Henry VIII and established the Roman Inquisition). Galileo, in the course of writing the Sunspot Letters, had sought the expert opinion of Carlo Cardinal Conti on the subject of change in the heavens. Cardinal Conti had assured him that the Bible did not support Aristotle’s doctrine of immutability; in fact, he said, Scripture seemed to argue against it.
None of his experience parrying angry attacks from academics prepared Galileo for the intimations of heresy – a crime he considered ‘more abhorrent than death itself’ – that now swirled around him. Given these circumstances, he must have felt relieved in October 1613, when Ottavio Cardinal Bandini, another prelate of his acquaintance, finally secured the dispensation of age for Galileo’s daughters. The immediate admission of both thirteen-year-old Virginia and twelve-year-old Livia into the nearby Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri was apparently facilitated by the coincidence that the mother abbess, Suor Ludovica Vinta, was sister to a Florentine senator who had served as secretary of state under Grand Duke Ferdinando. No sooner were the girls secured within the enclosure walls than the pitch of the Copernican controversy escalated.
In November, Galileo’s best and most beloved student, the Benedictine monk Benedetto Castelli, who had followed him from Padua, left Florence to take over Galileo’s old chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. Castelli not only had devised the safe method of observing the Sun on paper used by Galileo to such good effect, but had actually drawn the numerous sunspot diagrams published in Galileo’s book. Galileo had further relied on Castelli to answer all four published attacks on Bodies in Water. Newly arrived at Pisa, Castelli was warned by the university overseer never to teach or even discuss the motion of the Earth. The monk agreed to these terms, naturally, pointing out that his mentor, Galileo, had followed the same course throughout two-plus decades of lecturing at both Pisa and Padua. Within weeks, however, Castelli found himself specifically questioned on the matter of Copernicus in a private but most influential setting, when the Medici family and full entourage arrived in Pisa for their annual winter visit. Holding court for the season at their Pisan palace, Their Serene Highnesses Cosimo II, Archduchess Maria Maddalena and Grand Duchess Mother Madama Cristina filled the seats around their table three times a day with interesting conversationalists who could inform them on a variety of subjects.
‘Thursday morning I was dining with our Patrons,’ Castelli wrote to Galileo on Saturday 14 December, ‘and when asked about the university by the Grand Duke I gave him a complete account of everything, with which he showed himself much pleased. He asked me if I had a telescope; saying yes, I began to tell about an observation of the Medicean planets I had made just the night before. Madama Cristina wanted to know their position, whereupon the talk turned to the necessity of their being real objects and not illusions of the telescope.’
Instead of receding from court life following the death of her husband, Ferdinando I, in 1609, the influential grand duchess Cristina had changed her dress to black and donned a widow’s cap with a voluminous black veil in place of her ducal crown. She had held fast to her rank of grand duchess, leaving her daughter-in-law – Cosimo’s wife, Maria Maddalena – to be content with the ‘archduchess’ title that had come with her from Austria.
On this particular December morning, Madama Cristina found Castelli’s talk of planets disturbing – despite their ties to the House of Medici. Notwithstanding her fondness for Galileo, who had tutored her son, and over and above her respect for Castelli’s monastic robes, she much preferred the conversation of another breakfast guest from the university faculty, the Platonic philosopher Doctor Cosimo Boscaglia.
‘After many things, all of which passed with decorum,’ Castelli’s letter continued, ‘breakfast was over. I left, but I had hardly come out of the palace when I was overtaken by the porter of Madama Cristina, who had recalled me. But before I tell you what followed, you must first know that while we were at table Doctor Boscaglia had had Madama’s ear for a while, and while conceding as real all the things you have discovered in the sky, he said that only the motion of the Earth had in it something of the incredible, and could not occur, especially because the Holy Scripture was obviously contrary to that view.’
Friends of the court all knew Madama Cristina to be a devout Catholic who lent her ear most frequently to her confessor, other priests, cardinals and of course the pope, even when His Holiness’s opinions ran counter to the best interests of the Medici dynasty or the Tuscan government. She had read her Bible and could quote from the Book of Joshua – wherein the Sun is ordered to stand still, presumably because it had been moving – as well as the Psalms:
O Lord my God, Thou art great indeed…Thou fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved for ever.
PSALM 104: I, 5
‘Now, getting back to my story,’ Castelli went on,
I entered into the chambers of her Highness, and there I found the Grand Duke, Madama Cristina and the Archduchess, Don Antonio [de’ Medici], Don Paolo Giordano [Orsini], and Doctor Boscaglia. Madama began, after some questions about myself, to argue the Holy Scripture against me. Thereupon, after having made suitable disclaimers, I commenced 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 the Scripture. Only Madama remained against me, but from her manner I judged that she did this only to hear my replies. Professor Boscaglia said never a word.
The troubling news of Madama Cristina’s displeasure inspired an immediate response from Galileo. Even more than he regretted her opposition, he dreaded the drawing of battle lines between science and Scripture. Personally, he saw no conflict between the two. In the long letter he wrote back to Castelli on 21 December 1613, he probed the relationship of discovered truth in Nature to revealed truth in the Bible.
‘As to the first general question of Madama Cristina, it seems to me that it was most prudently propounded to you by her, and conceded and established by you, that Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways…when they would base themselves always on the literal meaning of the words. For in this wise not only many contradictions would be apparent, but even grave heresies and blasphemies, since then it would be necessary to give God hands and feet and eyes, and human and bodily emotions such as anger, regret, hatred and sometimes forgetfulness of things past, and ignorance of the future.’
These literary devices had been inserted into the Bible for the sake of the masses, Galileo insisted, to aid their understanding of matters pertaining to their salvation. In the same way, biblical language had also simplified certain physical effects in Nature, to conform to common experience. ‘Holy Scripture and Nature’, Galileo declared, ‘are both emanations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant executrix of God’s commands.’
Thus no truth discovered in Nature could contradict the deep truth of Holy Writ. Even Madama Cristina’s objection regarding the Book of Joshua could be put to rest in terms of the Sun-centred universe; indeed, Copernicus made more sense of the passage than either Aristotle or Ptolemy, as Galileo spent almost half of this letter explaining.
On this day, when the Lord delivered up the Amorrites to the Israelites, Joshua prayed to the Lord, and said in the presence of Israel: Stand still, O sun at Gabhaon, O moon, in the valley of Aialon! And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, while the nation took vengeance on its foe. Is this not recorded in the Book of Hashar? The sun halted in the middle of the sky; not for a whole day did it resume its swift course. Never before or since was there a day like this, when the Lord obeyed the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.
JOSH.
