A Short History of Astronomy - Arthur Berry (read along books .txt) 📗
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131. The book as a whole was in effect, though not in form, a powerful—indeed unanswerable—plea for Coppernicanism. Galilei tried to safeguard his position, partly by the use of dialogue, and partly by the very remarkable introduction, which was not only read and approved by the licensing authorities, but was in all probability in part the composition of the Roman censor and of the Pope. It reads to us like a piece of elaborate and thinly veiled irony, and it throws a curious light on the intelligence or on the seriousness of the Pope and the censor, that they should have thus approved it:—
“Judicious reader, there was published some years since in Rome a salutiferous Edict, that, for the obviating of the dangerous Scandals of the present Age, imposed a reasonable Silence upon the Pythagorean Opinion of the Mobility of the Earth. There want not such as unadvisedly affirm, that the Decree was not the production of a sober Scrutiny, but of an informed passion; and one may hear some mutter that Consultors altogether ignorant of Astronomical observations ought not to clipp the wings of speculative wits with rash prohibitions. My zeale cannot keep silence when I hear these inconsiderate complaints. I thought fit, as being thoroughly acquainted with that prudent Determination, to appear openly upon the Theatre of the World as a Witness of the naked Truth. I was at that time in Rome, and had not only the audiences, but applauds of the most Eminent Prelates of that Court; nor was that Decree published without Previous Notice given me thereof. Therefore it is my resolution in the present case to give Foreign Nations to see, that this point is as well understood in Italy, and particularly in Rome, as Transalpine Diligence can imagine it to be: and collecting together all the proper speculations that concerne the Copernican Systeme to let them know, that the notice of all preceded the Censure of the Roman Court; and that there proceed from this Climate not only Doctrines for the health of the Soul, but also ingenious Discoveries for the recreating of the Mind.... I hope that by these considerations the world will know, that if other Nations have Navigated more than we, we have not studied less than they; and that our returning to assert the Earth’s stability, and to take the contrary only for a Mathematical Capriccio, proceeds not from inadvertency of what others have thought thereof, but (had one no other inducements), from these reasons that Piety, Religion, the Knowledge of the Divine Omnipotency, and a consciousness of the incapacity of man’s understanding dictate unto us.”77
132. Naturally Galilei’s many enemies were not long in penetrating these thin disguises, and the immense success of the book only intensified the opposition which it excited; the Pope appears to have been persuaded that Simplicio—the butt of the whole dialogue—was intended for himself, a supposed insult which bitterly wounded his vanity; and it was soon evident that the publication of the book could not be allowed to pass without notice. In June 1632 a special commission was appointed to inquire into the matter—an unusual procedure, probably meant as a mark of consideration for Galilei—and two months later the further issue of copies of the book was prohibited, and in September a papal mandate was issued requiring Galilei to appear personally before the Inquisition. He was evidently frightened by the summons, and tried to avoid compliance through the good offices of the Tuscan court and by pleading his age and infirmities, but after considerable delay, at the end of which the Pope issued instructions to bring him if necessary by force and in chains, he had to submit, and set off for Rome early in 1633. Here he was treated with unusual consideration, for whereas in general even the most eminent offenders under trial by the Inquisition were confined in its prisons, he was allowed to live with his friend Niccolini, the Tuscan ambassador, throughout the trial, with the exception of a period of about three weeks, which he spent within the buildings of the Inquisition, in comfortable rooms belonging to one of the officials, with permission to correspond with his friends, to take exercise in the garden, and other privileges. At his first hearing before the Inquisition, his reply to the charge of having violated the decree of 1616 (§ 126) was that he had not understood that the decree or the admonition given to him forbade the teaching of the Coppernican theory as a mere “hypothesis,” and that his book had not upheld the doctrine in any other way. Between his first and second hearing the Commission, which had been examining his book, reported that it did distinctly defend and maintain the obnoxious doctrines, and Galilei, having been meanwhile privately advised by the Commissary-General of the Inquisition to adopt a more submissive attitude, admitted at the next hearing that on reading his book again he recognised that parts of it gave the arguments for Coppernicanism more strongly than he had at first thought. The pitiable state to which he had been reduced was shewn by the offer which he now made to write a continuation to the Dialogue which should as far as possible refute his own Coppernican arguments. At the final hearing on June 21st he was examined under threat of torture,78 and on the next day he was brought up for sentence. He was convicted “of believing and holding the doctrines—false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures—that the sun is the centre of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move and is not the centre of the world; also that an opinion can be held and supported as probable after it has been declared and decreed contrary to the Holy Scriptures.” In punishment, he was required to “abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors,” the abjuration being at once read by him on his knees; and was further condemned to the “formal prison of the Holy Office” during the pleasure of his judges, and required to repeat the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years. On the following day the Pope changed the sentence of imprisonment into confinement at a country-house near Rome belonging to the Grand Duke, and Galilei moved there on June 24th.79 On petitioning to be allowed to return to Florence, he was at first allowed to go as far as Siena, and at the end of the year was permitted to retire to his country-house at Arcetri near Florence, on condition of not leaving it for the future without permission, while his intercourse with scientific and other friends was jealously watched.
