The Trial of Galileo: Aristotelianism, the "New Cosmology," and the Catholic Church, 1616–1633

The Trial of Galileo

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The Trial of Galileo

Aristotelianism, the New Cosmology, and the Catholic Church, 1616–1633

Michael S. Pettersen, Frederick Purnell Jr.,

and Mark C. Carnes

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill

© 2022 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the

Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover illustration: Cristiano Banti, Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition, 1857.

Wikimedia Commons.

ISBN 978-1-4696-7081-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4696-7240-3 (e-book)

Table of Contents

I. THE GAME

Introduction: A Walk to the University

The Historical Context

The Protestant Challenge

Aristotle and Aquinas

Enter Galileo Galilei

The Religious Controversy Begins

The Cast of Characters

Role Allocation by Class Size

Allocation of Positions within the Major Factions

Factional and Indeterminate Players: Basic Goals

Key Elements of the Game

The Holy Office

Debates within the Academies

Prince Cesi’s Party

Patron Credits

Writing Assignments

Classes with Laboratory Experiments/Demonstrations

Ways in Which the Game Departs from History

Phases of the Game

Phase One (1616)

Phase Two (1632–1633)

Game Strategy

Class Assignments and Activities

Overview

Set-Up Sessions

Game Sessions 1-5: Phase One (1616)

Game Sessions 6-9: Phase Two (1632–1633)

Post-Mortem Sessions

II. APPENDICES

Appendix A: Introduction to Astronomy from Aristotle to Copernicus

Appendix B: Aristotle, On the Heavens and Posterior Analytics

Appendix C: Decrees by the Council of Trent Concerning Heresy

Appendix D: Galileo, The Starry Messenger (1610)

Appendix E: Galileo, Letter to Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

Appendix F: Galileo, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632)

Appendix G: Laboratory Exercises

Appendix H: Bibliographical References

I. The Game

Introduction: A Walk to the University

Last night was a sleepless one. One argument collided with another and another. When you awoke your bed covers were on the floor in a heap, a confused tangle, like so much of life. And over it all looms an omnipotent God whose purposes are so hard to understand. The Protestants say that anyone can and should read Holy Scripture. But if everyone can make his own sense of the Bible, then the word of God means many different things. And if something can have innumerable meanings, then it has no concrete meaning For this reason the Catholic Church prohibited publication of the Bible thirty years ago. It is the task of the Church and its fathers to discern God’s purposes. And soon you are to assist in this awesome task, reason enough for a sleepless night.

As you make your way to the University, a cool morning breeze sends a shiver down your spine. You hurry across the street, moving from the shadows into the sunlight Pausing, you look up. The Sun has just cleared the Coliseum. Then you shake your head. Again, these questions!

Does it—the Sun—rise? You recall the passage in the Book of Joshua, Sun, stand Thou still! If God commanded the Sun to stop, then normally the Sun moves. That is evident to everyone. You see that the Sun has just moved above the Coliseum. When you walk home later, the other side of the street will be in shadows. The Sun will have moved, not the buildings. This seems obvious.

Aristotle, writing nearly 2,000 years ago, explained it to nearly everyone’s satisfaction. The Earth rests motionless at the center of the universe. Around it rotates, in progressively larger orbits, the Moon, planets, and the Sun; at the outer edge of the universe rotates the celestial orb holding the stars. Aristotle explained, too, that the universe consisted of two distinct realms: the sublunary [below the Moon] realm, extending from the center of the Earth nearly to the Moon; and the heavenly realm, extending from the Moon to the stars, the end of the universe. Each realm, moreover, was fundamentally different: the earthly realm was always changing; the heavenly realm was perfect and immutable.

Several centuries ago, Christian scholars found that this Aristotelian [EH-RIS-TOH-TEE-LEE-AN] cosmology not only explained the world, but it also accorded with the word of God. Little wonder that Aristotelianism has become the foundation of all philosophy.

