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Europen Science Foundation Network: "Science and Human
Values"
Istanbul Workshop: 6 and 7 October 2001
Mariano Artigas (University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain)
Rafael Martínez (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross,
Rome, Italy)
William R. Shea (University of Padua, Italy)
Published as: Mariano Artigas, Rafael Martínez and
William Shea, "New Light in the Galileo Affair", in: Religious
Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, John Brooke and
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, eds., (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic
History, Art and Culture, 2005), pp. 145-166.
A new version of this article has been published as: Mariano
Artigas, Rafael Martínez and William R. Shea, "New light on
the Galileo affair?", in: The Church and Galileo, Ernan
McMullin, ed. (Notre Dame, In.: University of Notre Dame Press,
2005), pp. 213-233.
A Spanish version has been published as: Mariano Artigas, Rafael
Martínez y William R. Shea, "Nueva luz en el caso Galileo",
Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia (Facultad de
Teología, Universidad de Navarra), 12 (2003), pp.
159-179.
In 1999, a new document related to the Galileo affair was
discovered by Mariano Artigas in the archives of the Holy Office.
Artigas communicated his discovery to William R. Shea. Afterwards,
them asked Rafael Martínez to join the team. Martínez
transcribed the document and conducted extensive research in the
Italian archives. This allowed the researchers to identify the
author of the document. This result led to establish a link between
the document and the work of the Special Commission designated by
Pope Urban VIII in August 1632. The Commission was created in order
to decide whether Galileo ought to appear before the Holy Office in
Rome. In this article, the new document (named EE 291 by Artigas)
is described, its authorship is discussed, and its implications for
our knowledge of the Galileo affair are examined.
Keywords: the Galileo affair, Holy Office, Urban VIII, Robert
Bellarmine, Melchior Inchofer, Pietro Redondi, EE 291,
geocentrism.
New light on the Galileo affair
- Abstract
- Summary
- Redondi’s reinterpretation of the trial
of Galileo
- Galileo’s copernican campaign
- The dispute with Orazio Grassi
- The assayer denounced
- The document EE 291
- The author of EE 291
- The date of EE 291
- The date and authorship of G3
- G3, EE 291 and the Galileo affair
- The meaning of EE 291
- Conclusion
- Appendix I: the original latin document EE
291
- Appendix II: english translation of EE
291
- Notes
A new document concerning Galileo’s trial was discovered
by Mariano Artigas in December 1999 in the Archives of the Holy
Office, that are housed in the palace of the Holy Office next to
Saint Peter’s Square in Rome. Rafael Martinez transcribed the
document and carried out the extensive research in Italian archives
that led to the identification of the author. This, in its turn,
has led to relate the document with the work of the Special
Commission appointed by Pope Urban VIII in August 1632 to help him
decide whether Galileo should be summoned before the Holy Office in
Rome.
The Congregation of the Roman Inquisition, generally known as of
the Holy Office, was instituted by Pope Paul III in 1542 in order
to defend the Roman Catholic Church from heresy, which at the time
meant the Protestant Reformation. When the Congregation was
transformed by Pope Paul VI in 1965 it was renamed the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Holy Office worked closely with
the Congregation of the Index of Forbidden Books that was created
in 1571, and published an Index or list of forbidden books
from 1559 until 1917 when it was merged with the Holy Office. Both
Congregations played a central role in the Galileo affair. Our
story deals with years 1610-1633, at a time when Rome was engaged
in the so-called Counter-Reformation, and stressed those aspects of
the Catholic doctrine that helped to counteract the effects of
Protestantism. Two are particularly relevant to the Galileo affair.
The first is an emphasis on reading the Scriptures in accord with
Tradition represented mainly by the Holy Fathers and the Doctors of
the Church. The second is the affirmation of the real presence of
Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, which was explained with the concept
of ‘transubstantiation’. The second aspect has a direct
bearing on the new document.
In this paper we describe the new document (named by Artigas EE
291 for the reasons given below), discuss its authorship, and draw
some consequences for our knowledge of the Galileo affair. 1 The Latin original and an
English translation of the document are given in appendix I and II.
We must begin by examining G3, another document discovered in 1982,
because the new document is a continuation of G3.
The volumes that contain the Records (Protocolli)
of the Congregation of the Index are numbered with capital letters
A, B, C... AA (or A2), BB (or B2), and so on. The new document that was discovered by
Artigas was bound in volume EE (or E2), the same one in
which Pietro Redondi in 1982 found another, until then unknown,
three-page document, which is usually identified by the code
‘G3’ that appears at the top of the first page (nobody
knows what does ‘G3’ stands for).
G3 is a denunciation of the atomism that Galileo defended in his
book Il Saggiatore (The Assayer) of 1623,2 a work in which he argues that sensible qualities do not have an objective status but merely
result from the way atoms impinge on our sense organs. Colours,
tastes, smells, or tactile properties exist, as such, in the
persons who experience them, not in the objects themselves. The
anonymous author of G3 believed that this interpretation of
sensible properties was at variance with the doctrine of the
Eucharist that is characterised by transubstantiation, the word
that was used to indicate that after the consecration at the Mass
there is no longer the substance of bread and wine, but the body
and blood of Jesus Christ. What remains of the bread and wine are
only the so-called accidental properties (colour, odour,
general appearance) that are miraculously sustained by divine
power. No miracle would be needed if those properties were pure
names.
Based on G3, Redondi proposed a reinterpretation of the Galileo
affair in which Pope Urban VIII, a former friend and admirer of
Galileo, manipulated the proceedings in such a way that Galileo
‘only’ had to face the accusation of Copernicanism, and
not the more serious accusation contained in G3. 3 Few people followed this
interpretation, but the new document calls for a re-examination of
G3.
Galileo created a sensation when he used the newly invented
telescope to look at the heavens in the autumn of 1609. He
published his spectacular observations in 1610, and in 1611 he went
to Rome where he was given a hero’s welcome by the Jesuits of
the Roman College. The discoveries for which he was hailed include
the rocky surface of the Moon, the existence of new stars, the
nature of the Milky Way, the satellites of Jupiter, and the phases
of Venus.
Galileo was a Copernican by that time but he presented his views
in a cautious and courteous way. His discoveries threatened the
traditional view that the Earth is at rest at the centre of the
universe, but they did not constitute a definitive proof of the
Copernican system. Some Aristotelian professors first, and
afterwards a couple of friars, felt that Galileo’s
heliocentrism was at variance with a literal reading of the
Scriptures and they denounced him to the Holy Office in Rome. In
1615 Galileo decided take a stronger stand and he went to Rome to
argue the case for the motion of the Earth. The outcome was not a
happy one. Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus was banned by
the Congregation of the Index on 5 March 1616, and Galileo was told
in private, but nonetheless officially, that he was not to teach
Copernicanism in any way. He complied, albeit reluctantly.
