Becoming Galileist
A few years ago, I read a book that made me fall in love with Galileo. I don’t just mean I learned to admire him; I mean I learned that if he had lived down the street at any time in my life, I would have wanted to be there every day to hear his latest thoughts and aspirations and what poetry he was reading, and to hear him read it. He had the true renaissance mind, curious about everything, and full of love for words -- right and clear and musical words. He not only looked at the Moon, but turned his eyepiece over the looked at a moth, finding it quite lovely. And he outdid his opponents in argument because his arguments were full of common sense, easy to follow, full of good humor and the delight of his vision of the world.
And he loved the Church devoutly. Never in all his deep troubles with various Church officials did he ever criticize the Church or express dissatisfaction with our Faith, or wish he was Protestant. He recognized with clarity the true Catholicism of his supporters in the clergy, including some of the most prominent cardinals of his time in history; and he knew the simple human sinfulness of his detractors. When he was ready to publish his last work and found that he was forbidden to be published by Catholics no matter what the topic, he went about arranging for publication exactly in the way my teenage sons went about speeding without being caught. They did not doubt the importance of safe driving, only the wisdom of the politically motivated postings; and Galileo did not doubt his faith or cease to love the Church. He recognized the injustice of his political penalty and simply moved around it.
In my heart, Galileo is my friend and hero and I expect to meet him one day with Niels Stenson and Georges LeMaitre and my own father. As in his day, his followers were called Galileists, I will call myself a Galileist, and invite anyone with similar opinions to join this fellowship. To make my meaning clear, let me spell it out:
Who is a Galileist?
Being a Galileist is not about agreeing with Copernicus, because those people are called Copernicans. It doesn’t mean believing the Sun is in the center of the universe, for it is not, and the Galileists were never committed to anything false.
It means believing with Galileo:
1) That purely scientific matters should be separated from matters of faith so that their discussion may be based on observation, experience, experiment, and careful measurement, along with the logical and reasonable implications of these essentially physical encounters.
2) That we ought to take seriously St. Augustine's warning from his essay On the literal meaning of Genesis, to wit:
- Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions… Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation…
I am aware that St. Augustine followed this warning with an effort to bring Christian cosmology up to date, his date, and that this effort, now vastly out of date, is quoted by unscientific moderns as evidence that Augustine supports them in their backwardness. The Galileist position is that Augustine’s warning takes precedence over his outdated effort to show himself heeding it.
3) In union with the early Christian fathers, we should refrain from linking Christian faith with matters that are irrelevant to salvation, whether they can be measured or not.
In sum, the Word of Scripture must not be set against the Word of Creation, both coming from the same source in the Trinity.
And as I am a Galileist, I shall call my opponents in these opinions by the name given to Galileo's opponents in his day. Being led by one Coulombe, which, in Italian, means "pigeon", they were called (by the Galileists) "the pigeon assembly".
Below you will find a short biography of Galileo, and on another page I shall also address various flappings of the pigeon assembly, one by one.
Galileo was born in 1564 -- the same propitious year as William Shakespeare -- in the city of Pisa, ever famous for its tower that has been leaning over since before the building was completed. Galileo saw it every day of his early childhood, and it is hard to conceive of any little boy not wanting to drop things from such a vantage point, if ever he could.
However, when Galileo was old enough to go to school, his family moved to Florence and sent him first to one monastery school, then another, and finally to the University of Pisa, to study medicine. Galileo quickly found, however, that his true love was math. He never got a degree because he didn't study enough of either medicine or math. But he did get a reputation -- both for being a good mathematician, and for being something of an "elephant's child", if you know what I mean, full of "satiable curiosity" and never far from someone who thought he should be spanked.
His teachers told him that large objects fall faster than small ones. He looked out the window at a hailstorm, where large and small hailstones fell together -- and asked how this could be. They told him that since the cause of falling is heaviness, heavy objects must necessarily fall faster than light ones. Aristotle the Philosopher (with a capital "P"), said so. Galileo asked what would happen if you tied a cord between a light object and a heavy one. Would the light one slow the heavier one down? It must be so, if Aristotle was right. Then suppose you shortened the cord again and again, until the light and heavy objects touched. Now would the light one continue to slow the heavier one, or would they combine their weight and suddenly go faster than either?
This mental experiment was so simple a child could understand it but the university men who had wrapped their entire careers around Aristotle, were not at all pleased.
