Why did the Inquisition condemn Galileo Galilei?

Recap of the previous installment

In the last blog page, I provided a brief overview of astronomical research during Galileo’s time.

I talked about:

• Niccolò Cusano (1401-1464), a German cardinal, mathematician, and astronomer…
• Niccolò Copernico (1473-1543), a Polish priest, astronomer, and mathematician…
• Celio Calcagnini (1479-1541), an apostolic protonotary, humanist, and diplomat in the Duchy of Ferrara…

… and their various investigations and reasoning about the motion of planets.

I concluded my reflection with this question:

In other words…

Poor guy… but what had he done?

• Were his theses not standing up?
• Had he stepped on the wrong people’s toes?
• Did his feet stink?

1 • “The Problem” Between the Church and Galileo: Bible Interpretation

The issue between the Church and Galileo was not “scientific” but “theological.”

Or, to be more precise, the problem was “exegetical.”

What is that? A bunch of nonsense?

What does “exegesis” mean?

Now, interpreting the Bible is a mess; rivers of ink have been spilled on every single verse (since the patristic era)…

…cutting a bit with the axe, though (Bible scholars, don’t shoot me!), we can say that there are two types of interpretation of various Bible passages:

• Literal interpretation. I’ll give an example with Genesis 1: according to a literal interpretation of the text, God really created the world in seven days (i.e., in 168 hours of a Swiss watch), starting “with light” (cf. Gen 1:3) and ending with “man and woman” (cf. Gen 1:27).
• Symbolic/allegorical/typological interpretation. That is (staying with the example above): the first chapter of Genesis says something that, to be understood correctly, needs an explanation that decodes the symbols used in the text. In other words, “the tree of knowledge represents…, the serpent is an image of…” and so on.

The distinction between the two types of Bible interpretation must be made verse by verse (indeed, sometimes even word by word).

Otherwise, the meaning of the text is misunderstood.

2 • The Bible and the Movement of the Sun

There is a passage in the Book of Joshua (one of the books of the Old Testament) that says:

There are other passages in the Bible that refer to the movement of the sun; for example, a Psalm reads:

At the time of Galileo, whether we like it or not, what is obvious to us now was not so clear!

Regarding the exegesis of the Bible, the distinction between:

• the scene presented in the biblical text (= description);
• the symbols used in the passage (= decoding);
• the underlying salvific message (= interpretation).

Today, it is obvious that the Book of Joshua (composed in the 6th-5th century BCE) does not claim to provide astronomical truths…

… However, in the past, this obviousness was not so straightforward.

3 • Galileo Galilei, Heliocentrism, and Fake News

The “casus belli” between the Inquisition and Galileo was heliocentrism, which is the astronomical model that places the sun at the center of the solar system, with the planets orbiting around it.

As mentioned in the previous section, the incorrect interpretation of certain biblical passages, suggesting that it was the sun moving relative to the Earth, made heliocentrism incompatible with the Scriptures (at least according to a literal interpretation of those passages).

In the common imagination, the clash between Galileo and the Church is summarized in these three points:

• Galileo Galilei secretly demonstrates heliocentrism;
• The Church discovers Galileo’s shady plans;
• The Inquisition, unable to bury the discovery, condemns Galileo and forces him to recant.

Let’s start debunking some fake news…

…first of all, perhaps not everyone knows that neither Galileo nor Copernicus managed to prove heliocentrism!

Both of them started with a correct intuition, for which they then sought – but unfortunately failed – experimental evidence.

For those who want a bit more information on the matter, click the box below to open an extra mini-paragraph… (otherwise, continue reading below as if nothing happened).

~

Furthermore, Galileo’s research was not at all secret… in fact, many religious figures were attentive to his studies: Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino had a kind and friendly epistolary relationship with the scientist; the Jesuits were very interested in his research; the Dominicans, on the other hand, were a bit irritated (but I haven’t figured out why)…

Cardinal Bellarmine, engaging cordially with Galileo, had repeatedly emphasized that a theological discussion on the correct/incorrect interpretation of Bible passages regarding the movement of the sun could be opened…

…IF…

…someone provided certain proofs of heliocentrism. Until these proofs were produced, Bellarmine believed there was little to discuss (a bit stubborn, it must be said… presumably, the dramatic epilogue of Giordano Bruno‘s trial in 1600 might have prompted Bellarmine to act more cautiously with Galileo, advising him to proceed more prudently in spreading his theories).

However, his attitude was far from aggressive towards Galileo’s research.