In 1623 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a Florentine who had praised
Galileo’s achievements, was elected Pope under the name of
Urban VIII. Galileo had recently helped his nephew, Francesco
Barberini, obtain his doctorate at the University of Pisa, and the
Cardinal had written to express his appreciation. The postscript to
his letter, which is in his own hand, leaves no doubt about his
feelings. ‘I am much in your debt,’ he writes, ‘for
your abiding goodwill towards myself and the members of my family,
and I look forward to the opportunity of reciprocating. I assure
you that you will find me more than willing to be of service in
consideration of your great merit and the gratitude that I owe you.’ 4 Events moved rapidly, and less than two months
after writing this letter, Maffeo Barberini had become Urban VIII,
and was about to appoint his nephew, then only twenty-seven years
old, to the College of Cardinals. Francesco became the Pope’s
right hand.
Two close friends of Galileo, Giovanni Ciampoli and Virginio
Cesarini, were also named to important posts. Cesarini was
appointed Lord Chamberlain, and Ciampoli Secret Chamberlain and
Secretary for the Correspondence with Princes. Under these
favourable auspices Galileo thought the moment had come to renew
his campaign for Copernicanism, and in 1624 he set off for Rome
where he had the rare privilege of being received by the Pope six
times in six weeks. Although the 1616 decree of the Index against
Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus was not suspended,
Galileo felt that he could now argue for the motion of the Earth as
long as he avoided declaring that it was the only system that
fitted astronomical observations.
Here lurked the danger of serious misunderstanding. Maffeo
Barberini, while he was a Cardinal, had counselled Galileo to treat
Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not as a confirmed truth. But
‘hypothesis’ meant two very different things. On the one
hand, astronomers were assumed to deal only with hypotheses, i.e.
accounts of the observed motions of the stars and planets that were
not claimed to be true. Astronomical theories were mere instruments
for calculation and prediction, a view that is often called
‘instrumentalism’. On the other hand, a hypothesis could
also be understood as a theory that was not yet proved but was open
to eventual confirmation. This was a ‘realist’ position.
Galileo thought that Copernicanism was true, and presented it as a
hypothesis, i.e. as a provisional idea that was potentially
physically true, and he discussed the pros and cons, leaving the
issue undecided. This did not correspond to the instrumentalist
view of Copernicanism that was held by Maffeo Barberini and others.
They thought that Copernicus’ system was a purely
instrumental device, and Maffeo Barberini was convinced that it
could never be proved. This ambiguity pervaded the whole Galileo
Affair.
Unfortunately, Galileo had embarked around that time on a
drawn-out dispute with the Jesuit Father Orazio Grassi, something
that did not help his relationship with the Jesuits. He took Grassi
to task in his book The Assayer,a witty and
devastating work that was wildly acclaimed, not so much by
scientists as by writers and men of letters.
The Assayer was a part of a long dispute between Galileo
and Grassi. Three comets had appeared in 1618, and Grassi had
discussed them in a lecture at the Roman College in Rome.5 Galileo replied in a Discourse on the Comets6 that was delivered by Mario Guiducci, his disciple
and close friend. Galileo probably embarked on this dispute because
he felt that Grassi’s ideas might be used to support Tycho
Brahe’s geocentrism against Copernicus’ heliocentrism.
Grassi replied with his Balance, 7 published under the pen name of Lothario
Sarsi. Writing under a pseudonym was not unusual among Jesuits when
they discussed non-theological subjects, as they did not wish to
involve their religious Order. Galileo’s friends urged him to
retort, which he did in his The Assayer in 1623. It is in
this work that we find the celebrated passage in which Galileo
pokes fun at the Jesuit for thinking
that philosophy is a book of fiction created by one man, like
the Iliad or the Orlando Furioso, books in
which the last thing is whether what is written is true. Sig. Sarsi
[Grassi’s nom de plume] this is not the way matters
stand. Philosophy is written in that great book that ever lies
before our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it
if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in
which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and
the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures,
without whose help it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single
word, and without which one wanders in vain in a dark labyrinth.
8
Urban VIII, who liked to have someone read to him at mealtimes,
listened to a number of choice passages as soon as The
Assayer was published in October 1623, and the one we have just
quoted was probably included. In any event, the Pope was so pleased
that he took the book home to read it at leisure.
Not everyone in Rome was as enthusiastic as the Pope, and
Galileo suspected that his enemies (a broad category) were plotting
against him. When he returned to Florence in June 1624, he heard
rumours that his theory of sensible qualities was being criticised,
and he asked Mario Guiducci who was in Rome to investigate. On 21
June 1624, Guiducci reported as follows:
I hear from all sides rumours of the war with which Grassi is
threatening us to the point that I am tempted to believe that he
has his reply ready. On the other hand, I cannot see where he can
attack us since Count Virginio Malvezzi is virtually certain that
he cannot gain a foothold against your position about the nature of
heat, taste, smell, and so on. The Count says that you must have
written about that in order to give rise to a debate for which you
must be armed to the teeth. 9
Over the next months, Guiducci kept his ears open but the rumour
died out. On 18 April 1625, however, he had a new bit of gossip to
pass on. It was provided by Federico Cesi, the founder of the
Lyncean Academy, and concerned ‘a pious person’ who had
asked the Holy Office to ban The Assayer because it argued
for the motion of the Earth. The Pope’s nephew, Cardinal
Francesco Barberini, had agreed to look into the matter and had
entrusted Father Giovanni Guevara with the task of examining the
work. Guevara saw no reason to condemn the ‘doctrine
concerning motion’ that was found in the book, and the Holy
Office let the matter drop. But Galileo did not argue for the
motion of the Earth in The Assayer, and this incident
puzzled historians until Pietro Redondi discovered G3, which sheds
light on the problem. The ‘doctrine concerning motion’
in G3 does not refer to the motion of the Earth but to atoms,
precisely what is at issue in The Assayer. The information
that Guiducci had passed on to Galileo was not only second-hand, it
was distorted. He, or his informant, had misunderstood
‘motion’ as referring to the Earth when it was about
atoms. Galileo does not discuss how planets move in The
Assayer, but how atoms cause heat, and it is in this context
that he explains away the reality of sensible qualities:
As soon as I think of a material object or a corporeal
substance, I immediately feel the need to conceive that it is
bounded and has this or that shape, that it is big or small in
relation to others, that it is in this or that place at a given
time, that it moves or stays still, that it touches or does not
touch another body, and that it is one, few, or many. I cannot
separate it from these conditions by any stretch of my imagination.
