by Dava Sobel
I have just placed Suor Arcangela once more into the doctor’s hands, to see, with God’s help, if she can be relieved of her wearisome illness, which causes me no end of worry and work.
Salvadore [Galileo’s servant] tells me that you want to pay us a visit soon, Sire, which is precisely what we so desire; though I must remind you that you are obliged to keep the promise you made us, that is, to spend an entire evening here, and to be able to have dinner in the convent parlor, because we deliver the excommunication to the tablecloth and not the meals thereon.
I enclose herewith a little composition, which, aside from expressing to you the extent of our need, will also give you the excuse to have a hearty laugh at the expense of my foolish writing; but because I have seen how good-naturedly you always encourage my meager intelligence, Sire, you have lent me the courage to attempt this essay. Indulge me then, Lord Father, and with your usual loving tenderness please help us. I thank you for the fish, and send you loving greetings along with Suor Arcangela. May our Lord grant you complete happiness.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 20TH DAY OF OCTOBER 1623.
Most affectionate daughter,
S.M.C.
Suor Maria Celeste’s casual reference to excommunication poked private fun at a practice of the Poor Clares. The Rule of the order stated plainly that no visitors could enter the refectory where the nuns dined. The Convent of San Matteo, however, maintained a separate parlor where a sister’s family members might properly be received. They could bring their own food, too, and share it with her. Thus the dishes themselves, whether cooked in the convent or carried in by the guests, could be eaten with impunity, so long as everyone ate in his or her proper place. A black iron grate, or grille, separated the parlor from the nun’s quarters, and all exchanges passed through the lattice of its bars. Another grille pierced the wall near the altar in the adjacent Church of San Matteo, so that the voices of the nuns singing in their choir could reach the townspeople attending mass on the other side. Although the Poor Clares devoted their earthly lives to praying for all the souls of the world, they required the maintenance of a severed space for this work, where they lived hidden in God’s embrace.
These practices traced back to the early thirteenth century, when Francis of Assisi spurned splendid wealth to found his Order of Friars Minor on the principles of poverty, obedience, and devotion. The rich, privileged young Chiara Offreduccio, or Clare, joined him as his first female follower in the spring of 1212. Francis cut off her golden hair and sent her begging in the streets of Assisi. In time the two divided their labors so that Francis traveled widely preaching the Gospel, while Clare headed the contemplative second order of Franciscans, known as the Clarisses, or Poor Ladies— the Poor Clares. Clare sequestered herself for life in the convent Francis built her at San Damiano, where she slept on the floor and ate practically nothing. She also initiated the tradition of work in the convents, filling the hours between the daily offices with spinning and embroidery.
The Sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working should labor faithfully and devotedly after the hour of Terce at work which contributes to integrity and the common good . . . in such a way that, while idleness, the enemy of the soul, is banished, they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer and dedication to which all other temporal things should be subservient, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter VII]
By the time Suor Maria Celeste joined the order, the Rule of Saint Clare had relaxed on some issues and tightened on others, as dictated by Church policy and the individual interpretation of each convent’s mother abbess. Seventeenth-century parents, for example, paid dowries for their daughters to enter Clarisse convents in Italy—a requirement that might have horrified Francis and Clare. Poverty remained a central tenet of the Rule, rendering all Poor Clares dependent on alms. Suor Maria Celeste perforce appealed frequently to her father for financial help, though she found this duty embarrassing. It was one thing to request money to buy presents for Vincenzio and quite another to ask anything for herself. In the “little composition” she apologetically enclosed with her letter of October 20, she apparently meant to soften her current plea by making a comedy of the convent’s neediness. Unfortunately, the attachment has disappeared, so it is impossible to say whether it took the form of an essay or perhaps a dramatic action of the sort Galileo used to write—and liked to see performed, through the grille, when he visited San Matteo. The nuns also wrote plays, in keeping with convent traditions, for the Church authorities encouraged them to stage spiritual comedies and tragedies drawn from biblical themes as part of their education and recreation.
Saint Clare
Whatever Suor Maria Celeste’s request, Galileo never failed to fulfill it, precipitating a flood of appreciation in return. Suor Maria Celeste’s word for the loving indulgence that characterized her father’s attentiveness—amorevolezza—appears more than twenty times in her 124 surviving letters, thanking him for some recent act of thoughtfulness or generosity toward herself, her sister, or someone else in the convent. Thus, all the while that Galileo was inventing modern physics, teaching mathematics to princes, discovering new phenomena among the planets, publishing science books for the general public, and defending his bold theories against establishment enemies, he was also buying thread for Suor Luisa, choosing organ music for Mother Achillea, shipping gifts of food, and supplying his homegrown citrus fruits, wine, and rosemary leaves for the kitchen and apothecary at San Matteo.