But certain new philosophers propose that the Sun remains fixed in its place and the Earth moves around it. It is an amazing idea, first suggested, though not accepted, by the ancient Greeks, and now given new life by Copernicus [CO-PERN-EH-CUS], a Dominican scholar, almost a century ago. In On the Revolutions (1543), Copernicus suggested that the huge ball of the Earth turns completely around each day and, over the course of a year, the Earth arcs in a stupendous circle around the Sun. Copernicus died shortly after publishing his hypothesis, and not much further came of it.

In the past decade Galileo Galilei, a Tuscan mathematician and philosopher, has embraced Copernicanism with ingenuity and vigor and he has won over more than a few learned scholars, including some churchmen. Now a debate rages in the universities and, increasingly, among important Catholic prelates. Is it possible that Rome, along with the Earth, is now spinning? If so, then the Bible—the word of God—is seemingly in error. Can that be?

How do we know the truth? How do we know how to know?

A flock of pigeons breaks your reverie. You need to focus on the job at hand. Things are moving quickly—both those you know of and, you suspect, a great many more behind the scenes.

Galileo has long been defending Copernican views to his friends. But in recent years Galileo has found a new source of evidence from an unlikely source: a child’s toy—a spyglass. Galileo improved the toy, chiefly by grinding new lenses and positioning them with mathematical precision inside a tube. Now, when viewed through this spyglass, an object appears thirty times closer to the observer than to the naked eye. Galileo pointed his spyglass at the sky and claimed that he had found powerful refutation of Aristotle. Galileo published these claims in The Starry Messenger (1610).

For several years not much happened. But last year a Dominican priest at a church in Florence railed against heretics who took it upon themselves to contravene Holy Scripture by writing that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still; he mentioned Galileo by name. A few months later another Dominican priest wrote to the Inquisition in Rome, complaining that Galileo’s opinions were heretical. Now the Inquisition has decided to conduct an investigation to determine whether Galileo is a heretic, and whether Copernicanism is a heresy. You are to be an important part of the proceedings. What will transpire is unclear. Church authorities keep mostly to themselves on matters as delicate as this.

You stumble against a loose paving stone. You recall that yesterday workmen had been repairing a broken water main; obviously, they had forgotten to tap the stones fully into place. Does no one take their job seriously anymore? These are troubling times, unsettling times. One has to watch one’s step.

The point is underscored as you come to the Campo de’ Fiori, the flower market. Here, sixteen years ago, in the Year of Our Lord 1600, the ex-Dominican Giordano Bruno was burned alive by order of the Inquisition. Church authorities never said exactly why he had been condemned. Everyone knows that he had defended Copernicanism; but Bruno had also said many foolish things, such as that the universe was infinite and that it contained innumerable world-systems like our own. Worse, he denounced modern Christianity as a triumphant beast that distracted people from the true religion of the ancient Egyptians. Little wonder he was burned at the stake, particularly when the Catholic Church was faced with the ongoing challenge presented by the Protestants in northern Europe. Proponents of Bruno’s views, as well as practitioners of witchcraft and the occult, have not been completely eradicated from Christendom, or from Rome for that matter, but Bruno’s gruesome demise reminds everyone that the Church takes the new cosmology—the new science, as some term it—seriously.

In a few minutes you arrive at the College of Rome. Among those lounging outside, you look for your friends, members of the Jesuit Order that runs the College. You have great respect for some of the faculty’s contributions to astronomy and mathematics. Father Christopher Clavius, who wrote brilliantly on geometry and cosmology, was known throughout Europe. He died just over three years ago. He has been succeeded by his former student, the German Christoph Grienberger. Grienberger has published a new catalogue of fixed stars [so-called because they appear to move together across the sky, as though affixed to a celestial sphere] while training Jesuit missionaries to teach mathematics and astronomy in China. Many of the Jesuits have embraced the study of the sciences with great zeal. Some, perhaps including Grienberger himself, have even accepted the Sun-centered universe of Copernicus. You have heard that the commanders of the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—have placed restrictions on what its members can say about the new philosophy.

