Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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by Alberto A. Martinez


  should subscribe to the Oath of Allegiance to the king.

  98 John Donne, Sermon cxiii, preached to the Earl of Exeter and his Company in his Chapel at St John’s, 13 June 1624, in The Works of John

  Donne, iv (London, 1839), p. 576.

  99 Ibid., pp. 108, 402, 432, 491, 494, 535.

  100 Justo Justino Justinopolitano [Ludwig Camerarius], Mysterium iniquitatis, sive Secreta secretorum Turco­Papistica secreta, contra libellum famosum, sub titulo Secreta Calvino­Turcica (Justinopoli [Amsterdam?],

  1625), p. 180.

  101 Lucio Vero Clarimontano [pseudonym], Nova Apocalypsis in qua Innocentia Cæsaris Augusti et fidelium imperio principum et noxa rebellium

  (Luxembourg, 1626), p. 160.

  102 Campanella, quoted in Peter Rietbergen, Power and Religion in Baroque Rome: Barberini Cultural Policies (Leiden, 2006), p. 121.

  103 Caesar Longinus, Trinvm magicvm, sive secretorum magicorvm opvs (Frankfurt, 1630), pp. 45, 373, 385–91; Henning Grosse, ed., Magica de

  spectris et apparitionibus spiritu (n.p., 1656), pp. 186–7.

  104 Panfilo Persico, Del segretario libri quattro (Venice, 1629), ii, p. 171; Eng.

  trans. from Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier (Chicago, il, 1993), p. 315.

  105 Kepler’s Somnium, ed. Rosen, p. 5.

  106 Lucæ Holstenii, ‘De vita & scriptis Porphyrii philosophi dissertatio’

  (1630), 1; in Lucas Holstenius, Liber de vita Pythagorae. Eiusdem

  sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes. De antro nympharum (Rome, 1630).

  107 Rietbergen, Power and Religion in Baroque Rome, p. 266.

  108 Holstenius, Liber de vita Pythagorae, pp. 9, 65–6.

  109 Ibid., p. 9.

  110 Ibid., pp. 10, 8.

  111 Ibid., p. 10, also on pp. 8, 16, 22.

  112 Ibid., chap. 3, pp. 19–24; chap. 10, pp. 81–91.

  113 Ibid., pp. 99, 120.

  114 The original name of the Barberini family was Tafano: Italian for horsefly. The modest family heraldry included three horseflies. However,

  the family became wealthy. By 1607 Maffeo Barberini had changed the

  family emblem to three bees. Thomas Mayer, The Roman Inquisition on

  the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640 (Philadelphia, pa, 2014), p. 101.

  115 Francesco Barberini, quoted in Castelli to Galileo, 9 February 1630, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xiv, p. 78. See Jules Speller, Galileo’s Inquisition Trial Revisited (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), pp. 222–4.

  116 Bruno, 3rd Deposition, 2 June 1592, in Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno (Rome, 1993), pp. 167, 269. Bruno (3rd, 12th and 14th depositions) affirmed having such Pythagorean beliefs: Earth is a star, stars are

  worlds, infinitely many worlds exist; see ibid., pp. 268–9. ‘Summarium’:

  Tenth Censured Proposition, in ibid., p. 304.

  314

  References

  117 John Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford, 2010), pp. 300–301.

  118 Niccolò Riccardi to the Inquisitor in Florence, 24 May 1631, in Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago, il, 1955), p. 317.

  119 Liberti Fromondi, Ant­Aristarchus, sive Orbis­Terrae Immobilis. Liber unicus. In quo decretum S. Congregationis S.R.E. Cardinal. an. ciↄ.iↄc.xvi.

  aduersus Pythagorico­Copernicanos editum defenditur (Antwerp, 1631), p. 1.