“If I wanted to attempt to thank you with words, Sire, for these recent presents you sent us,” she wrote on October 29, 1623, the week after dispatching her “little composition,” “I could not imagine how to begin to fully express our indebtedness, and what is more, I believe that such a display of gratitude would not even please you, for, as kind and good as you are, you would prefer true thankfulness of the spirit from us over any demonstration of speeches or ceremonies. We will therefore serve you better if we apply what we do best, and by that I mean prayer, in seeking to recognize and make recompense for this and all the other innumerable, and even far greater gifts that we have received from you.”
Anxiously anticipating her father’s imminent departure for Rome, she feared that the separation would be a long one, and she dreaded being deprived of his attentions. As usual, she raised Vincenzio’s agenda: “I want to offer you a good word on behalf of our poor brother, although I may be speaking out of turn, yet I beseech you to forgive him his mistake this time, blaming his youth as the real cause for his commiting such a blunder, which, being his first, merits pardon: I therefore entreat you once again to take him with you to Rome, and there, where you will not lack for opportunities, you can give your son the guidance that your paternal duty and all your natural goodness and loving tenderness seek to provide him.”
Vincenzio, now seventeen, had turned out to be the sullen, thankless opposite of his industrious older sister. Attending college in Pisa, he squandered money and taxed the goodwill of Galileo’s dear friend Benedetto Castelli, to whose care he had been entrusted. None of Castelli’s letters clarify, however, what particular infraction of Vincenzio’s provoked the paternal anger on this occasion.
“For the future,” Galileo wrote in exasperation to Castelli of Vincenzio’s frequent financial demands during his student days, "he is to be content with 3 scudi a month for pocket money. With this he can buy plaster figures, pens, paper, or anything else he likes; and he may consider himself lucky to have as many scudi as I at his age had groats.”
Toward the end of November, after The Assayer appeared in print and won acclaim in Rome, Suor Maria Celeste requested a copy, among other favors from her father, on what she suspected to be the eve of his departure.
MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD FATHER
BETWEEN THE INFINITE LOVE I bear you, Sire, and my fear that this sudden cold, which ordinarily troubles you so much, may aggravate your current aches and indispositions, I find it impossible to remain without news of you: therefore I beg to hear how you are,
Sire, and also when you think you will be setting off on your journey. I have hastened my work on the linens, and they are almost finished; but in applying the fringe, of which I am sending you a sample, I see I will not have enough for the last two cloths, as I need almost another four braccia. Please do everything you can to get this to me quickly, so I can send them all to you before you leave; as it is for the purpose of your upcoming trip that I have gone to such lengths to finish them.
Since I do not have a room where I can sleep through the night, Suor Diamanta, by her kindness, lets me stay in hers, depriving her own sister of that hospitality in order to take me in; but the room is terribly cold now, and with my head so infected, I cannot see how I will be able to stand it there, Sire, unless you help me by lending me one of your bed hangings, one of the white ones that you will not need to use now while you are away. I am most eager to know if you can do me this service. And another thing I ask of you, please, is to send me your book, the one that has just been published, so that I may read it, as I am longing to see what it says.
Here are some cakes I made a few days ago, hoping to give them to you when you came to bid us adieu. I see that this will not happen quite as soon as I feared, and so I want you to have them before they turn hard. Suor Arcangela continues still to purge herself, and she does not feel terribly well after having had the two cauteries on her thighs. I am still not very well either, but by now I am so accustomed to poor health that I hardly think about it, seeing how it pleases the Lord to keep testing me always with some little pain or other. I thank Him, and I pray that He grant you, Sire, the greatest possible well-being in all respects. And to close I send you loving greetings from me and from Suor Arcangela.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 21ST DAY OF NOVEMBER 1623.
Most affectionate daughter,
S. M. Coloste
If you have collars to be bleached, Sire, you may send them to us.
[XI]
What we
require above
all else
In the great silence that descended over the convent after the evening prayers, the thirty sisters of San Matteo lay asleep in their beds, fully clothed. Should Death come to call for one of them in the night, she would be dressed and ready to enter the next life. Or, when the bell summoning the nuns to Matins disturbed the darkness at midnight, they all could rise from their straw mattresses and go at once, without delay, padding in barefoot procession to the choir to meet their bridegroom Jesus by candlelight.
“Venite adoremus” they chanted as they took their places near the altar under the church grille for the Office of the Annunciation the first round of devotions in a new day. The nuns touched their foreheads to the stone floor, made the sign of the cross on their lips, then rose and kneeled in worship, supplicating for all those who might be aided by their prayers.
In the predawn shadows following the choral recitation of Matins and Lauds, the sisters returned briefly to their cells for the remainder of their sleep. But it was probably during this period before sunrise on December 10, 1623, that Suor Maria Celeste found the time to complete a secret letter to her father regarding a matter of supreme importance to the convent.
Galileo, still intending to go to Rome, had offered to petition the pope on behalf of the nuns of San Matteo. He wanted Suor Maria Celeste, given her inside knowledge of their plight, to inform him of their greatest need. Over the past few days, she had sought the advice of the mother abbess and other trusted sisters, finally relying on her own observations to reach a decision as to what would serve the community best.
