by Dava Sobel
I am sending you another batch of the same pills, and I greet you with all my heart together with our usual friends and Signor Rondinelli. May Our Lord bless you.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 20TH DAY OF AUGUST 1633.
Most affectionate daughter,
[XVIII]
Recitation
of the
penitential
psalms
Galileo in siena reconvened his three familiar characters— Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio—and let them take up the discussion of his Two New Sciences. The banning of the Dialogue had destroyed his literary monument to the memory of those long-gone friends, and so, although Galileo had no idea whether he would be allowed to publish another book, he began to put his accumulated material on motion into their mouths. He composed the dialogue for the first two of his three interlocutors’ four new days together during his five-month stay at the archbishop’s house.
In the initial excitement of greeting one another again, the three companions flood their talk with speculations on how to measure the speed of light or the weight of air, and how patterns of waves create consonance or dissonance in music. But their voices have changed since last they met. It is as though—it must be because— all three have lived through Galileo’s tribulations with him and lost their verve. Salviati is not as persuasive, Sagredo not as passionate, Simplicio not nearly as stubbornly opposed to novelty. In lieu of the sarcastic barbs and literary devices that animated the Dialogue, the men trade polite lines to maintain the dramatic form, but not the flare, of the previous book. On the third and fourth days, they open their Italian dialogue to Salviati’s reading aloud an entire Latin treatise on motion written by “our Academician,” as they like to call Galileo. These sections, dense as any geometry textbook, almost immediately lose the casual reader in a forest of propositions and theorems, though they embody Galileo’s seminal restructuring of physics as a science based on mathematics.
Instead of Sagredo’s palazzo on the Grand Canal, Galileo staged the trio’s reunion at the great shipworks of the Venice Arsenale, where they could draw inspiration from the sight of men and machines at work. “The constant activity which you Venetians display in your famous Arsenale,” Salviati exclaims in his opening speech, “suggests to the studious mind a large field for investigation, especially that part of the work which involves mechanics.”
The Venetian Arsenale
An experienced artisan at the shipyard immediately sets them off with his remark that extra care must be taken in the launching of the largest vessels, so as to avoid the peril of the big ships’ splitting apart under their own great weight. Sagredo thinks this explanation strains belief. Though it is “proverbial and commonly accepted,” he says, that large structures are weaker than small, “I hold it to be altogether false, like many another saying which is current among the ignorant.”
Sagredo’s doubt gives Salviati a chance to reveal the wisdom of the old workman’s words, supported by “our friend” Galileo’s mathematical demonstrations regarding relative size and strength of materials—the first of the two “new sciences” in the book’s title. (The second, motion, including free fall and the paths of fired projectiles, would be covered on Days Three and Four.)
“Please observe, gentlemen,” Salviati responds,
how facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty. Who does not know that a horse falling from a height of three or four braccia will break his bones, while a dog falling from the same height or a cat from eight or ten, or even more, will suffer no injury? Equally harmless would be the fall of a grasshopper from a tower or the fall of an ant from the distance of the Moon. Do not children fall with impunity from heights which would cost their elders a broken leg or perhaps a fractured skull? And just as smaller animals are proportionately stronger and more robust than the larger, so also smaller plants are able to stand up better than larger. I am certain you both know that an oak two hundred feet high would not be able to sustain its own branches if they were distributed as in a tree of ordinary size; and that Nature cannot produce a horse as large as twenty ordinary horses, or a giant ten times taller than an ordinary man, unless by miracle or by greatly altering the proportions of his limbs and especially of his bones, which would have to be considerably enlarged over the ordinary. Likewise the current belief that, in the case of artificial machines the very large and the small are equally feasible and lasting is a manifest error.
The diagrams and geometrical proofs that follow show how volume outstrips strength as things get bigger: Volume expands as the cube of bodies’ dimensions, while strength increases only as much as their square.
“I am quite satisfied,” declares Simplicio toward the end of the first day, “and you may both believe me that if I were to begin my studies over again, I should try to follow the advice of Plato and commence from mathematics, which proceeds so carefully, and does not admit as certain anything except what it has conclusively proved.”