  120 Ibid., pp. 19–24.

  121 Joannes Aventinus, Annalium Boiorum (Ingolstadt, 1554), iii, p. 297.

  Aventinus died in 1534. His Annals were published posthumously and

  abridged; a more complete edition appeared in Basel in 1580. Although

  Aventinus remained a Catholic throughout his life, he sympathized

  with aspects of the Reformation, and described the struggle of Ludwig

  iv, Holy Roman Emperor and Duke of Bavaria, against the Papacy in

  the fourteenth century. Therefore, some Catholics viewed him as

  a Lutheran.

  122 Fromondi, Ant­Aristarchus, p. 21.

  123 Ibid., p. 29.

  124 Ibid., pp. 2, 26.

  125 Ioanne Baptista Morino, Famosi et antiqui problematis de telluris motu, vel quiete (Paris, 1631), p. 1.

  126 Ibid., pp. 4, 5, 11.

  127 Ibid., p. 138; see also pp. 12, 57, 136, where they are again called ‘obstinate’

  and ‘temerarius’.

  128 Ibid., p. 57.

  129 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

  130 Ibid., p. 57.

  131 Ibid., pp. 43–50, 105–6.

  132 Ibid., p. 136.

  133 Ibid., p. 139.

  134 Galileo to Elia Diodati, 15 January 1633, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, vol. xv, pp. 23–4; see also vii, pp. 16–17. Also in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 224.

  135 Ibid., p. 214. Stillman Drake, ed. and trans., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York, 1957), p. 5.

  136 This similarity was pointed out by Isabelle Pantin; see David Wootton, Galileo, Watcher of the Skies (New Haven, ct, 2010), pp. 55, 276.

  137 Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton, nj, 1989), p. 229.

  138 Ferdinando Gregorovius, Urbano viii e la sua opposizione alla Spagna e all’

  Imperatore (Rome, 1897), pp. 46–59.

  139 Redondi, Galileo Heretic, pp. 230–31.

  140 Rietbergen, Power and Religion in Baroque Rome, p. 266.

  141 Galilei, ‘Dialogo Secondo’, in Dialogo, Doue ne i congressi di quattro giornate si discorre sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo Tolemaico, e

  Copernicano (Florence, 1632), p. 183; as Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, ed. Stillman Drake (Berkeley, ca, 1962), p. 219.

  142 ‘Dialogo Primo’, in Dialogo, p. 3; Drake, ed., Dialogue, p. 11.

  143 Ibid., pp. 53–4; Drake, ed., Dialogue, p. 71.

  144 Wootton, Galileo, Watcher of the Skies, p. 212.

  315

  burned alive

  145 Galileo, Dialogo, Day 3, p. 324; also in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, vii, p. 354; Drake, ed., Dialogue, p. 380.

  146 Galileo, Dialogo, Day 1, p. 52; Day 2, pp. 110, 113; Day 3, pp. 323, 361–2; Drake, ed., Dialogue, pp. 139, 428.

  147 Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier, pp. 322, 330–38.

  148 Heilbron, Galileo, pp. 303–4.

  149 Riccardi to the Inquisitor of Florence, 25 July 1632, in Redondi, Galileo Heretic, p. 239.

  150 Campanella to Galilei, 5 August 1632, in Campanella, Lettere, ed.

  Vincenzo Spampanato (Bari, 1927), p. 241; his original phrase in Italian

  reads: ‘ch’erano degli antichi pitagorici e democratici e di Vostra

  Signoria’.

  151 Redondi, Galileo Heretic, p. 238.

  152 Hippolytus, Refutatio, i, sec. 13, pp. 72–3.

  153 Thomae Aqvinatis, ‘Distinction of Things in General’, Svmmae Theologiae, i (Venice, 1593), Question 47, Art. 3, fol. 165.

  154 Marsilio Ficino, Theologiae Platonicæ, de immortalitate animorum, ix, in Marsili Ficini, Opera & quæ hactenus extitêre, & quæ in lucem nunc primum prodiêre omnia (Basel, 1561), p. 311.

