2. Perhaps I have misread your account, but weren't you saying the ur-scientists had already taken to teaching Copernicanism as a better predictive model? So, to be truly comparable, wouldn't the fictional editor in your example have to have offered something that explains or predicts something Darwinism (whatever you mean by that today) can not to the degree than some reasonable percentage of the Darwinists (whoever that is supposed to be today) were actually using these predictions in a strictly instrumentalist fashion?

      Not to mention that example offered was very close to the false propaganda offered about a recent historical event, which is why I asked my question. Invoking a false presentation, details removed, as an example looks more like sly commentary.

      Galileo was as much of a scientist as any that preceded him, although I agree the "Father" is probably an exaggeration of his status.


    Gleason's New Standard Map Of The World


Whoa, What's This?
