In most of his letter, Galileo indulged in one of his specialties, giving at least as good as he got. Galileo complained about a verbal assault by the bishop of Fiesole, Baccio Gherardini, in front of some of his friends. Galileo fired back one of his best shots (in his eyes), accusing his enemy of thinking that he, Galileo, had written On the Revolutions of the Spheres. Besides, Galileo had defended its real author Copernicus on the extrinsic grounds that he was “not only a Catholic man, but a religious and a [cathedral] canon” (“uomo non pur cattolico, ma religioso e canonico”).
It may be that Galileo was right about what “the Dominican fathers” had planned and that Lorini was using Sfondrato as a conduit to his real target, Bellarmino, the recipient of Sfondrato’s complaint about the Index’s lack of power. Lorini may have thought it diplomatically inadvisable for a Dominican to approach a Jesuit directly in the wake of their orders’ violent and still unresolved dispute over the role of grace in salvation, not to mention his own difficulties with them in 1602. He may have known that Sfondrato had been among those trying to make Bellarmino pope in 1605.30 He must have known that Bellarmino had severe doubts about Copernicus. Galileo’s friend and patron, Federico Cesi, founder of the Academy of the Lynxes, certainly was aware of Bellarmino’s views and made sure Galileo knew them. In the context of Caccini’s reading, Cesi wrote Galileo that Bellarmino had told him Copernicus’s ideas were heretical and the “motion of the earth without any doubt is against scripture.” Cesi added that, if the Index considered Copernicus’s book, it would be banned.31 He urged Galileo to proceed very carefully indeed in responding to Caccini and warned that the most Galileo could hope for was a private censure of the friar. Cesi knew what he was talking about and so did Bellarmino. He was in a position to consult some of the best scientists at the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano, as he did on several occasions. But not now. He had no need.
Bellarmino was not a scientist, but he already had his mind made up on the burning scientific question of the constitution of the universe before Lorini and Caccini hatched their plot.32 Even if he ever had, he no longer had the slightest interest in matters of science. No, his thoughts had turned all to his own mortality. Just before Caccini’s sermon, Bellarmino finished Ascent of the Soul to God.33 As the title makes plain, this is an intensely mystical work. Not even the command of theology on which Bellarmino had once prided himself mattered any more.
The key point for Bellarmino, as for Caccini, was the role of scripture and its interpreters. It looks at first blush as if he changed his mind on this point right in the midst of things in March 1615. On 7 March, Dini passed to Galileo what amounted to an invitation from Bellarmino to lay out his interpretation of how scripture fit his case.34 Bellarmino had carefully pointed out that any republication of Copernicus’s book would require a note added to it that his system was intended merely “to save the appearances,” that is, it was a theory, no more. Then came the implicit invitation. Bellarmino suggested that only one scripture verse caused trouble, and it was not the one in Joshua Caccini had used. Instead, Bellarmino pointed to Psalm 19.4–5: “[Yet] their voice goes out through all the earth, and their message to the end of the world. High above, he pitched a tent for the sun, who comes out of his pavilion like a bride-groom, exulting like a hero to run his race.” The problem to Bellarmino was that this passage appeared to say the sun had been permanently fixed in that “tent.” (Neither he nor Galileo seems to have had any problem with the verse representing the sun as a person.) Galileo, who had already risen to similar bait in his “Letter to Castelli,” seized the invitation and barely two weeks later fired off by express a much more succinct letter to Dini, responding directly and bluntly to the invitation.35 Meanwhile, Bellarmino changed his mind, again in a talk with Dini, but reported at second hand by another of Galileo’s circle, Giovanni Ciampoli, that Galileo should not meddle in scripture because he lacked the proper qualifications as a theologian, more or less Cardinal Maffeo Barberini’s opinion, as Ciampoli summed up.36 Did Bellarmino really change his mind, or does what he said depend on who reported it, especially since it could be that Ciampoli was describing the same conversation as Dini had earlier? If Bellarmino’s change of mind is real, the “Letter to Castelli” was precisely what changed it. In the version Lorini sent via Caccini, Bellarmino and five other Inquisitors—not including Sfondrato—had discussed it on 25 February in a meeting at his palazzo, Palazzo Gabrielli in via del Seminario at the end next to Piazza Macuto.37 The day before Ciampoli’s letter, Caccini had testified before the Inquisition, although Bellarmino probably did not learn the content of his deposition until it was reported in the secret part of a congregation of 2 April, Sfondrato this time in attendance.38 In that context, Galileo’s letter to Dini looked like more provocation, and in consultation with Cesi Dini decided to suppress it.39
Even with Bellarmino’s expected support, Lorini still did not have easy sledding, as his conspiracy began to mesh with the independent and more important “motor” of developments in Rome.40 Galileo had powerful defenders there as he did in Florence. To begin with, a faction in Santa Maria Novella—home of the “moderate” Domenico Gori (see below)—opposed Lorini and Caccini and, unlike them, already had an agent in Rome, general preacher Luigi Maraffi. Maraffi was an old friend of Galileo and, even better, well enough placed to become an expert consultant to the Index in 1616, although not until after it had condemned Copernicus.41 Maraffi thus served as an excellent conduit for the latest news from Rome and might have been able to help Galileo especially well, that is, unless he was acting as a double agent. Even before Galileo wrote to warn him of it, Maraffi already had news of Caccini’s lecture, as well as of efforts to prevent it.42 Galileo could also hope for help from Caccini’s own family. Caccini’s reading horrified his brother Matteo, manager of its social-climbing operation in Rome, who blasted him for having acted like “a pigeon, testicle (coglione, i.e., with vulgar stupidity), or certain doves.”43 Much more important, Cardinal Andrea Giustiniani was still angry with Caccini, and Matteo feared Caccini’s behavior would likely cost him his chance to bring his brother into the service of Cardinal Pompeo Arrigoni, former secretary of the Inquisition, now in residence in his archbishopric of Benevento.44 Matteo Caccini, who held high office in Arrigoni’s household, put his brother forward as the cardinal’s theologian.45
For all Maraffi’s encouragement to Galileo, his letter contained one worrying piece of news. The latest book of Galileo’s old Paduan friend, the Aristotelian philosopher Cesare Cremonini, had run into serious trouble. Galileo had talked about it to Maraffi at length (but, then, Galileo talked about everything at length). Maraffi was indeed a well-placed source, since the Inquisition’s records contain little about Cremonini at precisely this time. But in October 1614 just before Caccini’s lecture, there had been a burst of activity directed by Pope Paul against his De coelo.46 When the Venetians tried to defend Cremonini in Rome, they met a flat condemnation from Arrigoni’s successor as secretary of the Inquisition, Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Millini. Cremonini offended by putting forward the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul’s mortality. The danger this idea posed to the Christian notion of salvation does not need emphasis. Cremonini and Galileo had been linked once before in the Roman Inquisition’s records when Pope Paul in 1611 ordered a search through them to see whether Galileo’s name appeared in Cremonini’s interminable