As you enter the College, you follow the crowd moving to the lecture room and take a seat. By the lectern is a table with a vase and some other implements. There doubtless will be a demonstration. Then Professor Lorenzetti enters, carrying no notes. He strides to the lectern.

We begin at the beginning, he says, scarcely acknowledging the audience. His Latin is clean, with scarcely an inflection of the lazy Italian vowels common among scholars from the provincial universities.

That is to say, we philosophers must begin with solid propositions. And there is nothing firmer than the Earth on which we stand. Lorenzetti bounces on the balls of his feet.

The man seated next to you chuckles, but Lorenzetti fixes him with a withering stare. These are not laughing matters.

As we get out of bed each morning, Lorenzetti continues, looking away, we know that we can place our feet on firm ground. The Earth will be there, solid and fixed. If the Earth sways as we step onto the floor, we know something is wrong. Either an earthquake has rocked Rome, or our senses are confused, perhaps because we consumed too much wine.

There is scattered laughter, which dies quickly when Lorenzetti glowers.

This Earth—Lorenzetti holds his arms out—is the center of everything under the heavens. We drop a leaf—he reaches into his pocket, produces one, and flings it into the air—and it seeks its way downward, toward the Earth from which it grew, nourished by the soil. When the leaf touches the Earth, its motion stops. So, too, if someone were to lop off my feet, I would tumble onto the ground. Indeed, when Our Maker decides that our earthly days have expired, the dust of our bodies will return to the dust of the Earth.

Lorenzetti pauses. Then he reaches into a pocket, pulls out a pebble, and holds it up. Then he walks to the table, picks up a pitcher of water, and pours the water into a glass bowl.

If I drop this rock into a pond or a stream or into a bowl of water—this he does, and you hear a plink—it sinks to the bottom of the bowl. The rock is of the Earth and is drawn back to its source. As I push the bowl toward the edge of the table, it, too, seeks to be reunited with the Earth from whence it came.

In a single gesture, he thrusts the bowl forward. The students in the front rows throw up their arms, but Lorenzetti catches it in midair. A feat he has doubtless perfected over the years.

Why, he asks, gesturing to the students in front, why did they cringe? Because they know in their bones a central truth that Aristotle explained nearly two thousand years ago: ‘All things composed of the Earth are attracted to it.’ These students know that the bowl would have dropped toward the ground and smashed into little pieces. This truth cannot be refuted. Hard things—things composed of earth—fall toward the center of the Earth. It is in their nature to do so. Is that not irrefutable?

But what of air? It is not of the Earth. What is its natural motion? Where does it naturally go?

Lorenzetti breathes in deeply and exhales noisily through his lips, making a flapping sound. You glance at the man next to you. There is no smile.

Where did it go? The air? Lorenzetti asks. Toward the Earth or away from it?

No one says a word.

You do not know, do you? How do you observe what you cannot see? I shall tell you. You look and you think! That is what Aristotle taught us! A simple experiment will answer the question. When I exhale into water, my air becomes visible as bubbles.

Lorenzetti walks to the bowl, leans over it, and plunges his face into the water. A gurgling sound ensues. He lifts his face from the bowl, dripping with water, reaches into his pocket, and dabs his face with a silk handkerchief.

What happened to the air from my mouth? The bubbles went straight up, or nearly so, as if they wished to flee from the Earth. Air, like fire, is not of the Earth. Thus it is not drawn to the Earth. It moves away from the Earth and into the air from whence it came. It does so naturally. It is in its nature to move straight up away from the center of the Earth.

Now fire? What is its natural motion?

Again, silence.

Look. He walks to the table and lights a candle.

The flames go up, away from the Earth. Why? Because fire, like air, is not of the Earth. It is in its nature to go up. Earth and water naturally go straight down; air and fire go straight up. But where does the fire go? Where does it seek repose?

