worry about being “so many ants on a big ball going through the air.” Galileo had once written satire with Querenghi, and it shows in his friend’s sarcasm now. Galileo’s original attacker Niccolò Lorini copied out the decree and triumphantly waved it around Florence. His leader Ludovico Delle Colombe gleefully put out the same news.164 Yet at the same time Galileo and his supporters brushed off what happened.165 In a letter the day after the Index acted, Galileo blithely ignored his interview with Bellarmino and Seghizzi, offhandedly telling the Florentine secretary of state that he had not put a letter into the last weekly post because there was nothing to report!166 Instead, Galileo crowed that Tommaso Caccini had suffered another defeat. None of this has anything to do with me, he added. Galileo was always good at seeing things his way, but this interpretation is nothing short of weird. He must have begun to worry his handlers in Florence, since he continued that he was expecting Cardinal de’ Medici’s arrival to clear everything up. With transparent alarm, the secretary of state replied by ordering Galileo back home.167 The Florentine authorities could be forgiven if they began to wonder just what their men in Rome were drinking when two of their cardinals, Orsini and del Monte, both reported that Galileo had triumphed unreservedly.168
Five days later Galileo went to see the pope.169 He told Paul the story of his coming to Rome, complete with juicy details of his enemies’ plotting. He acted worried. Paul assured him that neither he nor “the whole congregation [of the Inquisition]” believed a word of those allegations. The pope guaranteed Galileo that he would be safe as long as he, Paul, lived, repeating this “consolation” several times. In case the pope was not good enough, Galileo also noted that Federico Cesi favored him. What parallel universe had Galileo moved into? Since there is no other evidence of his meeting with the pope, it is not impossible that he at the very least heavily embroidered it if he did not invent it. And how he could think that Cesi, a mere marquess albeit a smart one, could in any way be on the same level as the pope beggars the imagination. Ten days later Galileo serenely pronounced the matter closed, expecting the quick republication of the revised Copernicus.170 He may have got this news from the man charged with correcting the book, Caetani, who may have been suffering from a lower grade form of the same optimistic psychosis as Galileo. In actual fact it was four years before the revision was ready, and a new edition was never published. Shortly after Galileo’s letter, back in the real world, the Index cranked out letters to all Inquisitors ordering them to publish the decree, and Bellarmino published another book that made crystal clear where his thoughts were.171 It was called De aeterna sanctorum felicitate (On the Eternal Salvation of the Saints).172 Together with On the Mind’s Ascent to God, it could not be more obvious that Bellarmino was concentrating all his energies on heaven as the reward of the just, not as an astronomical phenomenon.
And what of Caccini? His brother Matteo, last seen being terrified that Tommaso would ruin the family’s prospects, now vaunted the great reputation he had made by besting Galileo.173 Matteo probably got this assessment straight from Tommaso, but he did check carefully with others about the extent of his brother’s success. It included at least one tangible reward. By late summer Cardinal Nephew Scipione Borghese had got him the job of penitentiary of Santa Maria Maggiore, the church on which Paul V lavished particular attention and of which Millini was archpriest.174 The post paid 400 scudi a year (about half what Galileo got as the grand duke’s mathematician). Tommaso was also in good odor with the Dominican general.
Caccini had not finished with Galileo. In October 1616 Matteo feared that Caccini meant to publish a book, possibly about the stars.175 In early 1619 the news or at least rumor was worse. Under guise of a preaching assignment, Caccini had actually resurrected his “intrigues” against Galileo, as another Florentine friar told Matteo.176 A few months later Matteo thought Caccini meant to return to Florence in order to “terrebbe qualche persona più a segno,” which odd phrase Antonio Ricci-Riccardi interpreted as keeping surveillance on Galileo.177 The last we hear of Caccini “persecuting” Galileo is in a letter from Benedetto Castelli condoling with Galileo over the news that Caccini was going about saying Galileo had escaped only because of the protection of princes.178 Although he would never be a second Aquinas (to put it mildly), Caccini eventually became a client of Urban VIII’s cardinal nephew, Francesco, one of the key actors in the second phase of Galileo’s trial. He also published several books, mostly pastiches of other authors’ work, including Storia del primo concilio niceno (History of the First Nicene Council) (Lucca: Pellegrino Bidelli, 1637) that he sent Barberini.179
CHAPTER 4
The Legal Meaning of 1616: The Jurisprudence and Use of Admonitions and Precepts
While the controversy over what if anything happened to Galileo on 26 February 1616 careens into eternity, the legal meaning of that event has received next to no attention.1 I argued in the last chapter that Galileo received a strongly worded precept, not a charitable admonition, and in this chapter I explain what that imports. Unfortunately, the Roman Inquisition’s understanding of both admonition and precept must be constructed from its practice; there is almost no jurisprudence like that about its trial process.2 This chapter first establishes the background of the related concepts of admonition and precept in canon law and then lays out how the Inquisition used them, paying particular attention to those of most relevance to Galileo.
Admonitions
As in the case of precepts, there is a trajectory to the history of monitiones. A device that had originally provided strong protection to a defendant gradually became weaker and weaker. Canonists frequently cited two passages in the Decretum C.2.q.1.c.19 (“Si peccaverit”) and C.12.q.2.c.21 (“Indigne”), but not until the Decretals, especially those originating with Innocent III, did both monitio and various cognates (for example, commonitio and admonitio) and denunciatio evangelica receive extensive attention. It is repeated constantly that a monitio had to be given three times before any further legal action could be taken as C.5.q.2.c.2 had laid down.3 Enrico Da Susa (Hostiensis, † 1271) specified that each occasion required a proportionate number of witnesses.4 Innocent IV systematized the position that monitio in some form was always required.5 By the middle of the fourteenth century, the number of times the monitio had to be repeated had been reduced to one, except in the case of inferiors admonishing superiors, in which case the rule of three still obtained.6 The fourteenth-century canonist Antonio da Budrio († 1408) still usually held out for three no matter what.7 The issue of number of repetitions is not of much importance to Galileo. Another point of general agreement was that monitio was equivalent to a citation; the reason it had to be repeated was to be sure the accused knew he was on the point of being charged.8 Right from the first in notorious cases, it was not required at all, and a judge could always act solely on the basis of reputation, publica fama. Anyone with knowledge of the fact was obliged to report it to the court. A private warning ceased to be an option once the deed became public.9
Monitio and denunciation were closely connected. There were four kinds of denunciation, as Domenico da San Gimignano (ca. 1375–1424) summarized the views of Giovanni d’Andrea: evangelical, judicial, canonical, and “regular.”10 The first, the kind of interest here, pertained to a prelate in the first instance, but anyone could do it and to anyone. The only witness needed was the person being warned.11 That obviously guaranteed (or nearly so) secrecy. Notorious cases, on the other hand, required denunciatio judicialis instead.12 Antonio da Budrio wrote one of the most detailed discussions of evangelical denunciation in his commentary on Innocent III’s decretal Novit [X.2.1.13], De denunciatione evangelica (On evangelical denunciation) as the rubric called it, to which other lawyers frequently referred. Novit laid down that “manifest” crimes required denunciation to a judge followed by regular process. Such a denunciation demanded a precedent monitio. Da Budrio followed D’Andrea’s quadripartite division