In April 1615, the cardinal wrote a letter to Father Antonio Foscarini, the provincial of the Calabrian Carmelites (also a friend of Galileo and a convinced Copernican), in which he stated:

4 • Why was Galileo condemned by the Inquisition?

But if these are the premises… why was Galileo condemned?

Good question!

I have dedicated another little page on the blog to the trial of Galileo; in the lines below, I would like to focus only on the causes of the condemnation.

In short, the reasons that led to the condemnation were:

• the contrast over the interpretation of Scriptures;
• political tensions between the Jesuits and the Dominicans (Galileo’s most bitter enemies were not the Roman inquisitors but Raffaello Delle Colombe, Niccolò Lorini, and Tommaso Caccini, three Dominican friars from Florence: see SERGIO PAGANO, Galileo Galilei. Lo splendore e le pene di un “divin uomo”, Edizioni Polistampa, Florence 2009, pp. 19-34);
• envy, jealousy, heated tones, errors on both sides…

…and in the end, Galileo (who unfortunately had not managed to prove heliocentrism) was forced to abjure on June 22, 1633.

5 • The (strange) punishment Galileo received

According to the verdict, Galileo was sentenced to “formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our discretion” and to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years…

…the sentence ended with this clause: “reserving to us the faculty of moderating, changing, or removing in whole or in part.”

And indeed, that’s what happened:

• Galileo was released after two days from the Inquisition’s palace.
• He then remained imprisoned for five months in the Roman residence at Trinità dei Monti of Pietro Niccolini, the ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
• He was then moved to house arrest in Siena, in the palace of Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini. There, the cardinal allowed him to use his extensive library, continue his studies, meet scientific figures, … and there Galileo wrote his last work, “Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze.”
• Finally, in December of the same year (1633), the scientist was allowed to conclude house arrest in his villa in Arcetri, near Florence (close to the convent where his illegitimate daughter, Maria Celeste, lived as a cloistered nun; Galileo was allowed to visit her from time to time until her death in March 1634).

As for the recitation of the Psalms, even in that case, the scientist received a mitigated penalty.

Indeed, eight days after the sentence, Galileo asked and obtained that his nun daughter recite the Psalms in his place (see FRANCO TORNAGHI, GABRIELE MANGIAROTTI, Galileo Galilei. Mito e realtà. Itinerario antologico, CESED, Milan 1998, p. 56)!

6 • Galileo after the trial – between sorrow and hope

The Inquisition made a theological mistake in condemning Galileo.

No doubt about it!

In interpreting the scriptures, Galileo was a better theologian than the judges who condemned him, who misinterpreted (that is, literally) the Bible passages I mentioned earlier.

However, it is very interesting to observe Galileo’s reaction after the verdict.

He was certainly bitter, but he was also aware that the condemnation was caused by the envy of his adversaries rather than scientific reasons.

In a letter he wrote from his villa in Arcetri to Elia Diodati, Galileo reported what a Jesuit from the Roman College had told him, namely that:

In short, according to what Galileo wrote in his own hand:

• His condemnation was not due to his scientific theses but to the enmity with the Jesuits of Rome;
• He would not have undergone the condemnation if he had remained their friend.

Precisely because the condemnation was due to political rather than scientific reasons, in the correspondences after the abjuration, the hope for a revision of his sentence often emerges.

For example, in this letter written to the French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc:

Translated into understandable language:

• Galileo hopes that the verdict will be reviewed.
• He asserts that in all his works, he has always been motivated by “piety and reverence” towards the Church.
• He doesn’t blame the Church or the Magisterium at all, but rather his adversaries who spread false accusations about him.

Conclusion

In 1979, Pope John Paul II expressed these words at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

Two years later, a commission was created to study the case, and after eleven years of work, the commission produced a document in which, ultimately, it was decreed that:

• Galileo was unjustly condemned because theologians, by misinterpreting the passages I mentioned above, had reached incorrect conclusions (wrongly overlapping the theological realm with the scientific one).
• Galileo, for his part, took a step longer than his leg in proposing his theory – which at the time could have seemed scandalous – without providing sufficient scientific evidence (and making, in a couple of cases, some blunders, following Copernicus’ reasoning: circular orbits, epicycles in orbits, etc.).

For those who want to delve deeper into the issue, at this link you can find the speech that Giovanni Paolo II gave in 1992, commenting on the final document produced by the commission.

Well, that’s enough…

What can I say?

The issue is a bit more complex than they told us in school…

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(Winter 2020-2021)