  155 Riccardi to Niccolini, 1632, quoted in Heilbron, Galileo, p. 307.

  156 Pope Urban viii, quoted by Francesco Niccolini to Andrea Cioli, 5 September 1632, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione

  Nazionale, xiv, pp. 383, 384 (Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 229).

  157 Urban viii, quoted in Niccolini to Cioli, 13 November 1632, in ibid., xiv, p. 429 (Finocchiaro, p. 239).

  158 Urban viii, quoted in Niccolini to G. Gondi, 25 January 1642, in ibid., xviii, p. 379.

  159 Urban viii, quoted in Niccolini to Cioli, 27 February 1633, in ibid., xv, p. 56 (Finocchiaro, p. 245).

  160 Niccolini to Cioli, 11 September 1632, in ibid., xiv, p. 388 (Finocchiaro, p. 232).

  161 Niccolini to Cioli, 13 March 1633, in ibid., xv, p. 68 (Finocchiaro, p. 247).
r />   162 Niccolini to Cioli, 9 April 1633, in ibid., xv, p. 85 (Finocchiaro, p. 249).

  163 Heilbron, Galileo, p. 308.

  164 Bellarmino to Foscarini, 12 April 1615, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xii, p. 171.

  165 Clergymen rejected Galileo’s arguments about what is ‘probably’ true; see Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, pp. 24–5.

  166 Francesco Barberini, quoted in Niccolini to Cioli, 27 February 1633, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xv, p. 56.

  Finocchiaro, p. 246, translates dogma fantastico as ‘imaginary dogma’.

  167 Galilei, Dialogo, p. 53; Drake, ed., Dialogue, p. 71.

  168 [Anon.], c. May–July 1600, quoted in Tiziana Provvidera, ‘A New English Document on Giordano Bruno’, Bulletin of the Society for

  Renaissance Studies, xix (2002), p. 25.

  169 One commentator construes the expression ‘fantasticall fellow’ as a compliment. However, it was an insult. I have found more than fifty

  other instances of the word fantasticall and fantastical in dozens of books from 1590 to 1630, and all are negative. For example: ‘he was

  316

  References

  burned in Smithfield for obstinacy in new fantasticall opinions,’ in

  N. D. [Robert Parsons], An Examen of the Calendar, or the Catalogue

  of Protestant Saincts, Martyrs, and Confessors (n.p., 1604), p. xl. Also,

  ‘Margaret Ellis Confessor. This was a willfull woman of the towne of

  Bellirica [Billericay], who being condemned by the B. of London for

  divers fantasticall opinions obstinately held & defended by her, she died

  in Newgate’ [May 1556], in ibid., p. civ. In Italian the words fantastico

  and fantasticando had thoroughly negative meanings.

  170 Holste to Niccolò Peiresc, 1633, quoted in Rietbergen, Power and Religion, p. 267.

  171 Holste to Peiresc, 7 March 1633, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xv, p. 62.

  172 Galileo, 1st Deposition, 12 April 1633, in ibid., xix, pp. 339–40

  (Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 259).

  173 Niccolini to Andrea Cioli, 11 September 1632, in ibid., xiv, p. 389

  (Finocchiaro, p. 233).

  174 Ibid.

  175 Zaccaria Pasqualigo, 17 April 1633, in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 271.

  176 For biographies of Inchofer, see Dezsö Dümmerth, ‘Les combats et la tragédie du Père Melchior Inchofer S.J. à Rome (1641–1648)’, Annales

  Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae.

  Sectio Historica xvii (Budapest, 1976), pp. 81–112; and Thomas Cerbu,

  ‘Melchior Inchofer, “un homme fin & rusé”’, in Largo campo di filosofare: Eurosymposium Galileo 2001, ed. José Montesinos and Carlos Solís

  (La Orotava, 2001), pp. 587–611.