But my mind feels no compulsion to understand as necessary
accompaniments that it should be white or red, bitter or sweet,
noisy or silent, of sweet or of foul odour. Indeed, without the
senses to guide us, reason or imagination alone would perhaps never
arrive at such qualities. I think that tastes, odours, colours and
the like are no more than mere names so far as pertains to the
subject wherein they seem to reside, and that they only exist in
the body that perceives them. Thus, if all living creatures were
removed, all these qualities would also be removed and annihilated.
10
Some people, such as the author of G3, may in good faith have
considered this passage as incompatible with the permanence of real
accidents in the Eucharist, but the Holy Office saw no grounds to
proceed against Galileo. The Church had for centuries used the
concept of ‘transubstantiation’ when formulating the
doctrine of the Eucharist, but without giving the word a technical
meaning. The Church declared that the bread and wine are
transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ while the
appearances of wine and bread remain. It is noteworthy that in the
definitions of the Council of Trent, the word ‘accident’
is not used. Instead, the Council speaks of ‘species’,
i.e. appearances, and usually of ‘the species or bread’
or ‘the species of wine’ in the singular. Although the
concept of substance was borrowed from Aristotelian philosophy, the
Council did not intend to enter into a philosophical discussion,
and this was explicitly noted. The appearance of bread and wine
after the consecration are the same whatever scientific or
philosophical explanation is offered for the reality of sensible
qualities. Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s adviser, Father
Guevara, was quite correct in saying that Galileo’s theory
about the motion of atoms did not contradict the doctrine of the
Church. If the accusation had concerned the motion of the Earth,
Guevara would surely have pointed out that this matter was not
raised in The Assayer. The denunciation contained in G3 lay
dormant in the archives for several centuries, until Redondi
discovered it and used it to reinterpret the Galileo Affair. We
shall return to it after examining the new document discovered by
Mariano Artigas.
On 9 December 1999, Artigas happened to be working in the
Archives of the Index, searching for documents related to the
Church’s stance on the theory of evolution. As he was also
preparing a book on Galileo with William Shea, it occurred to him
that it might be useful to look up G3. He asked for volume EE in
which Redondi’s document occupies sheets 292 (recto
and verso), and 293 (recto). When he was given the
volume he remembered that Redondi had commented that he was not
allowed to look at more than that document. The Archives had not
yet been opened to the public and access was restricted. Seventeen
years later, however, the Archives had become fully accessible to
scholars and Artigas was allowed to examine the volume at
leisure.
The document just before G3 turned out to be another anonymous
and undated document that dealt with the same subject. It filled
sheet 291 recto and half of sheet 291 verso. This is
why Artigas called it EE 291. 11 Whereas Redondi’s G3 is in Italian,
EE 291 is in Latin. Galileo is not mentioned by name, but the text
begins with the words, ‘I saw the discourse of the
Lyncean’, an unmistakable reference to Galileo, who had been
admitted to the Lyncean Academy in 1611 and was fond of putting
Lynceo on the frontispiece of his books, as he did in the
case of The Assayer, the work that is considered in G3. The
fact that EE 291 comes just before G3 confirms that the discussion
of the presumed incompatibility of Galileo’s interpretation
of sensible qualities with the doctrine of the Eucharist is related
to what he had written in The Assayer. Artigas immediately
realised that he had found an unknown and unpublished document, and
suspected that it might be relevant to the Galileo Affair.
EE 291 is written with less care than G3, and it has a number of
hand-written corrections. This would seem to indicate that the
author of EE 291 was familiar with the Congregation of the Index
and had been asked to write an internal report on whether to
proceed with the accusation made in G3. EE 291 consists of an
introductory paragraph, eight numbered sections, and a conclusion.
The author is critical of Galileo’s views on atomism, and
concludes that the Holy Office could proceed with a formal
inquiry.
Artigas communicated his discovery to Shea, and both found it
difficult to interpret EE 291 without first determining the author
and the date of composition. This is when they turned to Rafael
Martínez and asked him to join the team.
Rafael Martinez undertook a systematic study of the volume in
which EE 291 appears, and he came across two documents in the same
handwriting signed by Melchior Inchofer, a Jesuit. The son of an
official of the Imperial Army, Inchofer was born in Köszeg in
Hungary around 1585, and died in Milan on 28 September 1648. He
came to Rome to study at the German Hungarian College in 1605, and
he entered the Society of Jesus as a novice on 26 March 1607. He
spent the rest of his life mainly in Italy except for a brief
period in Graz in Austria. 12
Inchofer was probably a member of the Preliminary Commission
appointed by Urban VIII to examine Galileo’s Dialogue on
the Two Chief World Systems in the summer of 1632. 13 The next year he was
asked, along with A. Oregio and Z. Pasqualigo, to assess the work
for the Holy Office, and determine whether Galileo had disobeyed
the injunction not to write on Copernicanism that he had received
in 1616. They concurred that Galileo had contravened the order, but
Inchofer was particularly damning in his report and, in the very
same year, he published in Rome a book entitled Tractatus
Syllepticus against the motion of the Earth. 14
Two other documents in Inchofer’s handwriting that were
identified by Martinez in the Casanatense, another Roman library,
strengthen our claim that Inchofer is the author of EE 291. The
slight differences in the handwriting of the two other documents by
Inchofer in volume EE can be explained by special circumstances.
For instance, in one case, he states that he is compelled to stop
writing because his hand is unsteady.
Artigas, Martinez and Shea drafted an article in 2000 but they
had not published it when they heard in January 2001, that two
other scholars acting independently had also seen the document. The
Italian historian, Ugo Baldini, who had been asked by the Vatican
authorities to head a systematic research of papers on science and
religion in the archives of the Holy Office until the
19th century, came across many documents with his
colleagues, including EE 291 that would seem to be the only
genuinely important document related to Galileo to have been
uncovered to date. A few other documents connected with Galileo
have been found, but they refer to minor points. Baldini and his
team have published these texts with some explanatory notes.
15 A second
scholar, Thomas Cerbu, of the University of Georgia, also found EE
291, and he has published a paper on Inchofer, in which EE 291 is
reproduced with some comments. 16 The fact that EE 291 has been found
independently three times in a short period of time proves that
free access to the Vatican Archives has already produced excellent
results.
We agree with Cerbu on the authorship of EE 291 and we can take
as established that EE 291 was written by Inchofer. This, in its
turn, permits us to establish, also in agreement with Cerbu, when
EE 291 was written.
Inchofer’s personal circumstances provide a reliable clue
to establish when EE 291 was written. In 1617 he was sent to
Messina to teach mathematics, philosophy and theology. He was a
prolific writer, very interested in historical controversies. In
1629 he published a work supporting the authenticity of a letter
presumably written by the Virgin Mary to the people of Messina,
which had been declared apocryphal by the Holy Office. This caused
some difficulties with the Congregation of the Index, and Inchofer
went to Rome to defend himself. He did this so well that he was not
only allowed to print a revised publication of book but was even
able to remain in Rome. He became a confidant of the Dominican
Niccolò Riccardi, the Master of the Apostolic Palace, one of
the main offices in the Vatican Curia. Riccardi could authorise the
publications of books, and he had close ties to the Holy Office,
and the Congregation of the Index.