She had rejected the notion of a gift of alms. Of course the convent was indigent, and as a result the nuns often went hungry, but Poor Clares consciously chose to live in continual abstinence. Their founding mother, Clare, herself had cherished the Privilege of Poverty as the clearest imitation of Christ. After her protector, Francis of Assisi, died in 1226, Clare battled successfully to maintain her right to own nothing, despite the objections of Church officials who feared she would starve to death. Bending to her will, Pope Gregory IX permitted the Poor Ladies at San Damiano to continue their tradition of corporate and individual poverty.
The Sisters shall not appropriate anything to themselves, neither a house nor a place nor anything whatsoever; and as strangers and pilgrims in this world, serving the Lord in poverty and humility, let them confidently send for alms, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter VIII]
Pope Gregory, however, weighing the general welfare of the Clarisses throughout Italy and France, had forced other convents to accept real property that could be sold or rented for profit. By the seventeenth century, this practice enjoyed wide vogue. Surely the new pope Urban, if approached by an individual he admired as much as he did Galileo, might easily cede to San Matteo a prosperous estate that generated enough income to buy food and blankets aplenty.
Something far worse than material poverty, in Suor Maria Celeste’s analysis, threatened to undermine San Matteo. Therefore she made bold to name the problem to her father, and to suggest precisely how the pope might crush the menace. Her letter described the impropriety of the men attending certain supervisory needs of the convent, beginning with the spiritual guidance that had once come from the blessed Francis himself.
Our Visitator shall always be from the Order of Friars Minor according to the will and instruction of our Cardinal. And let him be such as to be well known for his integrity and manner of living. His duty will be to correct faults committed against the form of our profession, whether in the head or in the members, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter XII]
If the visitator was wanting, the chaplains were worse. Yet, since the Church did not allow women to administer the Sacraments, the convent required a chaplain or two for special purposes such as hearing confession, anointing the sick, and celebrating the mass.
The current chaplain attending San Matteo exemplified the crowd of uneducated, unethical clerics who infiltrated ecclesiastical ranks at almost every level in seventeenth-century Italy, making a mockery of religious life wherever they came to roost. Although the Council of Trent, at its conclusion in 1563, had tried to rout these unscrupulous characters by calling for the establishment of seminaries—one in every diocese—to train truly devout young men for holy office, such schools had not yet proliferated widely enough, and many incompetent priests continued to obtain positions through apprenticeships or political connections. Suor Maria Celeste surmised that replacing the current priest, who had no experience of monastic life, with a friar would transform morale at the convent.
Saint Clare facing the Saracens
The Council of Trent had also reduced the tenure of mother abbesses from a lifetime appointment to an elected post that passed to a new occupant by a vote held every three years. At San Matteo later this very day, in fact, just such a ballot would decide the successor to Suor Laura Gaetani, or “Madonna,” as the nuns called her, who was now conducting the Morning Office for the very last time.
Another pealing of the Sacristan’s bell sounded the beginning of Prime. Fully awake, washed, and reassembled in the choir, the sisters pressed on with their intercessions for the sinful and the anguished. They had not spoken any words of ordinary conversation since the previous evening, following the Rule’s admonition to keep silence until the hour of Terce. Now they sang hymns to Suor Maria Grazia’s accompaniment at the old, dilapidated organ, breakfasted on bread, and bent to their work.
Sometime during the three hours of chores after Terce, before the midday chanting of Saint Clare’s own favorite canonical hours of Sext and None, Suor Maria Celeste could have found time to fold her two densely filled sheets of paper lengthwise in quarters, then in half to make a small square, seal the edges, and pass the packet to the steward for delivery to Bellosguardo.
MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND BELOVED LORD FATHER
I WAS HOPING to be able to respond in person, Sire, to everything you said in your most solicitous letter of several days ago. I see, however, that time may prohibit u
s from meeting before you take your leave, and so I am resolved to share my thoughts with you in writing. Above all, I want you to know how happy you made me by offering so lovingly to help our convent. I conferred with Madonna and other elders here, all of whom expressed their gratitude for the nature of your offer; but because they were uncertain, not knowing how to come to a decision among themselves, Madonna wrote to our Governor, and he answered that, since the convent is so impoverished, alms were probably needed more than anything. Meanwhile I had several discussions with one particular nun, who seems to me to surpass all the others here in wisdom and goodwill; and she, moved not by passion or self-interest but by sincere zeal, advised me, indeed beseeched me, to ask you for something which would undoubtedly be of great use to us and yet very easy for you, Sire, to obtain: that is, to implore His Holiness to let us have for our confessor a Regular or Brother in whom we can confide, with the possibility that he may be replaced every three years, as is the custom at convents, by someone equally dependable; a confessor who will not interfere with the normal observances of our Order, but simply let us receive from him the Holy Sacraments: it is this that we require above all else, and so much so that I can hardly express its crucial importance, or the background circumstances that make it so, although I have tried to list several of them in the enclosed paper that I am sending along with this letter.