  177 Melchior Inchofer, 17 April 1633, in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 264. See also Sergio Pagano, ed., I documenti del processo di Galileo

  Galilei (Vatican City, 1984), pp. 139–48.

  178 Inchofer, in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 267.

  179 Ibid., p. 268.

  180 D’Ascoli was absent from Rome until late April, so he participated in Inquisition meetings from 4 May onward. See Pierre­Noël Mayaud,

  ‘Les “Fuit congregatio sancti officii in . . . coram . . . ” de 1611 à 1642:

  32 ans de vie de la Congrégation du Saint Office’, Archivum Historiae

  Pontificiae, xxx (Rome, 1992), pp. 231–89. Two other cardinal Inquisitors participated in 1616, Gallamino and Zapata, but they were not in Rome

  in 1633. See Annibale Fantoli, Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church, trans. George Coyne (Notre Dame, in, 1994), p. 448.

  181 Ibid., p. 453.

  182 For evidence of Cardinal Barberini’s kindness toward Galileo, see Fantoli, The Case of Galileo, pp. 184–9.

  183 Riccardi, quoted in Filippo Magalotti to Mario Guiducci, 7 August 1632, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xiv, p. 370.

  184 Final Report to the Pope, May or June 1633, in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, p. 282.

  185 Galileo’s 4th Deposition, 21 June 1633, in ibid., p. 287.

  186 Giacomo Bouchard to Fulgenzio Micanzio, 29 June 1633, in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xv, p. 166.

  317

  burned alive

  187 For a discussion of different kinds of heresy in relation to Galileo’s trial, see Jules Speller, Galileo’s Inquisition Trial Revisited (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), e.g., pp. 21–50. See also Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo, pp. 12–16, 47, 272–4.

  188 Fantoli, The Case of Galileo, p. 206.

  189 The day after his condemnation to ‘imprisonment’, Galileo was allowed to stay instead at the Tuscan Embassy; the next week the Inquisition

  let him move to Siena to stay at the house of his friend, Archbishop

  Piccolomini. After six months Galileo was allowed to return under

  house arrest to his own home at Arcetri, then outside Florence. See

  Fantoli, Galileo: For Copernicanism, p. 464.

  190 ‘Vesta’ was an ancient name for the fire at the universal centre: ‘the figure of the whole universe, in the centre of which the Pythagoreans

  placed the fire, namely Vesta, and they called it unity. They held that

  the Earth is not immobile and is not located in the centre of the

  circumference, but is carried in a circle around the fire.’ Plutarch, ‘Numa

  Pompilius’ ( c. 75 ce), in Plutarchi, Summi et philosophi et historici parallela, p. 45.

  191 Liberti Fromondi, Vesta, sive Ant­Aristarchi Vindex . . . In quo Decretum S. Congregationis S.R.E. Cardinalium anno m.dc.xvi. & alterum anno

  m.dc.xxxiii. aduersus Copernicanos terraæ motores editum, iterum defenditur (Antwerp, 1634), [p. 19].

  192 Cerbu, ‘Melchior Inchofer’, p. 591.

  193 Ibid., p. 590. Melchiore Inchofer, De epistola B. Virginis Mariae ad Messanenses conjectatio (Rome, 1631).

  194 Cerbu, ‘Melchior Inchofer’, p. 592.

  195 Leone Allacci to Fabio Chigi, in ibid., p. 591.

  196 Ibid., p. 598.

  197 For discussion, see William Shea, ‘Melchior Inchofer’s “Tractatus Syllepticus”: A Consultor of the Holy Office Answers Galileo’, in

  Novità celesti e crisi del sapere, ed. Paolo Galluzzi (Florence, 1984),

  pp. 283–92.

  198 Richard Blackwell, Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial (Notre Dame, in, 2008), pp. 45–6.

  199 Melchioris Inchofer, Tractatvs syllepticvs, in quo, qvid de terrae, solisq.

  motv, vel statione, secundum S. Scripturam, & Sanctos Patres sentiendum

  (Rome, 1633), pp. 77–8, 86; trans. in Blackwell, Behind the Scenes,

  quotations on pp. 108, 123, 167.