The Pigeon Assembly is born
It was while living in Venice that Galileo was first opposed by a fellow named Coulombe, a name that means “pigeon” in Italian. After that, he and his friends got to calling his antagonists "the pigeon assembly." Notice, however, that this “pigeon assembly" was not originally engaged in religious issues, nor with astronomy, a topic that did not particularly interest Galileo. He had read Copernicus, whose work on the motions of celestial bodies been commissioned and accepted by the Church, but his own interests were more practical. Galileo was something of a mechanical genius, more like Archimedes than Aristotle. Astronomy was not -- or did not seem -- a practical science.
1604 Supernova
When, in 1604, there was a supernova, the university philosophers felt entirely sure that it was merely an event in the upper atmosphere of Earth, where alone, as they understood things, change was possible. Galileo, on the other hand, corresponding with astronomers in other cities and realized that everyone saw this event against the exact same background of constellations. If it were within our atmosphere, each city should have perceived it as if against a different part of the sky. In fact, a supernova is an explosion of a vast star, often of a star too dim to be seen before it explodes, but thoroughly visible in its explosion, just as fireworks shot up on the 4th of July are often invisible in the dark sky until they explode. Supernovas are also very far away for the simple reason that if they were nearby, we would die of their radiations before we had anything much to say about them.
An Aristotelian philosopher named Cremonini critiqued Galileo's claims, saying that measurements from earth could not apply to the heavens because celestial objects are made of quintessence and that is not subject to the same math as earthly things. Galileo replied -- in a fictional conversation -- that philosophers don’t know anything about measurement, and that to a mathematician, it doesn't matter whether you measure quintessence or polenta (Italian porridge).
Cremonini was not amused.
The Telescope
As I said, Galileo was something of a mechanical/inventive type, so when he heard about the telescope, he was interested because he had the type of genius to make a better scope than anyone else. Furthermore, he was then working for the Venetians who were masters of the sea. A spyglass that would let you sight the ships of your enemies two hours before they saw yours was of tremendous practical import. Galileo made a telescope for the Doge of Venice and got an immediate tripling of his salary.
Then he turned his telescope to the Moon and saw its mountains and the shadows of mountains falling on its surface. At once, he understood that the Moon could not be inherently luminous, as had always been taught. This observation caused a great outcry that Galileo was opposing scripture, for Genesis 1 says that God created the Moon as a light, not as a reflector. Because telescopes spread very quickly this critique died out in a short time, but again, it was not a peaceful situation for Galileo’s enemies.
Castelli:
One day, Galileo’s friend and disciple, Benedetto Castelli had dinner with the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, and fielded a number of questions about interpreting the Bible and the Fathers of the Church concerning the position and motion of the Earth, the Sun, and the planets. He answered as he thought Galileo would have answered, and then told Galileo the whole story, adding that he felt the Duchess’ questions, though penetrating, were not hostile, but earnest and seeking. Galileo approved all that Castelli had said, and agreed to write out his thoughts. This is the origin of a document called The Letter to Castelli.
When the Duchess heard of this letter, she asked to see it, and Galileo rewrote it for her, so that the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany is essentially the same as the Letter to Castelli. In time, the letter was shown to various people, one of whom made a doctored copy and sent it to the Roman Inquisition to get Galileo into trouble.
Fortunately, a friend tipped Galileo that his letter was being passed around the Inquisition, and he, guessing it might have been miscopied, sent his own copy to Rome to be judiciously leaked.
The essential concept of this letter is that because both scripture and nature are from the Word of God, one being a Word of revelation and the other a Word of creation, investigations based on "sensible experiences" (careful observation) and "necessary demonstrations" (logic and math) should not be set against scripture. Truth is one. Rather, considering that language and grammar are never as precise as the laws of nature, and considering that scripture often mentions cosmology only in passing, points of astronomy that have been established by "sensible experiences and necessary demonstrations" should not be set aside on scriptural grounds. Rather, these investigations should guide scripture scholars in their interpretation of the relevant passages.
Notice that Galileo’s principle is not a sloppy matter of claiming that science should take precedence over theology or over scripture. Galileo was very careful to outline the specific domain of scientific investigation which must be allowed stand on its own. As he put it, theology is queen because its topic, God and salvation, are most sublime and important; but only a tyrant would demand of his subjects that they not see what they do see, or that they not conclude what necessarily follows from the exercise of reason.
