commendable speed, Marzari expressed the transcripts to Rome. Just ten days later, meeting in Sfondrato’s palace in the Via Giulia (the present Palazzo Sacchetti, one of the grandest in Rome, which shortly afterward sold for the colossal sum of 55,000 scudi), the Inquisition ordered Sunspot Letters examined but took no other action.141 Now, after all this rush, nothing happened until February 1616, that is, except for Galileo’s decision to go to Rome.
Galileo Goes to Rome
It may be coincidence, but, within a week of the Inquisition’s decree on 25 November 1615 calling for review of his Sunspot Letters, Galileo was collecting letters of recommendation and preparing to leave for the eternal city.142 It seems likely that his principal concern remained the effect his “Letter to Castelli” was having, although the proximate trigger may well have been the Florentine depositions in his case, about which Attavanti likely told him.143 It may also be that continuing echoes of Lorini’s letter motivated his trip.144 Galileo probably reached Rome on or about 11 December.145 He stayed at the Villa Medici, rather than in the Tuscan embassy in Palazzo Firenze. That would have been more convenient but much less pleasant. His visit did not please the Tuscan ambassador, Piero Guicciardini. As soon as he got wind of Galileo’s proposed trip, he fired off a long letter to the secretary of state complaining that he had not been consulted, which was true if irrelevant, and that the visit was a really bad idea.146 About the second point he may well have been right. He was not the only one to make it. Bellarmino told Guicciardini more or less the same thing, warning him that, if Galileo overstayed his (short) welcome, action would have to be taken about Copernicus. Of course, that was just what Galileo wanted. Guicciardini did not. He added ominously that he thought Bellarmino had heard something objectionable, perhaps even in the ambassador’s residence, and that influential Dominican Inquisitors did not care for Galileo at all. As we have seen, this is certainly true at least in Cardinal Galamini’s case.
Speaking of influential Dominicans, there was still Caccini to contend with. Galileo took care to try to neutralize him, enlisting the aid of the balìa, the chief executive of the city government of Florence, to write the highest-placed member of the Caccini family asking him to keep Tommaso under control while Galileo justified himself to Tommaso’s fellows.147 Matteo, with Cardinal Arrigoni in Naples, lamented Tommaso’s involvement and suggested that he get Lorini to cease and desist, too.148 Galileo, as usual when he had chosen to take action, exuded confidence, that is, when he was not muttering darkly about the enemies who laid traps for him everywhere.149 He even thought Lorini had come to Rome because his denunciation had run into difficulties. The friar had not, but he had been to see the grand duchess, which was almost as bad, even if the secretary of state, eavesdropping, thought they had spoken about another matter.150
Paranoia might have suited Galileo better than cockiness, both because discretion would have served his purposes well and because there were good reasons for worry, including Lorini’s continued efforts. Galileo found himself in early January forced to combat a bruit in Rome that he had been disgraced at home.151 In a city that worked as much by rumor as by reality, there was plenty of danger reflected in a report sent about the same time by one of his friends from Paduan days, Antonio Querenghi, and mirrored back to Galileo by his Venetian intimate Giovanni Sagredo.152 Querenghi was considered cardinal material a bit earlier in Paul’s reign, so he would have had a pretty good idea what was going on or rumored to be going on in Rome. He wrote his employer that Galileo had not come to Rome voluntarily and would be called to account for his notions “completely contrary to holy scripture.” Galileo did not see fit to keep his head down, instead making the rounds of Roman salons arguing the truth of Copernicus’s ideas, as Querenghi regularly reported. Galileo called it breaking lances, as if he were one of the knights in his beloved Orlando Furioso.153 Among those he disputed was Francesco Ingoli, a client of Cardinal Caetani, one of Galileo’s potentially most important backers, another well-placed and wealthy Roman.154 The debate took place before Cardinal Barberini’s right-hand man.155 Annoying Ingoli in that context did not represent a victory.156
Yet, as January wore on, the worrying rumors began to die down. Almost as soon as he arrived, Galileo heard that his stay might be cut short on the strength of “a few words” that could be taken as orders to return and asked for reassurance that he had not been recalled. No, no, everything is fine, replied the secretary of state.157 On some days it was. Querenghi made light of Galileo’s facility with words and gradually sent more and more cheerful (and funny) reports of his derring-do, taking on fifteen or twenty opponents and making monkeys of all of them.158 But he still failed to convince them. By the end of the month even Querenghi was half-persuaded, enough so to pass on Galileo’s offer to come to Modena to prove his propositions.159
Despite his gallivanting around Rome unhorsing his opponents, Galileo knew the battle would be won in back rooms where he had to go carefully. It frustrated him both that he was forced to put his case in “dead writings” instead of in “live voice” and also that he could not deal directly with the people he needed to see because that would embarrass an unnamed friend and those people in turn could not approach him without “incurring the most severe censures.”160 In order to reach the right people, he had to work through third parties who tried to bring his case up casually, as if the decision makers had thought of it themselves. He meant men at least close to if not in the Inquisition. Despite setbacks, he remained certain that he could convince “those on whom the decision depends” not least because God was on his side. But did Galileo really think Ingoli and others who dealt with those very men (and their God) on a daily basis could not and did not talk to them more easily and with more authority than he did? What friend could trump them? The supporters Galileo had collected in 1611 in Rome were mostly still there, including Maraffi at the Minerva and Cardinal Bandini, but neither was in quite the right position to help.
The man Galileo did single out to represent him in the papal court seems an odd choice. This was Ciampoli’s original recruit, Alessandro Orsini, the almost ridiculously young, twenty-three-year-old, brand-new cardinal, just given the right to vote on 11 January 1616.161 Not that Orsini did not have a glittering lineage as a member of one of the oldest Roman baronial families, the son of the duke of Bracciano, the grand duke’s most southerly vassal, and a bulwark against the papal states.162 He was still a politically questionable choice for Galileo, since, after Alessandro’s father’s unexpected death in September 1615, his brother, the new duke, had broken with Florence and tried to strike an alliance with France.163 As a result, the grand duke almost withdrew Orsini’s nomination as cardinal. Possibly as a quid pro quo for saving it, the new duke promised his full protection to Galileo.164 That may have patched things up in Florence; it did nothing to defuse a tense situation in Rome. The Orsini, like many such families, were in difficult financial straits and had pulled off a marriage alliance with Paul V’s fabulously wealthy family.165 The Borghese were after a real noble title (not the ones Paul had invented for them) and were happy to part with some real estate to sweeten the deal. They were, however, considerably less than excited by the bride’s wish to become a nun. Cardinal Alessandro had the same problem, having to be talked out of entering the Jesuits once already and eventually succumbing to the temptation of the religious life.166 At this moment he temporarily behaved as a new cardinal should, making the rounds of banquets, including with Cardinal Caetani, going hunting, leading parades, and, oh yes, being seen at mass in St. Peter’s.167 A little less typically, he also became Galileo’s protégé, the addressee of his most dangerously Copernican work yet, “The Discourse on the Flux and Reflux of the Tides,” sent (or handed) to him on 8 January 1616; it allegedly arose from conversations in Rome between the two.168 By that act, Galileo anointed Orsini his official champion.
By the end of January Galileo had become so confident in his success that, in addition to dismissing Caccini as a continuing threat, he generously offered to intercede to protect his accuser from punishment for his denunciations.169
