straightforward and applied respectively if roughly, to anyone (but especially the laity), to the clergy, and to those under religious obedience (monks, nuns, friars, and the like). The last, which Da Budrio assimilated to fraterna correctio, was the least lawlike and consquently hardest to understand. The biggest issue was whether denunciation involved an order also called a precept or involved a counsel instead, a less binding piece of advice. Da Budrio took the position that any precept from a prelate to his subordinate was ipso facto an order if not necessarily a matter of sin, although violating it was, a point of great importance to Galileo. This rather positivist move helped him to collapse the first three kinds of denunciation. It also made the last more complicated. He noted three cases when fraterna correctio could be omitted: when the merits of the case allowed it, when it was charitable to do so, and, most interesting, when the prelate feared worse. Evangelical denunciation dealt with hidden sins, since once they became public there was no point in warning the perpetrator—he had fallen into the hands of the law. Heresy especially was not subject to this procedure unless it was certain that using it would produce instant amendment. Besides, given the imminent danger posed by heresy, there was usually no time for the two monitiones or warnings absolutely required by Novit before proceeding to evangelical denunciation. If they had not been given, the case—except for heresy—could not proceed to further remedies of any kind.
The rules were different when evangelical denunciation was applied. The first warning was proved merely by the act itself, while the second needed at least one witness in addition to the person being warned. That witness could be anyone not a criminal. The whole point of an evangelical denunciation was to keep the offense secret and induce penance in the offender. Its nearest relative, a canonical denunciation, by contrast, despite also requiring warnings, was meant to force correction. Therefore an evangelical denunciation, unlike the other three, should not lead to judicial proceedings. Judicial denunciation differed from evangelical in that, while both aimed to correct sin, any of the three judicial kinds also demanded restitution. Were that distinction lost, secular jurisdiction would disappear. Da Budrio noted that there were those who said that an evangelical denunciation could have no place where a legal remedy existed.
Relying on the well-established principle that the church did not deal with hidden acts, Da Budrio argued that secrecy was of the essence of an evangelical admonition. Ergo, it should not (but might?) lead to a sentence, since it was not a judicial act. But a charitable admonition was not the only private kind.14 A judicial one could also be given in that way. A charitable monitio had as its sole object the correction of sin, while a private judicial admonition went farther and demanded restitution. Thus arose another distinction. While both led to denial of the sacraments, a judicial (or canonical) admonition did so through excommunication and the force of law, while a charitable admonition took effect only through a sort of shunning. Evangelical admonition had no precise judicial form, since it was “as if in the penitential forum” (“cum sit fori poenitentialis”), while a judicial admonition necessarily gave rise to legal process. Any kind of sin could be subject to evangelical admonition, while only certain ones (Da Budrio meant crimes, public sins) could fall under judicial admonition. If a judge administered such, then his act could serve as a citation depending on the circumstances.15
Da Budrio’s fellow fourteenth-century jurist Henri de Bohic had gone further, coming close to collapsing any distinction between an admonition and a precept. He observed that some thought that correctio charitativa was both an act of charity and of correction; the second also made it an act of justice. If a prelate denounced a crime “charitably,” his act became a precept. If a layman did so, then it was only a nonbinding counsel. But Bohic did not ultimately accept this view, following Da Susa and Uguccio to conclude that any admonition, no matter by whom administered, constituted a precept, with coercive force. The great fifteenth-century civilian Paolo Da Castro in several places assimilated a judge’s monitio to a precept.16 Even better, in the parlance of the papal secretariat of breves in Galileo’s day, monitio and praeceptum were synonymous.17
A popular manual summarized the situation at the end of the fifteenth century.18 The Repertorium inquisitorum maintained that an evangelica monitio should always precede any denunciation (citing “Si peccaverit” and “Novit”) except in public cases or those posing an imminent danger. Two notes added by one of the later editors are more interesting. The first said “a judge must give a charitable admonition to the accused [denuncianti (sic)]” and the second after a slew of classical citations about monitio as an act of persuasion drew the conclusion that “a simple admonition does not obligate the person warned.”19 Thus it could under no circumstances give rise to judicial process.
The key fact in interpreting any monitio is whether the act to which it applied had remained private or whether it had become public, “notorious” (less significant was whether it was corrigible). The procedure Francesco Beretta thinks was applied in Galileo’s case, denunciatio evangelica, was strictly private. Had there been any doubt up to the point when Tommaso Caccini—along with a number of other Dominicans—denounced Galileo publicly in Florence, thereafter it became notorious that he held Copernican ideas. In the wake of Caccini’s actions, a “charitable admonition” leading to a denunciatio evangelica would have served no purpose, even if his fellow Dominican Niccolò Lorini claimed that was all he wanted when he also reported Galileo privately to one of the senior Inquisitors.20 But both Caccini in testimony to the Inquisition in Rome and Lorini in his letter stressed Galileo’s mala fama. An evangelical denunciation at that point would indeed have represented especially kind treatment, but it would have made legal nonsense and been completely useless in any subsequent proceedings. Nor does the preface to the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems alleged by Beretta prove that Galileo received a monitio. As the sequel in 1633 shows, Galileo needed to maintain the purity of his intention as “witness of pure truth” to escape the possibility of conviction on one of the more severe grades of heresy. Besides, according to Sigismondo Scaccia, “customarily” (de consuetudine) evangelical denunciation had passed out of usage, since all Christians were bound to denounce heresy.21 Furthermore, of the nearly five hundred monitiones recorded in the Inquisition’s decree registers, none are qualified as “charitable.”
The case could be made out on these grounds, together with Da Budrio’s observation that a single citation in person had the effect of a threefold one by edict “to the church or [suspect’s] house” (“ad ecclesiam vel domum”), that is, a broadcast citation, that the Inquisition had designed a procedure to leave Galileo no wiggle room.22 Since he had been personally cited by either monitio or precept or both, he could not possibly pretend ignorance. Any subsequent mention of Copernicus would ipso facto condemn him. Thus it seems unlikely that Galileo got only a “charitable admonition” or, if he did, that the majority of jurists were prepared to make that nearly equivalent to a judicial order, the precept he also received.
One final argument precludes the possibility that Galileo received only a charitable admonition. It turns on a single word in the minute of his precept, constitutus. It indicates a similar change in the legal status of the person being given the precept as that a witness underwent when being sworn in, which in turn means the proceeding was judicial, not even extrajudicial, certainly not prejudicial.23
The principle that a trial had to begin with a formal citation including the charges did not extend to the Inquisition, which never informed a suspect of the accusations against him or her.24 It also had much looser rules than other courts about what constituted a citation. It could take the form of a verbal invitation or—more important for us—a precept.25 By seeing that Galileo got both a warning and a precept, Paul V took no chances that he could wriggle out of papal clutches. Roberto Bellarmino gladly helped, acting on behalf of both pope and Inquisition in summoning Galileo. Paul and Bellarmino could be excused if they were somewhat confused about exactly what to do. The lawyers had not achieved much more clarity. But it does appear that Bellarmino had already opened formal proceedings against