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The story of the trial reflects little credit either on Galilei or on his persecutors. For the latter, it may be urged that they acted with unusual leniency considering the customs of the time; and it is probable that many of those who were concerned in the trial were anxious to do as little injury to Galilei as possible, but were practically forced by the party personally hostile to him to take some notice of the obvious violation of the decree of 1616. It is easy to condemn Galilei for cowardice, but it must be borne in mind, on the one hand, that he was at the time nearly seventy, and much shaken in health, and, on the other, that the Roman Inquisition, if not as cruel as the Spanish, was a very real power in the early 17th century; during Galilei’s lifetime (1600) Giordano Bruno had been burnt alive at Rome for writings which, in addition to containing religious and political heresies, supported the Coppernican astronomy and opposed the traditional Aristotelian philosophy. Moreover, it would be unfair to regard his submission as due merely to considerations of personal safety, for—apart from the question whether his beloved science would have gained anything by his death or permanent imprisonment—there can be no doubt that Galilei was a perfectly sincere member of his Church, and although he did his best to convince individual officers of the Church of the correctness of his views, and to minimise the condemnation of them passed in 1616, yet he was probably prepared, when he found that the condemnation was seriously meant by the Pope, the Holy Office, and others, to believe that in some senses at least his views must be wrong, although, as a matter of observation and pure reason, he was unable to see how or why. In fact, like many other excellent people, he kept watertight compartments in his mind, respect for the Church being in one and scientific investigation in another.
Copies of the sentence on Galilei and of his abjuration were at once circulated in Italy and in Roman Catholic circles elsewhere, and a decree of the Congregation of the Index was also issued adding the Dialogue to the three Coppernican books condemned in 1616, and to Kepler’s Epitome of the Coppernican Astronomy (chapter VII., § 145), which had been put on the Index shortly afterwards. It may be of interest to note that these five books still remained in the edition of the Index of Prohibited Books which was issued in 1819 (with appendices dated as late as 1821), but disappeared from the next edition, that of 1835.
133. The rest of Galilei’s life may be described very briefly. With the exception of a few months, during which he was allowed to be at Florence for the sake of medical treatment, he remained continuously at Arcetri, evidently pretty closely watched by the agents of the Holy Office, much restricted in his intercourse with his friends, and prevented from carrying on his studies in the directions which he liked best. He was moreover very infirm, and he was afflicted by domestic troubles, especially by the death in 1634 of his favourite child, a nun in a neighbouring convent. But his spirit was not broken, and he went on with several important pieces of work, which he had begun earlier in his career. He carried a little further the study of his beloved Medicean Planets and of the method of finding longitude based on their movements (§ 127), and negotiated on the subject with the Dutch government. He made also a further discovery relating to the moon, of sufficient importance to deserve a few words of explanation.
It had long been well known that as the moon describes her monthly path round the earth we see the same markings substantially in the same positions on the disc, so that substantially the same face of the moon is turned towards the earth. It occurred to Galilei to inquire whether this was accurately the case, or whether, on the contrary, some change in the moon’s disc could be observed. He saw that if, as seemed likely, the line joining the centres of the earth and moon always passed through the same point on the moon’s surface, nevertheless certain alterations in an observer’s position on the earth would enable him to see different portions of the moon’s surface from time to time. The simplest of these alterations is due to the daily motion of the earth. Let us suppose for simplicity that the observer is on the earth’s equator, and that the moon is at the time in the celestial equator. Let the larger circle in fig. 58 represent the earth’s equator, and the smaller circle the section of the moon by the plane of the equator. Then in about 12 hours the earth’s rotation carries the observer from A, where he sees the moon rising,
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