Inchofer’s collaboration with Riccardi could not have
begun before he had been cleared of the charges against him. A
positive report on his behalf was presented by Riccardi on April
23, 1630, and this was approved by the Holy Office. In December
1630 Riccardi notified the Holy Office that the corrections to
Inchofer’s book had been made, and the Cardinals approved the
publication of the revised edition. Shortly thereafter, Inchofer
began to be consulted by the Congregation of the Index, except for
the period when he returned to Sicily between 1634 and 1636. In
1640, he was officially appointed a Consultant, a title he retained
to his death.
From these circumstances we can infer that the end of 1630 or
the beginning of 1631 are the absolute lower limits for the initial
collaboration of Inchofer with Riccardi and the Congregation of the
Index. It is likely that he was not consulted immediately after
having been cleared, but sometime in 1631 or early in 1632. EE 291
could not have been written later than 1642, the year of
Galileo’s death, because the criticism of the
‘Lyncean’ is directed against a living person. The
suggestion that the matter be examined more closely at the end of
the document would make no sense if Galileo were already dead.
Since there is no reference to Galileo’s condemnation on 22
June 1633 (which the author would have mentioned had the document
been written after the trial), we can surmise that EE 291 was
written before that date. Moreover, Inchofer’s conclusion
that the denunciation provided a basis to examine the matter at the
Holy Office would make no sense if it had submitted it after it was
decided, on 23 September 1632, to summon Galileo to the Holy
Office.
We can conclude, therefore, that the document was written
sometime in 1631 or 1632 but not later than 23 September 1632. This
is consistent with the evidence provided by the similarity between
the handwriting of EE 291 and the one that is found in the
documents that we know to be in Inchofer’s own hand and that
are prior to 1634. 17 It is also consistent with Inchofer being
a member of a Preliminary Commission appointed in the Summer of
1632 to consider whether Galileo should be called before the Holy
Office. But, before developing this line of argument, we must raise
a few questions concerning G3.
In order to ascertain why Inchofer wrote EE 291, we first ask
about the date of G3. Redondi conjectured that it was written after
the publication of The Assayer in 1623, and before Father
Grassi answered it in his Ratio Ponderum of 1626. It is
around this time that Galileo heard the ugly rumour that his theory
of ‘motion’ had been denounced. We cannot exclude that
G3 was written some years after the publication of The
Assayer. There have been cases of such delayed attacks in more
recent times. For example, at the end of the 19th
century, a book on evolution by Father Leroy was denounced to the
Index several years after it was published. There was no rule for
the arrival of denunciations at the Congregation of the Index or
the Holy Office. Nevertheless, it seems more reasonable to assume
that G3 was produced in 1624, shortly after The Assayer
appeared. This date agrees with what we know about the
circumstances, above all the uneasiness manifested by Galileo when
he returned to Florence in June 1624, and the denunciation
mentioned by Mario Guiducci in his letter to Galileo of 18 April
1625. 18 The only
detail that does not fit so well is Guiducci’s reference to
the motion of the Earth as the cause of the denunciation, but as we
have seen, this was surely a mistake, because there is no mention
of the motion of the Earth in The Assayer. That the person
who informed Cesi had difficulties in grasping that the real issue
was the motion of atoms is quite understandable, and Cesi himself,
or Guiducci for that matter, could have missed the point. The
second time Guiducci refers to the denunciation in his letter he
only speaks of ‘motion’, not ‘the motion of the
Earth.’ Once this matter is clarified, the denunciation
reported by Cesi and transmitted by Guiducci fits perfectly well
with Galileo’s worries: a theory concerning sensible
qualities is a subject he had treated in The Assayer.
Our conclusion is that G3 was written and sent to the
Congregation of the Index or the Holy Offdice in 1624. As Guiducci
says in his letter the Cardinal, who declared that he would examine
the matter, asked Father Guevara to read the book and report on it.
Now Father Guevara shortly thereafter went off to France with the
Cardinal Legate, who was no other than Cardinal Francesco
Barberini. Everything jells if we assume that the Cardinal who took
matters in hand was Francesco Barberini, the nephew of the Pope and
the friend of Galileo. He had a genuine interest in the issue. When
Father Guevara reported that Galileo’s views on qualities did
not oppose the doctrine of the Church, G3 was archived and lay
dormant until it was discovered by Inchofer.
But who wrote G3? It is difficult to identify the author because
the neat copy of G3 in the Archives is almost certainly the work of
a copyist. Redondi initially conjectured that the author was none
other than Father Orazio Grassi, but this has now been shown to be
most unlikely by Sergio Pagano. 19 Several persons in Rome disliked Galileo,
on personal or doctrinal grounds, but none of those we have studied
qualify as the author of G3. One possibility is Francesco Ingoli
(1578-1649) with whom Galileo had clashed in Rome in 1616. Ingoli
was largely responsible for carrying the revisions to
Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus that the Index
had requested, and he had his share in the prohibition of
Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. Several of
his manuscript notes are in the Archives of the Congregation for
the Evangelisation of the Peoples (formerly the Propaganda
Fide) of which he was the first secretary, and Rafael Martinez
was able to determine that he did not write G3. Martinez also
examined the work of several copyists who worked at the
Propaganda Fidei at the time but their handwriting does not
match that of G3.
Sergio Pagano has drawn attention to what might be another clue:
the watermark of G3. It is an ecclesiastical coat of arms, probably
that of Cardinal Tiberio Muti, the bishop of Viterbo between 1611
and 1636. 20
Martinez found several variants of this watermark in documents in
the diocesan archive of Viterbo. The Mutis were a noble Roman
family and Galileo was acquainted with Cardinal Tiberio Muti, his
brother Giacomo, and his nephew Carlo. When Galileo came to Rome in
1611, he carried a letter of recommendation for Tiberio Muti from
Antonio de’ Medici.21 He saw Tiberio again in 1616,22 but he was closer to Carlo Muti, who became a member of the Lyncean Academy, and with whom he
corresponded until Carlo’s death in 1621.23 Cardinal Tiberio Muti was a
member of the Congregation of the Index whose meetings he attended
at least until 1633. 24
It is most unlikely that Cardinal Muti was involved in drafting
G3, not only because his handwriting is different but on account of
the tone of the document. It is just not what we would expect from
a Cardinal who belonged to the Congregation of the Index. Several
persons in the entourage of the Cardinal could have had access to
paper with his watermark, but thus far we are in the dark about who
he was. 25
The evidence we have examined strongly suggests that G3 was
written in 1624. It was archived, and then discovered in 1632, in
relation to the early stage of Galileo’s trial. The author of
G3 mentions that he experienced ‘doctrinal scruples’
after reading The Assayer, a statement that would have been
welcome by those who wanted to see Galileo put down a peg or two
after the publication of his Dialogue on the Two Chief
World Systems. Galileo’s trial was preceded by several
months of inquiry, and in August 1632, Rome tried to halt the sale
of the Dialogue and at that time the Pope appointed a
Commission of Inquiry that probably numbered Inchofer among its
members.
