A week later Galileo sent another letter to Florence.178 This time a passage he may have meant as rhetorical exaggeration came, unbeknownst to him, even closer to the truth than his last letter. Now he wrote that his three principal enemies, “ignorance, envy, and impiety” (“ignoranza, invidia et impietà,” a nice piece of assonance in Italian), wanted to “annihilate” the Copernicans. He could not have been more right.
Probably about this time one of Galileo’s oddest backers weighed in.179 The Dominican Tommaso Campanella had been imprisoned for almost twenty years in Naples (and had more than another decade to go before being released), yet Cardinal Caetani thought it worth asking him for an opinion about Copernicus and Galileo.180 Caetani was a member of the Index, not the Inquisition, so his move may be another instance of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. It is hard to believe that Caetani knew how much Paul V hated Campanella. Campanella’s little Apologia pro Galileo would probably not have been much help, even if it had arrived in time. It did not really defend Galileo, since Campanella did not accept heliocentrism, nor was he comfortable with the moral implications of Galileo’s proposed divorce between science and religion (despite all Galileo’s protestations of loyalty to holy mother church).181 Campanella took up Caetani’s invitation for two reasons: to defend “the liberty of philosophizing” for all philosophers, not just Galileo, and to make a case, not unlike Galileo’s, against the continued blending of Aristotle and Christian theology. While Campanella was writing, Caccini’s leader, Cardinal Galamini, was reviewing one of Campanella’s prides and joys, “Atheismus triumphatus” (Atheism conquered) written a decade earlier against Niccolò Machiavelli; Galamini was still working on the book a decade later—the Inquisition could drag its feet with the best of them.182 Galamini’s opinion was then highly valued, and in May 1616 he would get Cremonini’s most recent publication to critique.183 Alas, we do not know what if anything Galamini said about Campanella’s book. A review by the Inquisition was not necessarily the kiss of death, but it was rarely a good thing. Given the Inquisition’s tendency to rely heavily on guilt by association, trouble for Campanella (and Cremonini) was likely to spill over onto Galileo and vice versa.
“Not without my prior information”: The Approach to the Precept
After a lull of about three weeks, matters came to a head. At this point, it was still only a rumor that the Holy Office had summoned Galileo, but it was about to. The crisis began around February 20, when Galileo reported to Florence that he had given Orsini the second recommendation from the grand duke and that the young cardinal could not wait to talk to Cardinal Borghese and the pope himself about “the public case.”184 Galileo had primed Orsini about its importance and how much he needed to find “an extraordinary authority” against those who were trying to trick “the superiors.” Galileo devoutly asserted that God was still on his side and would prevent “any scandal for holy church.” Although he found himself alone against his enemies’ skull-duggery, he had no fear of putting everything in writing, unlike his sneaky opponents who worked by whisper and innuendo. This is classic Galileo. He had also changed his mind about Caccini, whom he now once again thought not only completely ignorant but also “full of poison and empty of charity,” a man to stay well away from. Of course, he hurried on to write, there are plenty of “good” Dominicans. Then he said something strange, at least for him: “I am in Rome where the air [the weather] is constantly changing, just as the negotiations are always fluctuating.” Maybe this pessimistic judgment arose from a bad turn in his health, or maybe this time, when he said he could not put anything more in writing, he knew how bad things were becoming. The same packet to Florence included an ominously gushing letter from Orsini to the grand duke about his eagerness to help Galileo.185
The day before, 19 February, the Inquisition’s theologian experts received copies of Sunspot Letters.186 Now the pace picks up. In the early morning of 23 February, they held a meeting at which they tabled two propositions “to be censured”: “that the sun is the center of the world and consequently immovable by local motion” and “that the earth is not the center of the world nor immovable, but that it moves by itself, including by a daily motion.” Those two propositions were identified as coming from the book, first, in the summarium drawn up near the end of Galileo’s trial and on which his sentence rested and then unsurprisingly in the sentence itself.187 Paul V’s order of 25 February 1616 to silence Galileo also identified the two propositions as Galileo’s, without giving their precise source.188 It is nevertheless well known that the propositions as quoted do not appear in Sunspot Letters. The closest passage I have found in any of Galileo’s writing comes from a letter of 16 July 1611 to Gallanzone Gallanzoni, maestro di camera to Cardinal François de Joyeuse, the man who had mediated the end of the Interdict crisis with Venice, where Galileo wrote that “the earth moves with two motions … that is the diurnal in itself around its own center … and the annual motion.”189 I am unable to suggest how this letter could have reached the Inquisition or Galileo’s enemies in Florence.190 It is often suggested that the propositions came from Caccini’s deposition, but it is worth raising the possibility that they really arose from the censoring of Galileo’s book and that Caccini got his evidence from his sponsors in the Inquisition, not from Ximenes.191
Even had they met straight through until the next day, the consultors did not take long over their decision. They had help moving as fast as they did. Before they made their judgment, Orsini had taken up the cudgels for Galileo. With the enthusiasm of the raw youth given his first big assignment, he barged into the consistory of Wednesday 24 February, stoutly defending Galileo, perhaps even waving around “Discourse on the Tides.”192 Paul replied that it would be well for Orsini to tell Galileo to give up his opinion. Orsini persisted and Paul, visibly annoyed, snapped back, chopping off further discussion (as the Tuscan ambassador put it) by bluntly saying the matter had been turned over to the Inquisition. After Orsini left, Paul summoned Bellarmino, and together the two of them (again, according to the ambassador) decided Galileo’s opinion was “erroneous and heretical.” Of course, the pope should not have done that, even in consultation with Bellarmino, and probably he did not. Nevertheless, things moved with as much speed as if done by a single man. Would Paul have acted so quickly—by himself, with Bellarmino, or through the Inquisition—if Orsini, on Galileo’s instructions, had not egged him on?193
The theologians handed down their brief opinion on 24 February.194 To the first point “everybody said the aforesaid proposition was foolish and absurd in philosophy and formally heretical, in that it expressly contradicts the opinions of Holy Scripture in many places according to the proper sense of the words and the common exposition and sense of the holy fathers and doctors of theology” (“Omnes dixerunt dictam propositionem esse stultam et absurdam in philosophia et formaliter haereticam, quatenus contradicit expresse sententiis Sacrae Scripturae in multis locis secundum proprietatem verborum et secundum communem expositionem et sensum Sanctorum Patrum et theologorum doctorum”). Number 2 (“2.a Terra non est centrum mundi nec immobilis, sed secundum se totam movetur, etiam motu diurno”) fared little better. Again unanimously, the theologians decided that it had the same philosophical status as no. 1 and theologically was “at least erroneous.” Eleven experts signed the opinion. They have usually been dismissed as dunderheads. No generalization could be further from the truth. No, they did not know much about arithmetic, but they knew plenty about theology.
They were the following:195
(1) Peter Lombard, the archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland (not to be confused as incredibly enough has sometimes happened with his twelfth-century namesake, one of the inventors of scholastic theology), a prolific writer and almost as well regarded as a theologian in Rome as Bellarmino, his comrade-in-arms against James I of England;196
(2) Giacinto Petronio, Dominican, master of the sacred palace, chief papal censor, later Urban VIII’s point man in the effort to force the Roman Inquisition on the Spanish kingdom of Naples, one of the irritants in the background of the second phase of Galileo’s trial;197
(3)