is concerned,” since they had seen both his innocence and the “malignity” of his enemies. He could go home.170 This may sound like the end of a letter; in fact, it is only the first sentence. This is the second time we have seen Galileo’s “business” finished. It was not the first time in early 1615, nor was it now. Why not? Because Galileo had no idea how to leave well enough alone. He rushed on to demand not only that he be cleared but also that all other followers of Copernicus had to be, too, and heliocentrism accepted as true. Getting that job done was wearing him out, but, as “a zealous and Catholic Christian” pursuing a “just and religious end,” he was determined to overthrow those who for their own selfish reasons opposed the truth. It is typical of Galileo as a man of the seventeenth century to trivialize and personalize his opponents. Manifesting contempt for one’s opponents is never a compelling persuasive tactic, and it did not work well for Galileo, either, not if we consider that all this is the prologue to a report on a lengthy meeting with Caccini that Galileo was forced to admit left the Dominican completely unconvinced.
On 5 February, one month before Copernicus’s book would be suspended, Caccini came to visit Galileo.171 They began by spending half an hour alone. Caccini begged Galileo to believe that he had not “been the motor of that other noise here [in Rome, in addition to his reading in Florence].” Then five other people, most of them Florentines, showed up, two of them dependents of one of the Inquisitors to whom Galileo later claimed to have talked during this visit, Giovanni Battista Bonsi: his favored nephew Domenico Bonsi and his auditor Francesco Venturi.172 All three were lawyers. The Florentine Cardinal Bonsi had spent much of his career in France before coming to Rome in mid-1615 to represent French interests.173 He became an Inquisitor on 21 July 1615 and later served as deputy secretary, although there is little sign of his impact as such or as a representative of Florence. The appearance of two of Bonsi’s familiars in Galileo’s room was no accident. They had come to witness Caccini’s submission to Galileo in case evidence was needed in the future. Bonsi has to have been one of the men on whom Galileo relied. If so, he did not help much. It is a great irony that Galileo or his backers tried to give Caccini exactly the same treatment he would himself receive shortly. Caccini probably had the last laugh. It is likely that he was spying on Galileo and gleefully reported finding him as determined as ever to defend Copernicus.
Galileo closed his report with one of the most accurate things he said throughout this episode: “Now the discussion has become more open, considering it in a certain way a public matter, even if in respect to the other courts this one [the Inquisition], including in these actions, is very secretive.”174 Since things were going so well, Galileo had decided to present the grand duke’s recommendation to Cardinal Nephew Borghese on the following Tuesday, 9 February. He also decided to activate Orsini, first of all as his means of access to Borghese. Borghese effusively promised full support.175 Orsini was jumping up and down with excitement at the important job he had been given. Just in case, Galileo asked for another recommendation from the grand duke to him.176 It was dispatched as soon as Galileo’s letter reached Florence, despite the distractions of Carnival, including the rehearsal of an equestrian ballet that was proving difficult because there was so much ice.177 Borghese’s interest was great news. Orsini’s was not.
A week later Galileo sent another letter to Florence.178 This time a passage he may have meant as rhetorical exaggeration came, unbeknownst to him, even closer to the truth than his last letter. Now he wrote that his three principal enemies, “ignorance, envy, and impiety” (“ignoranza, invidia et impietà,” a nice piece of assonance in Italian), wanted to “annihilate” the Copernicans. He could not have been more right.
Probably about this time one of Galileo’s oddest backers weighed in.179 The Dominican Tommaso Campanella had been imprisoned for almost twenty years in Naples (and had more than another decade to go before being released), yet Cardinal Caetani thought it worth asking him for an opinion about Copernicus and Galileo.180 Caetani was a member of the Index, not the Inquisition, so his move may be another instance of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. It is hard to believe that Caetani knew how much Paul V hated Campanella. Campanella’s little Apologia pro Galileo would probably not have been much help, even if it had arrived in time. It did not really defend Galileo, since Campanella did not accept heliocentrism, nor was he comfortable with the moral implications of Galileo’s proposed divorce between science and religion (despite all Galileo’s protestations of loyalty to holy mother church).181 Campanella took up Caetani’s invitation for two reasons: to defend “the liberty of philosophizing” for all philosophers, not just Galileo, and to make a case, not unlike Galileo’s, against the continued blending of Aristotle and Christian theology. While Campanella was writing, Caccini’s leader, Cardinal Galamini, was reviewing one of Campanella’s prides and joys, “Atheismus triumphatus” (Atheism conquered) written a decade earlier against Niccolò Machiavelli; Galamini was still working on the book a decade later—the Inquisition could drag its feet with the best of them.182 Galamini’s opinion was then highly valued, and in May 1616 he would get Cremonini’s most recent publication to critique.183 Alas, we do not know what if anything Galamini said about Campanella’s book. A review by the Inquisition was not necessarily the kiss of death, but it was rarely a good thing. Given the Inquisition’s tendency to rely heavily on guilt by association, trouble for Campanella (and Cremonini) was likely to spill over onto Galileo and vice versa.
“Not without my prior information”: The Approach to the Precept
After a lull of about three weeks, matters came to a head. At this point, it was still only a rumor that the Holy Office had summoned Galileo, but it was about to. The crisis began around February 20, when Galileo reported to Florence that he had given Orsini the second recommendation from the grand duke and that the young cardinal could not wait to talk to Cardinal Borghese and the pope himself about “the public case.”184 Galileo had primed Orsini about its importance and how much he needed to find “an extraordinary authority” against those who were trying to trick “the superiors.” Galileo devoutly asserted that God was still on his side and would prevent “any scandal for holy church.” Although he found himself alone against his enemies’ skull-duggery, he had no fear of putting everything in writing, unlike his sneaky opponents who worked by whisper and innuendo. This is classic Galileo. He had also changed his mind about Caccini, whom he now once again thought not only completely ignorant but also “full of poison and empty of charity,” a man to stay well away from. Of course, he hurried on to write, there are plenty of “good” Dominicans. Then he said something strange, at least for him: “I am in Rome where the air [the weather] is constantly changing, just as the negotiations are always fluctuating.” Maybe this pessimistic judgment arose from a bad turn in his health, or maybe this time, when he said he could not put anything more in writing, he knew how bad things were becoming. The same packet to Florence included an ominously gushing letter from Orsini to the grand duke about his eagerness to help Galileo.185
The day before, 19 February, the Inquisition’s theologian experts received copies of Sunspot Letters.186 Now the pace picks up. In the early morning of 23 February, they held a meeting at which they tabled two propositions “to be censured”: “that the sun is the center of the world and consequently immovable by local motion” and “that the earth is not the center of the world nor immovable, but that it moves by itself, including by a daily motion.” Those two propositions were identified as coming from the book, first, in the summarium drawn up near the end of Galileo’s trial and on which his sentence rested and then unsurprisingly in the sentence itself.187 Paul V’s order of 25 February 1616 to silence Galileo also identified the two propositions as Galileo’s, without giving their precise source.188 It is nevertheless well known that the propositions as quoted do not appear in Sunspot Letters. The closest passage I have found in any of Galileo’s writing comes from a letter of 16 July 1611 to Gallanzone Gallanzoni, maestro di camera to Cardinal François de Joyeuse, the man who had mediated the end of the Interdict crisis with Venice, where Galileo wrote that “the earth moves with two motions … that is