We know that the Commission met in August and September 1632,
but we do not know its mandate, how it went about its task, or what
reports were produced. One thing is clear: the Commission
recommended that Galileo be called before the Holy Office. We also
have another item of important information: a very damaging
injunction made to Galileo in 1616 was discovered in the archives
of the Holy Office. On 11 September 1632 the Tuscan ambassador in
Rome, Francesco Niccolini, wrote to Andrea Cioli, the Tuscan
Secretary of State that Father Riccardi, the Master of the
Apostolic Palace, mentioned his Jesuit confidant (surely Inchofer)
was a member of the Commission. Riccardi also added that the famous
injunction of 1616 had been found in the Holy Office. On 26
February 1616 Cardinal Bellarmine, acting on orders of the Pope,
had intimated to Galileo to abandon Copernicanism. This had been
recorded in the archives, and now it came to light.
Once he had been made aware of the content of the
Dialogue in 1632, Pope Urban VIII took the whole affair in
hand. The Archives were searched for anything concerning
Galileo’s antecedents in all likelihood on the Pope’s
instructions for Urban VIII remembered that the Holy Office had
dealt with Galileo in 1616. As a Cardinal member of the Index, but
not of the Holy Office, Urban VIII did not have direct access in
1616 to the proceedings of the Holy Office which were kept secret.
This is why, in an interview with Galileo’s friend, Piero
Dini, in April 1615 he had declared that nothing was brewing
against Galileo in Rome although a friar by the name of Lorini had
already denounced him to the Roman authorities, and another friar,
Tommaso Caccini, had made a statement against him before the Holy
Office. 26 More
specifically, Urban VIII did not know about the injunction ordered
by Pope Paul V and transmitted to Galileo by Cardinal Bellarmine on
February 26, 1616. Now two documents (not just one) in the Holy
Office recorded this event. The authenticity of the first document
that contains a very explicit description of the injunction has
been queried, but the second document is not controversial and is
found in the proceedings of the Holy Office, where every meeting
with the subject matter and the decisions were recorded. This
document clearly says that Bellarmine, acting on the orders of the
Holy Office, formally warned Galileo that he should abandon the
Copernican opinion, and that Galileo accepted. 27
When the documents of the Holy Office came to light, Urban VIII
discovered to his surprise that his much admired friend Galileo had
told him nothing about the injunction. But this is what one should
expect in normal circumstances. In 1616 the Holy Office was anxious
to protect Galileo’s reputation, and there was no reason why
Galileo should have told anybody about the precept. Galileo had
even obtained a certificate from Cardinal Bellarmine, who was a man
who respected confidentiality. But secrecy was so strict at the
Vatican that Bellarmine could not refer in his own writings to the
procedures of the Holy Office, or explain in detail the orders
received from the Pope. Nonetheless, Galileo should have mentioned
that he had received such an injunction when he brought the
manuscript of his Dialogue to Rome in 1630 in order to have
it approved for publication. The discovery of the injunction turned
against him, and it became the focus of the trial. Galileo’s
only defence was to claim that he did not argue for Copernicanism
in the Dialogue. The three experts who read the work soon
realised that he argued as persuasively as he could for the motion
of the Earth, and they told the Pope.
G3 was probably discovered when the archives were searched for
information about Galileo. The accusation contained in G3 was not
about Copernicanism, and a report about its relevance was
necessary. Inchofer was the right person to prepare such a report;
he knew some science and he was a member of the Preliminary
Commission. He thought that the accusation contained in G3 was
justified and that the matter deserved to be more fully
investigated by the Holy Office.
The violation of the 1616 injunction regarding Copernicanism was
sufficient to call Galileo before the Holy Office. It was directly
related to the Dialogue, and provided juridical grounds for
a trial. EE 291 and G3 were not needed. One can imagine that both
documents were carefully saved, with an eye on the development of
the affair. They were not forgotten. After all, the trial might be
not so easy.
Galileo did not arrive to Rome until February 13, 1633. To his
surprise, he had to wait a long time before he was summoned to the
Holy Office. On February 26 ambassador Niccolini asked the Pope for
a rapid trial, but Urban VIII told him that he did not know how
long the trial would last, because the case was still being
investigated. 28
Since the Pope was the head of the Holy Office, it is clear that
the matter was taken very seriously. It is only on 12 April, two
months after his arrival in Rome, that Galileo appeared before the
Holy Office to make his deposition. We can assume that all relevant
documents were examined in the meantime, including G3 and EE 291.
We know the outcome. The trial focused on the Dialogue, and
there could be no doubt that Galileo had disobeyed the injunction
of 1616. From a legal point of view it seemed that the accusation
could be entertained. Philosophical opinions about sensible
qualities seemed irrelevant, and G3 and EE 291 were archived, and
remained unnoticed until recently.
There is always the possibility that G3 was not deposited in the
Vatican archives, but remained with Cardinal Francesco Barberini,
who remembered it in 1632 and had it re-examined by Inchofer. Cerbu
suggests that EE 291 was ‘a strictly personal memorandum,
drafted in conjunction with the meetings of the special commission... The two pieces [G3 and EE 291] may well have remained in his
[Inchofer’s] possession for several years after he drafted
his opinion, and been deposited with the Index in connection with
his [Inchofer’s] later duties as consultant here.’
29 It seems
difficult to admit, however, that a member of the Preliminary
Commission, such as Inchofer could keep G3 for himself, unless
Cardinal Barberini handed it over to him. But in this case it would
still be difficult to understand why Inchofer should have deposited
G3 and EE 291 in the archives some years later.
Historians lament two lacunae in the records of the trial of
Galileo. The first concerns the discussions that took place prior
to his being summoned to Rome (August-September 1632), the second
the preparation of the trial after he had arrived in Rome
(February-March 1633). We know very little of the first, and almost
nothing at all of the second, but EE 291 provides clues that can
help us reconstruct those events.
