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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 A
2 ), BB (or B 2 ), and so on. The
new document that was discovered by Artigas was bound in
volume EE (or E 2 ), 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 Comets 6 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
puttingLynceo 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 19
th 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 19 th 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
thePropaganda 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
theDialogue 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 co
n solato (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 é si a
stiques, vol. XXV (Paris: Letouzey et Ané,
1995), col. 979-980; Catalogi personarum et off
i ciorum 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».
LeTractatus 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 doc u menti 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 16 th and
17 th 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)
SeeOpere, XII, 240-41 and 411-12.
(23)
SeeOpere, 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 Pontif i cum 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 doc u menti 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)
Aftercalorem, 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 p o
natur 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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