Galileo’s comparative
bone drawing from
Two New Sciences
On Day Two, when the discussion becomes more mathematical and even more dependent upon diagrams, Salviati elaborates on problems of scale by drawing a couple of bones. One appears to be a femur from a dog. The other looks like a gross, bloated distortion of the same. “To illustrate briefly,” Salviati says,
I have sketched a bone whose natural length has been increased three times and whose thickness has been multiplied until, for a correspondingly large animal, it would perform the same function which the small bone performs for its small animal. From the figures here shown you can see how out of proportion the enlarged bone appears. Clearly then if one wishes to maintain in a great giant the same proportion of limb as that found in an ordinary man he must either find a harder and stronger material for making the bones, or he must admit a diminution of strength in comparison with men of medium stature; for if his height be increased inordinately he will fall and be crushed under his own weight. Whereas, if the size of a body be diminished, the strength of that body is not diminished in the same proportion; indeed the smaller the body the greater its relative strength. Thus a small dog could probably carry on his back two or three dogs of his own size; but I believe that a horse could not carry even one horse of his own size.
“I am delighted to hear of your good health and peace of mind,” Suor Maria Celeste wrote in response to one of Galileo’s progress reports on Two New Sciences, “and that your pursuits are so well suited to your tastes, as your current writing seems to be, but for love of God may these new subjects not chance to meet the same luck as past ones, already written.”
Because of the subjects he had treated in his Dialogue, Galileo was now expected to perform penance as part of the process of contrition. The Holy Office had enjoined him to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years, to aid his rehabilitation. Saint Augustine, around the dawn of the fifth century, had selected these particular psalms for daily study and prayer in trying times, as a way to guard and greaten one’s faith.
O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed. [6:1, 2]
The sacrament of penance, which the Protestants had rejected during the Reformation, increased in importance in seventeenth-century Italy after the Council of Trent. The penitent was required to reconcile himself with God and the Church by performing three kinds of acts: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Galileo had already expressed his contrition and confessed publicly by abjuration. He most likely confessed in private and in confidence to an individual priest as well, although there is no evidence—of necessity there would be no evidence—that he did so. Even though the council’s decrees stipulated only a single confession annually, at Eastertide, a new spiritual emphasis on the introspective examination o
f conscience compelled many Catholics to confess their sins as often as once a month.
Satisfaction, the third act of the sacrament of penance, consisted in performing three classes of good works, namely prayer, fasting, and the giving of alms. The recitation of the penitential psalms, in partial fulfillment of the prayer obligation, would have taken Galileo approximately one-quarter of an hour per week, on his knees.
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. [32:1, 2]
September saw the end of the plague epidemic that had menaced life in Tuscany for two whole years. Grand Duke Ferdinando attributed the respite to the May procession of the Miraculous Madonna of Impruneta. He and his grandmother, Grand Duchess Cristina, ordered their finest craftsmen to create ornate tokens of appreciation—including a cross in carved rock crystal with gold decorative bands, fifteen silver votive vases, and a silver reliquary containing the skull of Saint Sixtus—which the Medici family sent in a grateful outpouring to the small church that housed the Virgin’s holy image.
I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. [32:5]
At the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, the disappearance of the plague coincided with another remarkable stroke of good fortune: Through a series of deaths attributed to old age, the late brother of Suor Clarice Burci bequeathed the nuns a farm at Ambrogiana valued at more than five thousand scudi. In reporting this event to Galileo, Suor Maria Celeste estimated the coming year’s harvest to yield 290 bushels of wheat, 50 barrels of wine, and 70 sacks of millet and other grains, “so that my convent will be greatly relieved.” She anticipated that Galileo, too, would be relieved of constant requests for money, given the sisters’ sudden affluence.
Their benefactor, well knowing the nuns could not leave the convent to tend crops and feed animals, had thoughtfully willed them a full complement of field hands and caretakers to remain on the property. Along with this largesse, the Poor Clares of San Matteo inherited the responsibility of celebrating mass every day for four hundred years to pray for the immortal soul of Suor Clarice’s brother. They also stood obliged to perform the Office for the Dead in his honor three times per year for the next two centuries.
To these requisite prayers, Suor Maria Celeste voluntarily added the psalms for her father’s penance.
Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation. [38:21, 22]
MOST BELOVED LORD FATHER
SATURDAY I WROTE TO YOU, Sire, and Sunday, thanks to Signor [Niccolo] Gherardini [a young admirer, and later biographer, of Galileo, who was related to Suor Elisabetta], your letter was delivered to me, through which, learning of the hope you hold out for your return, I am consoled, as every hour seems a thousand years to me while I await that promised day when I shall see you again; and hearing that you continue to enjoy your well-being only doubles my desire to experience the manifold happiness and satisfaction that will come from watching you return to your own home and moreover in good health.