Lorenzetti points his finger to the ceiling. Up, obviously. But how far? If I were to climb the Tower of Pisa and light a candle, would the flame still go up? Surely. If I climbed to the top of the Alps? Surely the flame would still go upward.

If fire rises through the air, it means that fire is lighter than air. Air rises through water, and thus air is lighter than water. And water is lighter than rocks or earth or people. There you have it. The four elements—earth, water, air, fire—one atop the other: our Earth is at the bottom; above most of the Earth sits the oceans and other bodies of water; and above water is a dome of air. That is the whole of our world. Fire likely rises to the outer limits of our world, just below the Moon.

"Now, we know the natural motion of elements of the earthly realm. We know where they seek to go. But how do they get there? What is the direction by which a rock moves toward the Earth?"

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out another rock, and drops it.

All elements composed of earth move in a straight line, the shortest and fastest route to their natural resting place. A rock falls straight down. If I were to dig a well, jump into it and drop the rock again, it would again go straight down. If I were to dig far enough, the rock would continue falling straight down until it reached the center of the Earth. Water, too, falls down and in a straight line. A bubble of air in a bowl also moves in a straight line, though it naturally moves away from the Earth. So does fire. Unless some other force acts against the earthly elements—earth, water, air, and fire—they will move in a straight direction, down or up. But what about me?

Lorenzetti taps his chest. Then he stomps around and looks up imploringly. How do I move?

Any way I want. Living things are able to move themselves. Even plants can move toward sources of light. Living things possess a special life force that enables them to seek out the specific things they need to live and reproduce. They can thus produce ‘artificial’ motions, based on their needs and wants. The human ‘life force’ enables us to see, hear, move about, and think.

This is the cosmological system of the master, Aristotle. As you know, he was a peripatetic philosopher in ancient Greece. He learned from Plato. But unlike Plato, who focused on ethical issues like ‘What is justice?’ and tried to advance knowledge by means of logic, Aristotle observed the world. He grew up in Thrace, at the very edge of the Greek world, studying the animals and plants he encountered at the seashore. His father was a doctor who became court physician to Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Aristotle eventually tutored the great conqueror, but that, as they say, is ancient history. My point is that Aristotle studied the world around him and tried to understand how it worked. And from observations such as the ones I’ve shown you, he concluded that the natural motion of the four elements is always in a straight line, up or down. Living things, possessed of a life force, are capable of counteracting this ‘natural’ motion.

But now I ask you: Apart from this ‘life force’ of natural motion, does everything in the universe naturally move in a straight line, either up or down? Can you think of a single exception? Lorenzetti raises his eyebrows.

Professor, you blurt out, the stars!

Of course, he says, making no note of you whatsoever. The ancient Greeks knew this thousands of years ago. When we peer into the sky on a dark night, the stars rotate around the Pole Star, though some of you from foreign lands may call it the North Star. If you plot the movement of a star or a constellation on a chart, you find that over the course of the evening all of the stars—all of the constellations—rotate—they move in a circular direction. They do not move in a straight line.

And what about the Sun?

Now many in the audience lean forward.

The Sun rises in the morning, moves around the Earth, sets in the West, and then rises the following morning, repeating its circuit. The Sun, like the stars and the Moon, moves in a circular pattern.

"Aristotle explained this, too. He said that the stars and the planets and the Moon belonged to an entire different realm, a heavenly realm made of another element, ether, where things are changeless and eternal. This heavenly realm is fundamentally different from the Earth. On Earth, everything changes. People and trees live and die. Mountains crumble. Puddles evaporate. Things in our realm change."

"But not in the heavenly realm. It is eternal and perfect. And motion in the heavenly realm is also eternal and perfect: it is circular. A circle, with neither beginning nor ending, is unchangeable and perfect. It is complete in and of itself.