Meantime, the pigeon assembly was working overtime in Rome, trying to have the work of Copernicus put on the Index of Forbidden Books. This would get Galileo into trouble, since the work of Copernicus was the only existing source from which to interpret what he saw through his telescope. Galileo saw that this effort would greatly damage, not only his own reputation, but that of the Church, and would also impede the reputation and progress of astronomy in Italy. He himself had enough creativity to keep busy for a century without ever mentioning Copernicus. In the last eight years of his life, he more than proved this.
But sure enough, he was soon called to Rome regarding his thoughts about Copernicus, astronomy, and scripture, and when he produced the real letter to Castelli and answered some questions, the Pope and the Inquisition were satisfied.
Unfortunately there was an edict at the end of this episode, forbidding any Catholic to "hold or defend" the teaching of Copernicus, although his ideas could be "taught" -- as theories under discussion. This edict applied equally to all Catholics everywhere, and was troubling, but it was not a doctrinal condemnation.
Hold and Defend vs. Teach
It is important to understand the distinction between "holding and defending" an idea, and merely "teaching" it. “Teaching” means making information available as a topic for discussion; “holding and defending” means claiming the truthfulness of an idea. The latter was forbidden. This doesn't mean people couldn't believe Copernicus was right, only that they couldn't set themselves up to defend his ideas in public. Catholics must adopt a public "wait and see" attitude, and, in those days, there was no expectation that there would ever be conclusive evidence about starry or planetary motions.
Anyway, Galileo received a personal warning from Cardinal (Saint) Robert Bellarmine not to "hold and defend," Copernicanism, or he would be forbidden even to mention it ever again. Then the edict was published, and Copernicus' books had to have minor editing before they could be printed by Catholics. Mind you, Copernicus had been dead 70 years with no complaints against him, for his work had been undertaken at the request of the Church. Furthermore, he made no reference to scripture, only discussing his celestial observations and the related mathematics. The editing was minor and quickly accomplished, and science went forward.
However, it appears that when Bellarmine spoke to Galileo about the edict, there were some Dominicans present, and it may be that they told him not even to "teach" Copernicanism. This would have been out of place on their part, but they were certainly present, and it seems likely enough that they said what they thought. Galileo had serious enemies among the Dominicans. In any case, someone wrote an account of the meeting, stating that Galileo had been told not to hold, defend, or "teach" Copernicanism, and this account was placed, unsigned, in Galileo's Inquisition file, where it smoldered for sixteen years, at the end of which time Bellarmine and everyone else with a personal memory of the events, except Galileo himself, had died.
Fortunately, Bellarmine wrote his own account of all that went on during the meeting and gave it, signed, to Galileo, who was smart enough to keep it.
Time marches on
For the next few years, things were more or less quiet. Galileo worked on the motions of Jupiter's moons and on the motions of comets, very interesting because the path of a comet passes so close to the Sun from so far beyond Jupiter. For those who held to the Ptolemaic astronomy comets were problematic because the Ptolemaic system does not allow for movement between the rotating crystalline spheres which were thought to enclose each planet. Clearly, the comets were going through those spheres with no trouble at all, and this caused a royal battle about the true location of the paths of comets.
There was also a long squabble about sunspots. Galileo and his friends made careful observations about these, showing that sunspots had to be on or quite close to the surface of the Sun. This was contrary to the Ptolemaic view of luminous perfection in the celestial realms.
In time, (1623), an old friend of Galileo's, Maffeo Barberini, came into the Papacy. Galileo hoped that Pope Urban VIII, would rescind the edict of 1616 and take the lid off the teaching of Copernicanism. Unfortunately, Pope Urban VIII reasoned that since the Edict was, formally speaking, only a caution, not a prohibition, it needed no action.
At the same time, he agreed that Galileo might publish a discussion of his theory of the tides in a format that would lay out the likely responses of both the Aristotelians and the Copernicans regarding celestial motions. This would be teaching Copernicanism, but not actually holding and defending it, and would show that Italian Catholics had that crucial freedom of discussion.
With the Pope's blessing, then, Galileo set to work. Sickness and other things distracted him on and off for several years, but eventually his Discourse was completed, and sent to the Roman censors before publication. They made minor changes; the Pope made others; after these were incorporated, printing began in February of 1632. The book was immediately welcomed everywhere with great delight.
The Inquisition calls Galileo to Rome
In August, by order of the Inquisition, printing was abruptly stopped, and Galileo was called to Rome.