We are not told in the official documents who first accused
Galileo and whether anyone approached the Pope. Neither do we know
if the Dialogue was examined alone or whether other writings
of his were taken into consideration. We do know, however, that the
situation was very tense in Rome in 1632 when the papacy was deeply
involved in the consequences of the Thirty Years War. In a
consistory, the pro-Spanish Cardinal Borgia accused the Pope of
favouring the Protestants on the grounds that his support of France
served the interests of Sweden, an ally of France. The Pope did not
want to appear weak on doctrinal matters and felt obliged to act
firmly. Galileo’s Dialogue could only too easily be
represented as a source of doctrinal error, and his adversaries
suggested that it might even be an affront to the papacy. The three
dauphins on the cover of the book, were said to be an implicit
criticism of the nepotism of the Pope who had given important jobs
to three members of his family. A more serious accusation was the
fact that the Pope’s argument about the undecidability of
scientific theories had been placed at the end of the book in the
mouth of Simplicio, the Aristotelian pedant who had made himself
perfectly ridiculous. Seen in this light, G3 could be used to
accuse Galileo of deviating from Catholic doctrine in fields other
than the motion of the Earth. Although G3 and EE 291 were not
mentioned at the trial, they could have played an important role
during the period when evidence was being marshalled against
him.
Thomas Cerbu has something like this in his mind when he alludes
to the persecution of the Jesuits. Galileo later considered them
the cause of his misfortune. But according to Cerbu,
‘Inchofer’s troubles with his fellow Jesuits, starting
with his two writings against heliocentrism, the Tractatus
and the Vindiciae, and continuing to the very end of his
life, make it difficult to count him among the Jesuits reputed in
1632 to be persecuting Galileo.’ 30 In 1632, however, Inchofer’s
troubles with the members of his Order were not so big, and in his
1633 report on the Dialogue Inchofer goes out of his way to
claim that ‘Galileo’s main purpose was to fight Father
Christopher Scheiner, a Jesuit who had very recently written
against the Copernicans.’ 31 This shows that in 1633 Inchofer was on
Scheiner’s side.
Other scenarios are possible. Although we are confident that
Inchofer wrote EE 291 between 1631 and September 1632, and that
there is a high probability that G3 was written around 1624, we
cannot exclude that it was written in 1632, shortly before EE 291.
But this would not affect our conclusion which is that G3 and EE
291 were used during the work of the Preparatory Commission in the
Summer of 1632, or when the trial was being prepared in 1633, or
perhaps in both cases. Perhaps we shall one day know who wrote G3
and when was it presented to the Index or the Holy Office. Other
documents may surface, and new light may be shed on the
circumstances that led to Galileo’s trial. We do not believe,
however, that the well-known facts about the Galileo Affair will be
challenged. What was at stake was Galileo’s failure to comply
with a formal injunction not to teach that the Earth moves. The
background theological issues were the authority of Scripture in
scientific questions, and the relevance of geocentrism to the
Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the Redemption. Many
Catholics, some of them high-ranking members of the Church were
aware of these problems and felt that they could be faced. As we
learn more about the circumstances of the trial, we are
strengthened in our conviction that Galileo’s condemnation
was not inevitable.
Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Index, Protocolli, vol. EE, f. 291r (new
301r-v) 32
[f. 291r] Vidi discursum Lyncei et agnovi philosophiam
esse eius hominis qui nunquam non verae philosophiae imposuit, sive
errore, sive ignorantia, semper temerarie.
Errat in primis negando qualitates primas et secundas etiam in
iis corporibus quae agunt in materiam externam, velut cum negat
calorem inesse igni qui in nos agit calefaciendo.
2. Errat dicendo non posse conceptu separari a substantiis
corporeis accidentia modificantia, velut quantitatem et quae ad
quantitatem consequuntur. Quae opinio est absolute contra fidem,
exemplo Eucharistiae, ubi quantitas non solum realiter distinguitur
a sua substantia, sed etiam separata existit.
3. Errat cum dicit saporem, odorem, colorem, esse pura nomina,
et quasi denominationes extrinsecas a corporibus sentientibus,
quibus sublatis ipsa quoque huiusmodi accidentia tolli et
annihilari, praesertim si sint distincta a primis veris et realibus
accidentibus. Ex quo errore duo alii consequuntur: 1. Corpora
eandem quantitatem et figuram habentia habere eosdem sapores,
odores etc. 2. Corpora amittentia odorem et saporem, amittere etiam
quantitatem et figuram a quibus sapor, odor etc. non distinguuntur
in phantasia Lyncei.
4. Errat quod sensationes in corpore animalis vocet actiones,
cum patitur ab obiecto extrinseco, velut cum titillatur a penna aut
alio corpore. Sed hoc condonandum ruditati Philosophi.
5. Errat cum eandem velit esse rationem odoris et saporis, ac
titillationis causatae ab agentibus extrinsecis; haec enim sentitur
in passo iuxta dispositionem corporis organici, ad cuiusmodi
sensationem per accidens se habet hoc vel illud agens in individuo:
at sapores et odores etc. oriuntur ex qualitatibus obiectorum,
ratione mixtionis hoc vel illo modo temperatae; ad quod viceversa
per accidens se habet hoc vel illud organum sensationis in
individuo, unde iuxta varias dispositiones, unus altero plus vel
minus sentit.
6. Errat cum dicit, ferrum v.g. candens tantum calefaceret
animalia sensu praedita; nam quodvis corpus appositum igni, dummodo
sit mixtum et non quintae alicuius essentiae recipit calorem.
33 Idem dico si
iuxta ponatur quodvis aliud corpus cuivis agenti per species
sensibiles, a quo recipit easdem qualitates.
[f. 291v] 7. Recte deducitur ex opinione huius authoris,
non manere accidentia in Eucharistia sine substantia panis. Patet,
agunt enim in organum sensationis resolutione minimarum partium,
quae cum sint heterogeneae a quantitate, alioqui[n] non afficerent
nisi sensum tactus, erunt substantiae, non nisi ex substantia
panis, quae enim alia potest assignari, proinde habetur intentum.
Idemque sequitur non minus evidenter in ea sententia quae ponit
partes substantiae entitativas, distinctas a quantitate dimensiva,
nec distinctas realiter a substantia.
8. Recte etiam deducitur non manere alia accidentia in
Eucharistia nisi quantitatem, figuram etc. nam sapor odor, sunt
pura vocabula si non habeatur relatio ad sensum, in opinione
scilicet erronea Lyncei; proinde absolute non sunt distincta
accidentia a quantitate figura etc.
Si author per partes minimas intelligat species sensibiles,
habebit patronos quosdam ex philosophia Aboriginum, sed plura
cogetur asserere absurda nec salva in fide. Interim sufficiant ista
ex quibus ulterior inquisitio fieri potest coram S. Officio.
1. I saw the discourse of the Lyncean, which I recognise, as the
philosophy of someone who does not adhere to the true philosophy.
Whether this be through error or ignorance, it is always rash.
He errs in the first place, in denying primary and secondary
qualities even in bodies that act on external matter, as when he
denies that heat inheres in the fire that acts on us to warm us.