And just as the earthly realm, by contrast, is changeable and imperfect, all motion in the earthly realm is similarly imperfect: a rock will fall until it hits the Earth; its motion is finite.

And there are the planets—Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. When you plot their movement over time, you find that they loop this way and that. They move toward the North Star, then away from it, then toward the eastern horizon, then the southern. That’s why the ancients called them the ‘wanderers.’ But are not these weird loops another form of circular motion?

You may fairly ask: Why do the heavenly bodies move in a circular pattern? The answer is not so complex. Imagine that this glass bowl is half of the heavens.

Lorenzetti takes the bowl, pours the water into a vase, and places the bowl upside down on the table.

First, we need stars. Here are some buttons, coated with glue. They will be our stars.

He presses a handful onto the outside of bowl.

Now imagine that we live on the Earth, at a place inside this bowl. When we look into the night sky, we see the stars above, like this.

He walks toward the window, raises the bowl—upside down—high over his head and into a shaft of sunlight. He rotates it, slowly.

The stars rotate around the North Star.

Brightly lit dots—reflected from the silvery button-stars—move across the ceiling.

See? All of the stars move in a circular pattern.

This explains the circular motion of the stars. But now imagine that within this bowl is another glass bowl. The Sun is attached to that bowl, and it, too, rotates around the Earth, though more slowly than the larger bowl of the stars. And, then, within that Sun-bowl are more bowls, one for each planet, and then a final bowl for the Moon. All of these bowls are transparent, composed of some sort of heavenly ether. But they are also fixed and immutable. And in this realm of the stars and planets, everything moves in circles because they are affixed to these rotating bowls.

Aristotle taught us that the heavenly world is perfect and immutable, and the earthly realm is imperfect and subject to change. These two realms, heavenly and earthly, constitute the universe. The only universe.

You hear a cough coming from someone in the back of the room, loud and false. Lorenzetti stops and glares. You turn around, as does everyone near you. Just who coughed, you cannot tell.

Lorenzetti frowns, eyes hard. One universe, he growls. Then he paces, recollecting his thoughts.

At last he resumes, Everything in Aristotle’s universe runs by one of two separate sets of laws: in the earthly realm, all things move in straight lines, up or down, unless they’re tossed about by the wind or sea or otherwise moved by living things possessed of a life force. But from the Moon out to the outermost sphere of the ‘fixed’ stars, everything moves in a circular way (or in a combination of circles) and is eternal.

"Need I say that the Aristotelian system not only entails perfection and order, but that it also accords with the Word of God: the Bible? This was demonstrated by the great Thomas Aquinas over three centuries ago. When Moses asked God His name, God replied: ‘I am’ (Exodus 3:14). God is: God is existence, forever and unchanging. So, too, the heavenly realm. It exists, forever and unchanging, perfect and incorruptible, a domain of circular motion, itself an expression of divinity: complete in and of itself. The earthly realm, by contrast, like the creatures who inhabit it, is impermanent and continuously changing, imperfect and corruptible, a world, too, whose components move either straight down—toward the center of the Earth—or straight up—toward the heavens—but stopping short of the heavenly realm."

This is what we believe. This is what we teach at the College of Rome and at all Jesuit colleges. It is what all Dominicans teach as well.

But in recent years, some say that Aristotle’s magnificent system of knowledge is unsound. They say that the world of the heavens is imperfect. They say that new stars pop up in the heavens, like flowers in the spring. They say that stars and comets and moons zoom around throughout the heavens, as if there were no fixed ‘bowls’ holding them in place. They say that the Earth moves while the Sun stands still. They say that the sages of antiquity are wrong. They say that the Bible is wrong.

They, doubtless, are ‘clever men.’ But do they know more than Aristotle and Aquinas? Does their wisdom surpass that of countless generations? Does their evidence—the things they see with their toys and ‘prove’ with elaborate theories—count more than that which we see with our own eyes and prove with reason? Do their words hold greater truths than those found in the Bible?