I would surely not want you to doubt my devotion, for at no time do I ever leave off commending you with all my soul to blessed God, because you fill my heart, Sire, and nothing matters more to me than your spiritual and physical well-being. And to give you some tangible proof of this concern, I tell you that I succeeded in obtaining permission to view your sentence, the reading of which, though on the one hand it grieved me wretchedly, on the other hand it thrilled me to have seen it and found in it a means of being able to do you good, Sire, in some very small way; that is by taking upon myself the obligation you have to recite one time each week the seven psalms, and I have already begun to fulfill this requirement and to do so with great zest, first because I believe that prayer accompanied by the claim of obedience to Holy Church is effective, and then, too, to relieve you of this care. Therefore had I been able to substitute myself in the rest of your punishment, most willingly would I elect a prison even straiter than this one in which I dwell, if by so doing I could set you at liberty. Now we have come this far, and the many favors we have already received give us hope of having still others bestowed on us, provided that our faith is accompanied by good works, for, as you know better than I, Sire, fides sine operibus mortua est [faith without works is lifeless].
My dear Suor Luisa continues to fare badly, and because of the pains and spasm that afflict her right side, from the shoulder to the hip, she can hardly bear to stay in bed, but sits up on a chair day and night: the doctor told me the last time he came to visit her that he suspected she had an ulcer in her kidney, and that if this were her problem it would be incurable; the worst thing of all for me is to see her suffer without being able to help her at all, because my remedies bring her no relief.
Yesterday they put the funnels in the six barrels of rose wine, and all that remains now is to refill the cask. Signor Rondinelli was there, just as he also attended the harvesting of the grapes, and told me that the must was fermenting vigorously so that he hoped it would turn out well, though there is not a lot of it; I do not yet know exactly how much. This is all that for now in great haste I am able to tell you. I send you loving regards on behalf of our usual friends, and pray the Lord to bless you.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 3RD DAY OF OCTOBER 1633-
Most affectionate daughter,
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. [51:1, 2,3]
It is not known whether Galileo himself recited the prayers of his penance, either before or after Suor Maria Celeste assumed the burden, for this was a duty performed in private. In public, Galileo remained ever consistent in his conviction that he had committed no crime.
“I have two sources of perpetual comfort,” he wrote retrospectively to his French supporter Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, "first, that in my writings there cannot be found the faintest shadow of irreverence towards the Holy Church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only I and God in Heaven thoroughly know. And He knows that in this cause for which I suffer, though many might have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or with greater zeal for the Church than I.”
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.
Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. [102:1, 25, 26, 27]
[XXIX]
The book of life,
or,
A prophet accepted in
his own land
During this episode of anticipated healing at Siena, Galileo sank periodically into despondency. In October he confided to his daughter that he felt as though his name had been stricken from the roll call of the living. The condemnation by the Holy Office, so far exceeding the contumely he had come to expect in reaction to his work, branded him an outcast in his own eyes. At his worst moments, he despaired of ever reestablishing his reputation, of ever bringing the rest of his work to light. All his life he had attracted jealousy and criticism, sustaining blows dealt in such number and with such vehemence that he esteemed himself a magnet for malignity.
“May it please Blessed God that the final decree regarding your return does not postpone it longer than we hope,” Suor Maria Celeste wrote right back brightly on October 15.
But meanwhile I take endless pleasure in hearing how ardently Monsignor Archbishop perseveres in lov
ing you and favoring you. Nor do I suspect in the slightest that you are crossed out, as you say, de libro viventiutn* certainly not throughout most of the world, and not even in your own country: on the contrary it seems to me from what I hear that while you may have been eclipsed or erased very briefly, now you are restored and renewed, which is a thing that stupefies me, because I am well aware that ordinarily: Nemo Propheta acceptus in patria sua* (I fear that my wanting to use the Latin phrase has perhaps made me utter some barbarism). And surely, Sire, here at the convent you are also beloved and esteemed more than ever; for all this may the Lord God be praised, as He is the principal source of these graces, which I consider my own reward, and thus I have no other desire but to show gratitude for them, so that His Divine Majesty may continue to concede other graces to you, Sire, and to us as well, but above all your health and eternal blessing.
