(“immediately thereafter”), never allowed it to include even an extra moment.99 Wohlwill’s contemporary and competitor Karl von Gebler similarly rendered it as “gleich darauf ohne Unterbreching” (“immediately thereafter without interruption”).100 It has usually been translated into English as “immediately thereafter.” Fantoli gives the most elaborate translation-cum-gloss: “an intervention that immediately followed Bellarmine’s warning, apparently without Galileo having had time to display his acquiescence.”101 The conclusion from such translations follows that Seghizzi violated the contingency in Paul V’s instructions that he was to act only if Galileo “refused to obey” (“recusaverit parere”).
Neither Wohlwill nor von Gebler tried to establish what successive ac incontinenti might have meant in the seventeenth century. Several of their contemporaries did better, including Philippe Gilbert and Franz Reusch. Both turned to inquisitorial manuals, Gilbert to the Repertorium Inquisitorum (1575) and Reusch to Eliseo Masini’s widely used text for provincial inquisitors, Sacro arsenale (first edition 1621 and frequently reprinted). Quintiliano Mandosio added a note to a passage in the Repertorium that left incontinenti almost without limits as to how much time was meant.102 Masini gave instances of actions linked by successive ac incontinenti, as well as more with only the first word.103 In one with the whole phrase, Masini paralleled it to immediatamente, a word seemingly as strong as its modern English cognate.104 Yet this cannot be what Masini meant, since he joined two actions that could never occur strictly “immediately” after one another: fetching a suspect from prison (even if in the same building) in order to confront another suspect. Thus on Masini’s evidence successive can signify no more than “after,” perhaps “as soon as possible after” or better “directly” in both a temporal and procedural sense. This comes close to Beretta’s gloss of “in continuity with the previous event,” that is, part of the same legal proceedings, even if he continues to use the temporal meaning of “immediately.”105
Uses found in Peña’s “Introductio” (written before his death in 1612), as well as in inquisition records, support the same meaning. Thus, Peña once wrote of asking the same questions “successive in the same or another examination.”106 At least three times it has the simple meaning “after” in the Holy Office’s own records, including indicating a prison visitation that must have begun sometime later than the first event indicated.107 It also occurs in the records of peripheral tribunals. In Naples, we find it several times in Tommaso Campanella’s processo, for example, twice to link the examination of two witnesses, once to introduce the swearing in of another after an interval.108 Likewise, it occurs in Romagna in a similar sense a number of times in the records of Rodrigo Alidosi’s trial when witnesses successive “appeared.”109 The two words and the joint phrase were also known in the governor of Rome’s court.110
The entry in Du Cange makes successive seem a fifteenth-century neologism since it cites only a letter of Pius II of 1459.111 Most dictionaries have equally thin entries for it. The only other textual citation in any yet found, Andreas Stübelius’s Thesaurus latinitatis, quotes a bad reading from Aelius Spartianus on Caracalla taken from Robert Constantin’s Supplementum linguae latinae, which should be emended to successisse.112 The full title of Constantin’s work underscores the word’s rarity: Supplementum linguae Latinae, seu dictionarium abstrusorum vocabulorum.113 Johann Matthias Gesner cited the same passage without correction in his slightly later Novus Linguae et Eruditionis Romanae Thesaurus.114 Although certainly rare, a number of uses of the word come up in a search of the Patrologia latina database covering patristic and medieval writing before 1215.115 The interval between then and the seventeenth century still needs investigation, but, by the later period, the word appears fairly frequently, for example, two or three times in Melchior Adam, Vitae Germanorum iureconsultorum et politicorum.116 Since successive need not mean much more than “after,” by itself it says nothing about whether Galileo had a chance to respond.
Perhaps because they found its meaning obvious, successive did not interest the jurists, unlike its mate incontinenti. While still far from a common word, the second has a substantially richer history. Along with the then more usual ex continenti, it appeared a number of times in Justinian’s Code with such a variety of possible meanings as to generate a substantial amount of jurisprudential commentary.117 Alberico da Rosate (ca. 1290–1360) offered one of the most detailed discussions in his Dictionarium iuris tam civilis, quam canonici, which went through many editions.118 He gave an almost bewildering number of definitions, most in the temporal sense from statim onward, and a number of cognates (all meaning at first glance “immediately”), extending all the way to three days as the time limit for revoking an attorney’s errors (citing C. 2. 9 and his own discussion in Commentariorum iuris utriusque summi practici Domini Alberici de Rosate Bergomensis pars prima super codice).119 His gloss on confestim, one of the synonyms he suggested for incontinenti, defined it again as sometimes statim, but sometimes ten days. The word also had nontemporal meanings, especially continuus, without any “extraneous acts.” In this case, the time period might be left entirely undefined; Alberico again suggested the figure of ten days. In his third entry he gave the example of merchants going off in search of a notary or a celebratory drink at the conclusion of a deal, both (especially the second) denoting a possibly protracted interval of time. Other commentators often cited Alberico’s three days in the case of a man who died that long after being wounded.120 Others stretched the time indefinitely, for example, the great late fifteenth-century canonist Felino Sandeo, who left it up to the judge’s decision how long an heir had to prove his claim incontinenti.121 The eminent late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century jurist Giacomo Menochio did the same in his most popular work, throwing out “one day,” “three days” or “two months” as possibilities.122 He also offered almost exactly the same definition as Beretta, citing Bartolo Da Sassoferrato: “before it [the trial] can be diverted to extraneous acts” (“antequam ad actus extraneos divertatur”).123 The exhaustive note in Repertorium Inquisitorum said virtually the same thing, although in the specific case of ratification of a confession given under torture it was much more restrictive, saying incontinenti meant “intra diem,” “within a day.”124 In short, the general opinion was that the word “receives a varying interpretation according to the matter … and we [in this case Bernabé Brisson, but it could be any of a number of commentators] interpret it with some modest space of time.”125 German commentators introduced a distinctive subtlety, saying the term should not be interpreted literally but instead civiliter, moraliter leaving its precise temporal component to the judge’s discretion, as Sandeo and Menochio had thought.126
An Elegant but Wrong Solution
In 1987, Thomas Kurig, now an intellectual property lawyer, proposed a radically new translation as a solution to the problem. His argument depended on two grammatical points. “Immediately” (“gleich darauf” in German) is mistaken and ignores “ac incontinenti.” “Successive” should be translated not in a temporal sense but as “following thereon (expressing the papal will),” while “ac incontinenti” is a causal dative modifying “Galileo” and the phrase should therefore be rendered as “since Galileo was unwilling” or “being impudent.”127 The first of these at least raises a question about the usual translation. No doubt because of the incorrect linkage to “incontinenti,” “successive” lost its simple meaning of “after” with no necessary implication of “right after.” Kurig’s second point appears even more vital, if not as original as he claims; it had been made if not published already in 1964.128 By almost literally translating “si recusaverit” of No. 1, “incontinenti” would remove the most important contradiction between it and No. 2. That contradiction has been overdrawn even without the correct translation of “incontinenti,” because “recusaverit” need