34
2. He errs when he says that it is not possible to conceptually
separate corporeal substances from the accidental properties that
modify them, such as quantity and those that follow quantity. Such
an opinion is absolutely contrary to faith, for instance in the
case of the Eucharist, where quantity is not only really
distinguished from substance but, moreover, exists separately.
3. He errs when he says that taste, smell, and colour are pure
names, or like extrinsic denominations taken from bodies that can
have sensations, so that if these bodies were destroyed the
accidental properties would also be removed and annihilated,
especially since they are said to be distinct from the primary,
true, and real accidents. From this error two other follow: 1.
Bodies that have the same quantity and the same shape will have the
same taste, smell, etc. 2. Bodies that lose their smell and taste
will also lose their quantity and their shape which, in the
Lyncean’s imagination, are not distinguished from taste,
odour, etc.
4. He errs in calling actions the sensations of a living
body that is acted upon by some external object, for instance when
it is tickled by a feather or some other body. But this can be
excused by the philosopher’s lack of sophistication. 35
5. He errs when he claims that the cause of smell and taste is
the same as that of tickling that is caused by external agents
since someone feels tickling according to the disposition of his
organic body, so that such a sensation is accidentally related to
whatever acts on the individual. But tastes and smells, etc.,
proceed from the properties of objects and result from the way they
are mixed. Likewise the organ of sensation in a given individual is
accidentally disposed in this or that way so that one person feels
more or less than another one according to these different
dispositions.
6. He errs when he says, for example, that a heated iron can
only warm sentient beings, for any object, placed before a fire,
will receive heat as long as it is a ‘mixed’ body, and
is not composed of some fifth essence. 36 And I say that the same happens whenever a
body, placed next to a substance that acts by sensible qualities,
receives the same qualities as that substance.
7. It immediately follows from the opinion of this author that
in the Eucharist the accidental properties do not remain without
the substance of the bread. This is evident for the accidental
properties are said to act on the organ of sensation by being
divided into very small particles which, since they are not the
same as quantity (otherwise they would only act on the sense of
touch) must be parts of the substance. And this can only be the
substance of bread, for what else could it be? This clinches the
argument. The same follows no less clearly from the statement that
posits that the parts of the substance are distinct from
dimensional quantity but not really distinct from the
substance.
8. It also follows immediately that in the Eucharist no other
accidental properties remain other than quantity, figure, etc.,
because taste and smell are mere words if they are not related to
the senses, as the Lyncean erroneously believes. Therefore the
accidental properties are absolutely not distinct from quantity,
shape, etc.
If the author considers the smallest particles to be sensible
species, he will find some support among ancient philosophers,
37 but he will
have to affirm many things they are absurd and contrary to the
faith. So much for now, which is enough for this matter to be
further investigated by the Holy Office.
(1) We have published four studies on the scientific, philosophical and theological aspects of the document in Acta Philosophica, the periodical of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome: M. Artigas, ‘Un nuovo documento sul caso Galileo: EE 291’, Acta Philosophica, 10 (2001), 199-214; Rafael Martínez, ‘Il Manoscrito ACDF, Index, Protocolli, vol. EE, f. 291 r-v’, ibid., 215-42; Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, ‘Galileo e l’Eucaristia. La questione teologica dell’ACDF, Index, Protocolli, EE, f. 291 r-v’, ibid., 243-56; William R. Shea, ‘Galileo e l’atomismo’, ibid., 257-72.
(2) Galileo Galilei,
Il Saggiatore in A. Favaro (ed.), Le Opere di Galileo
Galilei (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890-1909), vol. VI,
197-372. Quoted in the following as Opere, followed by the
Latin number of the volume and the Arabic number of the pages.
(3) Pietro Redondi,
Galileo Eretico (Turin: Einaudi, 1983); Galileo
Heretic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
(4) Maffeo Barberini to
Galileo, 24 June 1623: Opere, XIII, 119.
(5) De tribus
cometis anni MDCXVIII Disputatio
Astronomica publice habita in Collegio Romano Societatis
Iesu ab uno ex Patribus eiusdem Societatis (Roma:
Iacobi Mascardi, 1619): Opere, VI,
19-35.
(6) Discorso delle
comete di Mario Guiducci, fatto da lui nell’Accademia
Fiorentina nel suo medesimo consolato (Firenze:
Stamperia di Pietro Cecconcelli, 1619): Opere, VI,
39-105.
(7) Libra
Astronomica ac Philosophica qua Galilæi Galilæi
Opiniones de Cometis a Mario Guiducio in Florentina Academia
expositæ, atque in lucem nuper editae, examinantur a Lothario
Sarsio Sigensano (Perugia: Typographia Marci Naccarini, 1619):
Opere, VI, 111-180.
(8) Opere, VI,
232.
(9) Mario Guiducci to
Galileo, 21 June 1624: Opere, XIII, 186.
(10) Opere, VI, 232.
(11) There is a
pencil pagination, apparently more recent, where sheets 291, 292
and 293 are indicated as 301, 302 and 303. We prefer the older
pagination that Redondi used in his book. The new document EE 291
occupies 291 recto-verso (301 in the pencil pagination), and
G3 292 recto-verso and 293 recto (302 and 303 in the
pencil pagination).
(12) Cfr. L. Szilas,
‘Inchofer’, in Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de
Géographie Eccl
ésiastiques, vol. XXV (Paris:
Letouzey et Ané, 1995), col. 979-980; Catalogi personarum
et officiorum provinciae Austriae S.I., a cura di
L. Lukács, vol. II: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 125
(Roma: Institutum Historicum S.I, 1982); D. Dümmerth,
‘Les combats et la tragédie du Père Melchior
Inchofer S. J. à Rome (1641-1648)’, Annales
Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis, Sectio Historica, 17
(1976), 81-112.
(13) Francesco
Niccolini to Andrea Cioli, 11 September 1632: Opere, XIV,
389.
(14) W. Shea,
‘Melchior Inchofer’s Tractatus Syllepticus: A Consultor
of the Holy Office Answers Galileo’, in P. Galluzzi (ed.),
Novità celesti e crisi del sapere (Florence:
Barbèra, 1983), 283-92; F. Beretta, ‘«Omnibus
Christianae, Catholicaeque Philosophiae amantibus». Le
Tractatus syllepticus de Melchior Inchofer, censeur de
Galilée’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für
Philosophie und Theologie, 48 (2001), 301-25.
(15) U. Baldini and
L. Spruit, ‘Nuovi documenti galileiani degli Archivi del
Sant’Ufficio e dell’Indice’, Rivista di storia
della filosofia, 56 (2001), 661-99.