Somebody had found the note in Galileo's file and shown it to Pope Urban VIII, who perhaps felt that his friendship had been abused. According to the (unsigned) document, it seemed that Galileo had sworn neither to hold and defend nor even to teach Copernicanism. The Pope was furious. Galileo had never told him that he had been forbidden even to teach the ideas of Copernicus. At last, Galileo arrived, produced his signed letter from Bellarmine showing that he was free to teach Copernicanism. Furthermore, Bellarmine's own files also included the letter to Galileo and not the unsigned note in Galileo’s file. That should have been the end of it.
Nevertheless, the trial dragged on. There was an interlude in which Galileo was apparently told that he could get off completely if he could prove that the Sun was in the center of the universe, for then the Church would accept and deal with it. But although Galileo had very solid reasons for his heliocentrist leanings, enough to make it clear that science could progress only on this hypothesis, a truly airtight proof was not possible at that time in history.
The real problem was that, having been set in motion, the Inquisition could not simply drop a charge. Whoever brought a charge against an innocent man was himself in trouble. Who brought the charge against Galileo? Was it the Pope? We really do not know.
In any case, perhaps to cover the reputation of his accuser, Galileo agreed to enter into a sort of plea bargain, basically saying that he had not meant to disobey the edict, but perhaps he had been carried away in a few places. He understood that he would get off lightly and this would close the issue.
Nothing like it.
Galileo's conviction
Galileo's enemies now had it in his own writing that he had disobeyed the 1616 Edict, even by ever so little. They came down hard with verdict of "vehement suspicion of heresy". This was not -- technically -- because he supported Copernicanism, but because he had been disobedient; disobedience was grounds for a conviction of heresy.
They demanded that Galileo publicly admit he was a bad Catholic; he refused and they took that part out. They demanded that he admit he had obtained his printing license by fraud; he would not. Nor did he actually state in public that Copernicus was wrong, only that he had done wrong in teaching his ideas and that such a failure on his own part was "detestable". Galileo did not perjure himself before the Inquisition, not even for a moment, not even for the fear of punishment.
Nor did the Church condemn Copernicanism. She did not commit herself to scientific backwardness, in spite of many voices which had begged her to do so since 1616 at least.
Nevertheless, Galileo’s punishment was imprisonment for life, the saying of some prayers (which his daughter could do for him) and never to be published again by a Catholic printer.
Galileo’s heart was crushed. Evidently he wrote to his daughter that he felt his name blotted from the book of life, for she wrote loving reassurances on this matter. The Cardinal Archbishop of Sienna asked permission to take Galileo into his personal custody rather than leave him in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and this request was granted. The Cardinal then set about to comfort and encourage the intensely depressed old man by arranging for various scientists to have dinner with Galileo, a happy event for all concerned.
In time, Galileo was allowed to return home and be near his daughter -- not out of mercy, but because the home of the Cardinal was becoming a local academy where scientists met with great delight, and where, in fact, Galileo was healed and probably his life and sanity were saved.
Note that the Cardinal Archbishop of Sienna was the man who took Galileo in. Galileo was not, and did not perceive himself to be, alone against a hostile church.
Galileo's last years
Shortly after Galileo return home, his daughter, Sister Marie Celeste, died. He was overwhelmed with sorrow, and once again, his scientific spirit was nearly crushed. For five months he grieved, before he turned from poetic and spiritual reading to continue his scientific work.
When he recovered, he wrote another series of dialogues on matter and motion -- the real source of his enduring reputation as a scientist -- and it was only when this work was ready for publication that he realized that, for him, publication was forbidden under any circumstances. No Catholic could publish so much as a copy of the Our Father from Galileo's hand.
Louis Elzevir of Protestant Holland therefore assumed the honor of publishing Galileo’s last great work. The same printer also published a Latin translation of the Letter to Castelli and, also in Latin, the famous Dialogue which was on the Index, but which everyone wanted to read. Thus, Galileo's work was increasingly discussed all over Europe, though unavailable in Italy.
In the last years of his life, Galileo went blind. Little is said about this human trial, but blindness for this early user of the telescope, was like deafness for Beethoven. And yet he never complained. Never, even in the most private of his voluminous correspondence, did he complain of his sufferings.
And although the name of Galileo has long been associated with a scientifically repressive image of the Church, let it be clearly understood: Galileo was the man who, at one specific point in history, prevented the Church from taking an unwise stand on the matter of heliocentrism, and he did this at the risk of his life.
Oh, you may say: the Holy Spirit protected the Church.
Yes, always.
Always; but this protection does not come by magic. Remember St. Athanasius? The Spirit protects the Church through the Cross, through the energetic travail and the patient suffering of individual, Spirit-led and Spirit-placed members of the Church.
Such was my friend Galileo.