  200 Campanella, Apologia pro Galileo (1622); Defense of Galileo, trans.

  Blackwell, pp. 50, 48.

  201 Nicolai Mulerii, ‘Isagoge in tabulas Frisicae’, Tabulae Frisicae Lunae­

  Solares quadruplices (Alkmaar, 1611), chap. 1, p. 318.

  202 Nicolaus Mulerius, Institutionum astronomicarum libri duo (Groningen, 1616), p. [x].

  203 Inchofer, Tractatus syllepticvs, p. 92.

  204 Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. B. Hicks (Cambridge, 1972), bk 1, sec. 13, p. 74.

  205 Inchofer, Tractatus syllepticvs, p. 92.

  206 Ibid., p. 80.

  318

  References

  207 For discussion, see Michael Gorman, ‘A Matter of Faith? Christoph Scheiner, Jesuit Censorship, and the Trial of Galileo’, Perspectives on

  Science, iv/3 (1996), p. 298.

  208 Inchofer, Tractatus syllepticvs, Imprimatur by Lucas Waddingus, [p. iv].

  209 Galileo to Elia Diodati, 25 July 1634, in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, Prima edizione completa
, 15 vols (Florence, 1842–56), vii, pp. 49–50. This letter is missing in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, xviii.

  210 See Melchiorre Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, sacrorum tribunalium et authoritatum adversus neo­Pythagoraeos terrae motores, et

  solis statores [Libri Duo], 1635, Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, ms 182.

  211 Domenico Berti, Il processo originale di Galileo Galilei (Rome, 1876), pp. xci–xcii.

  212 Mariano Artigas, ‘Un nuovo documento sul caso Galileo: ee 291’, Acta Philosophica, x/2 (2001), pp. 199–214.

  213 For discussion on the issue of transubstantiation, see Lucas Mateo­Seco,

  ‘Galileo e l’Eucaristia. La questione teologica dell’acdf, Index, Protocolli, EE, f. 291r–v’, Acta Philosophica, x/2 (2001), pp. 243–56; and William

  Shea, ‘Galileo e l’atomismo’, Acta Philosophica, x/2 (2001), pp. 257–72.

  214 Rafael Martínez, ‘Il Manoscritto acdf, Index, Protocolli, vol. ee, f. 291r–v’, Acta Philosophica, x/2 (2001), pp. 215–42.

  215 Francesco Beretta notes that G3 might instead be from as late as 1642. See Beretta, ‘Melchior Inchofer et l’hérésie de Galilée: Censure

  doctrinale et hiérarchie intellectuelle’, Journal of Modern European

  History, iii/1 (2005), p. 44.

  216 Ibid., pp. 41–2.

  217 Philippi Lansbergii, Commentationes in Motum Terræ Diurnum,

  & Annuum, trans. Martin van der Hove (Middelburg, 1630).

  218 Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, p. 5; Augustine, Confessions, v, chap. 5.

  219 Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, pp. 6, 17.

  220 Galileo, Dialogo, Day 3, p. 324; also in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, vii, p. 354. Drake, ed., Dialogue, p. 380.

  221 Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, p. 15.

  222 Ibid., p. 16.

  223 Ibid., p. 17.

  224 Ibid., p. 34. Augustine, City of God, xvi, chap. 9.

  225 Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, p. 35.

  226 Ibid., pp. 11, 88, 92, 94.

  227 Dionysius of Alexandria, ‘Against the Epicureans’, in The Works of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria and Archelaus, xx of Ante­

  Nicene Christian Library, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Edinburgh,

  1871), p. 171.

  228 Inchofer, Vindiciarum S. Sedis Apostolicae, p. 36.

  229 Ibid. Plutarch had written that Cleombrotus asserted 183 worlds.

 

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