I doubt that any such ‘clever men’ are listening to my words. Why should they? Such persons are enthralled by their own words, none of which they truly believe. They delight in provocation, in the hope of acquiring fame and fortune. In these declining times, many care more about promoting themselves than about serving their God.

But you ‘clever men,’—if you are listening—please answer these questions: Would you exalt your own bright words over the ineffable truths of God? Would you replace God’s order and perfection, as propounded by Aristotle and Aquinas, with confusion and doubt? To put it simply, would you serve God or would you spread falsehood and do the work of Satan?

Lorenzetti’s eyes narrow as he scans the room.

Of course, he says, nodding, Satan would never stand and speak in an open forum. The serpent hides in darkness. His mischief is done by those who have been bitten by his fangs and infected with his poison. But, with the Grace of God, we shall deal with them. If we do not, we will have failed our Church. More important, we will have failed the numberless souls who, poisoned by false doctrines, will be denied the eternal salvation that is the message of Christ. We must have the courage to crush the serpent!

Eyes blazing, Lorenzetti marches to the table, seizes the bowl, and hurls it onto the floor, creating an explosion of sound and shards.

Then he strides out the door.

The Historical Context

Although this game is entitled The Trial of Galileo, it encompasses two separate hearings: the first in 1616, when the Catholic Church initially examined Galileo’s views, and the second in 1632–1633, when the Church revisited those issues and actually put Galileo on trial. The game consequently has two phases, occurring in 1616 and 1632–33.

During both phases, the hearings were conducted by what was called the Inquisition, the common name for the body of the Catholic Church charged with protecting the faith from errors of doctrine. Inquisition, however, actually refers to a cluster of Church institutions. The Roman Inquisition [there were, in fact, different Inquisitions] consisted of two bureaucracies: the Congregation of the Holy Office and the Sacred Congregation of the Index of Forbidden Books. Each bureaucracy, though headquartered in Rome, had local branches throughout Catholic Christendom. The Holy Office identified heresy and punished heretics. The Index determined whether books accorded with Catholic doctrine; those books that the Index judged to be unfit were banned.

Often the Holy Office and the Index worked together; and, in fact, some members of the Holy Office also served as members of the Index. For the purposes of this game, the Holy Office and the Index are presumed to be the same institution. The Holy Office will therefore render judgments as to whether any particular ideas are heretical and it will also decide what books can be published.

Many students in this game will have roles as cardinals in the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, the governing branch of the Holy Office; its meetings were held at the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. Two class sessions during Phase One (1616) will be conducted by the Holy Office.

Two other class sessions during Phase One will be held in alternate locations. That is because the cardinals of the Holy Office did not live in seclusion, like the Confucian scholars of the Forbidden City in Ming China. The cardinals were visible and active figures in a city that most regarded as the heart of the Renaissance. For this reason, other students will assume roles as professors of mathematics and philosophy prominent in Rome. The first class session in Phase One will be held at the Jesuit College of Rome, for example, where different scholars discourse on philosophy, mathematics, and religion. The third class session will be a party at the palace of Prince Cesi [CHAY-ZEE], a nobleman who has committed his fortune to an organization—the Academy of the Linceans [LIN-CHAY-ENZ] (Accademia dei Lincei)—that seeks to promote the new science.

This underscores the point that although Galileo was tried by the Holy Office, Church officials were influenced by what they heard at the universities and elsewhere. Every class session provides a forum to debate, in different ways and with different rules, the cluster of issues swirling around The Trial of Galileo.

Although the game is about Galileo and his opinions, Galileo himself is not a player. Few students—or even professors—could credibly represent the views of one of the extraordinary thinkers of the seventeenth century—or any other century, for that matter.

Nor does any student assume the role of pope in Phase One of the game. Student-players who wish to contact him will do so by sending messages to his papal nuncio—the Gamemaster.

At