(16) T. Cerbu,
‘Melchior Inchofer, «un homme fin &
rusé»’, in: José Montesinos and Carlos
Solís (eds.), Largo campo di filosofare. Eurosymposium
Galileo 2001 (La Orotava, Tenerife: Fundación Canaria
Orotava de Historia de la Ciencia, 2001), 587-611.
(17) It is very
similar especially to EE f. 125r-v, which seems to date from
1630, and to FF f. 521r-v, from the first half of 1634.
(18) Mario Guiducci
to Galileo, Opere, XIII, 265.
(19) See S. Pagano
(ed.), I documenti del processo di Galileo
Galilei (Città del Vaticano: Pontificia Academia
Scientiarum, 1984), 43-48.
(20) P. Gauchat, Hierarchia catholica
medii et recentioria aevi (Münster, 1935), 12. There is
another possibility, namely that the coat of arms was that of one
of the Cardinals Gondi, who in the 16th and
17th centuries occupied the see of Paris: Pietro
(1533-1616), since 1595 ambassador in Rome, his nephew Enrico
(1572-1622), and Giovanni Francesco (1584-1654), who succeeded his
brother.
(21) Tiberio Muti to
Antonio De’ Medici, 9 April 1611: Opere, XI, 87. There
is an error in the edition by Favaro, where the letter is signed
‘Il Car. Muti’. In 1611, Tiberio Muti was not yet a
Cardinal, but was a member of the chapter of Saint Peter. Instead
of Car. (Cardinal) one should read Can. (Canon).
(22) See
Opere, XII, 240-41 and 411-12.
(23) See
Opere, XX, 491. Carlo Muti was born in 1591.
(24) The last meeting
he attended was on 19 September 1633 (see Archive of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Index,
Diari, vol. IV, p. 68).
(25) We sometimes
find variant of watermarks in writings apparently unrelated to the
original. For instance, there are different versions of the
watermark with Muti’s coat of arms in the manuscript of Th.
Ameyden Elogia Summorum Pontificum et S.R.E.
Cardinalium suo aevo defunctorum (Bibl. Casanatense, ms. 1336).
This is explained by the friendship between Muti and Ameyden, who
had access to his writing paper.
(26) Piero Dini to
Galileo, 18 April 1615: Opere, XII, 173.
(27) S. Pagano (ed.),
I documenti del processo di Galileo Galilei,
op cit, 223 (document n. 7). There we find also another document on
the same subject, found by Pagano in the ‘Stanza
Storica’ in the archives (document n. 6, pp. 222-23), but we
do not know whether it is an original or a later copy.
(28) Francesco
Niccolini to Andrea Cioli, 26 February 1633: Opere, XV,
56.
(29) Cerbu,
‘Melchior Inchofer, «un homme fin &
rusé»’, op cit, 598.
(30) Ibid.
(31) S. Pagano (ed.),
I documenti del processo di Galileo Galilei, op cit,
143.
(32) The original punctuation, which is not always
consistent, has been normalised. Other details have also been
normalised, for instance, by substituting “ij” by “ii”,
or writing full words instead of abbreviations.
(33) After
calorem, and before cuivis agenti, the author had
written iuxta positum igni, aut, now cancelled. Between the
lines, the same hand has added the corrected text: Idem dico si
iuxta ponatur aliud corpus.
(34) The words ‘primary and secondary qualities’
(literally first and second qualities) that are used in the
document are not found in the Assayer where Galileo uses
first accidents when he refers to objective qualities. The
terminology primary and secondary qualities was
developed by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding where he describes the primary qualities of
bodies as ‘utterly inseparable from the body, in what
state soever it be (...) viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or
rest, and number’ (J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. A. Campbell Fraser [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1894], book II, ch. VIII, par. 9: vol. I, 169-70). This is
close to what Galileo writes in the Assayer: ‘I say
that upon conceiving of a material or corporeal substance, I
immediately feel the need to conceive simultaneously that it is
bounded and has this or that shape, that is big or small with
respect to others, that it is in this place or that at any given
time; that it moves or stays still; that it does or does not touch
another body; and that it is one, few, or many. I cannot separate it
from these conditions by any stretch of my imagination.’
(Opere, VI, 347). Secondary qualities of bodies for
Locke are ‘such qualities which in truth are nothing in the
objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by
their primary qualities, i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and
motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c.’
(Locke, Essay, ibid., par. 10, 170). Galileo says much the
same in the Assayer: ‘I think that tastes, odours,
colours, and so on are no more than mere names so far as pertains to
the subject wherein they seem to reside, and that they have their
habitation only in the sensorium. Thus, if the living creature
(l'animale) were removed, all these qualities would be
removed and annihilated. Yet since we have given them particular
names that differ from the names of the other first and real
attributes (primi e reali accidenti), we like to believe that
they are also truly and really different from them.’ (Opere,
VI, 348).
(35) The author is interpreting Galileo in the light of his own
Aristotelian philosophy. Galileo does not refer to ‘sensations’
as ‘actions’. This is an error of interpretation. What
Galileo actually says in The Assayer is the following: ‘I
believe I can explain my idea better by means of some examples. I
move my hand first over a marble statue and then over a living man.
Now as to the action derived from my hand, this is the same with
respect to both subjects so far as the hand is concerned; it
consists of the primary phenomena of motion and touch which we have
not designated by any other names. But the animate body, which
receives these operations, feels diverse sensations according to the
various parts, which are touched. Being touched on the soles of the
feet, for example, or upon the knee or under the armpit, it feels in
addition to the general sense of touch another sensation upon which
we have conferred a special name, calling it tickling; this
sensation belongs entirely to us and not to the hand in any way. It
seems to me that anyone would seriously err who might wish to say
that the hand had within itself, in addition to the properties of
moving and touching, another faculty different from these; that of
tickling - as if the tickling were an attribute which resided in the
hand. A piece of paper or a feather drawn lightly over any part of
our bodies performs what are inherently quite the same operations of
mowing and touching; by touching the eye, the nose, or the upper lip
it excites in us an almost intolerable titillation while in other
regions it is scarcely felt. Now this titillation belongs entirely
to us and not to the feather; if the animate and sensitive body were
removed, it would remain no more than a mere name. And I believe
that many qualities which we come to attribute to natural bodies,
such as tastes, odours, colours, and other things, may be of similar
and no more solid existence’: Opere, VI, 348.
(36) In other
words, a sublunary body and not a celestial one of the kind
Aristotle considered to be composed of a ‘fifth’ kind of
matter. It is interesting that in the passage of The Assayer that
is being considered (VI, 348, l. 36 - 350, l. 21) Galileo applies
the theory of the four elements to his own purposes: the different
sensations are produced by the particles of fire (odour), earth
(touch), water (taste) and air (sound).
(37) The censor writes, ‘the
philosophy of the Aborigines’, which is probably intended as
a reference to the pre-Socratic philosophers.
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