Since the time of Aristotle, the purpose of astronomy was to save the appearances of celestial phenomena. To the Aristotelian mind, science was an expedient means of organizing data. It had no bearing on the ultimate reality of things. This was a matter for philosophy and theology. Different mathematical devices, such as the Ptolemaic epicycles, could be advanced to predict the movements of the planets, and it was of no concern whether they were objectively true. The only point was to give order to complicated data. All that mattered was which system was most convenient. Very much the same attitude is now prevalent in the modern physics establishment regarding Quantum Theory.
The Aristotelian Cosmos comprised two worlds, the superlunary and the sublunary. The former consisted of the moon and everything beyond; it was perfect and imperishable. The latter was the terrestrial globe and its atmosphere, subject to generation and decay. Use of Ptolemy's methodizing of Aristotle, made it possible to navigate the seas and predict eclipses. There was no practical motivation to give up this successful system for a new, unproved cosmology which not only contradicted common sense (as no less an authority than Francis Bacon averred), but also the obvious meaning of Scripture.
That Copernicus believed the heliocentric theory to be an objective description of reality went largely unnoticed. This was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles. He also borrowed from Aristotle the mistaken notion that the planets must move in circles because that was the only perfect motion. There was, moreover, the famous preface by Osiander, a Protestant who oversaw the printing of the first edition. Osiander knew that Luther and Melanchthon violently opposed any suggestion that the earth revolves around the sun. So he wrote an unsigned preface, which everyone took to be Copernicus's, presenting the theory as a mere mathematical device for charting the movements of the planets in a simpler manner, but one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens.
In reality, Copernicus's book marked a revolution in human thought: one that caught the universities even more off guard than the Church. Copernicus, and others like Kepler and Galileo, began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only saved the appearances, but was objectively true. This represented a new theory of the nature of theory: to the extent that a hypothesis saves the appearances, to that extent, it should be taken as corresponding with reality.
The response to these discoveries ranged from enthusiastic to downright
hostile. The leading Jesuit astronomer of the day,
Christopher Clavius, was sceptical. However, when the Roman college
acquired an improved telescope, he saw for himself that Galileo was right
about Jupiter's moons, and the Jesuits subsequently confirmed the phases
of Venus. Still, Galileo was the man of the hour. In 1611 he made a triumphant
visit to Rome, where he was feted by cardinals and granted a private audience
by Pope Paul V, who assured him of his support and good will. Cardinal
Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit scholar and inquisitor, was intrigued with
Galileo's theories but concerned with the disruption that publication of
them could produce in the minds of ordinary Catholics.
Cardinal Newman, wrote concerning Galileo's campaign, that:
"had I been brought up in the belief of the immobility of the earth as though a dogma of Revelation, and had associated it in my mind with the incommunicable dignity of man among created beings, with the destinies of the human race, with the locality of purgatory and hell, and other Christian doctrines, and then for the first time had heard of Galileo's thesis .... I should have been at once indignant at its presumption and frightened at its speciousness, as I can never be, at any parallel novelties in other human sciences bearing on religion."Perhaps Galileo's path would not have led to the offices of the Inquisition had he been more discrete. However, like many of the Fathers, he was not a tactful person. Moreover, is it proper to be discrete about truth? The examples of Elijah, Jeremiah, John Baptist, Jesus, St Stephen Protomartyr and St Athanasius might make one think not!
When Galileo started his campaign, he enjoyed almost universal good will among the Catholic hierarchy. However, he managed to alienate almost everybody with his caustic manner and aggressive tactics. His position gave the Church authorities no room to manoeuvre: they either had to accept Copernicanism and reinterpret Scripture accordingly; or they had to condemn it. He rejected out of hand the unreasonable compromise which the Church offered him: that Copernicanism might be considered a hypothesis, one even superior to the Ptolemaic system, but one that should not be proposed as objective truth until absolute proof be obtained.
Galileo's belligerence probably had much to do with the fact that he knew there could be no direct proof of heliocentrism. He could not even answer the strongest argument against it: if the earth did orbit the sun, Aristotle had argued, then stellar parallaxes would be observable in the sky. Galileo was not able with the best of his telescopes to discern the slightest stellar parallax. This was because the distance of the nearest star is so unthinkably huge as to make its parallax incredibly small: but such an explanation was implausible at the time.
Galileo's other problem was that he insisted, despite the discoveries of Kepler, that the planets orbit the sun in circles. The Jesuit astronomers could plainly see that this was untenable. Galileo nonetheless launched his campaign with a series of pamphlets and letters which were circulated all over Europe. Along the way, he picked fights with a number of Churchmen on peripheral issues which helped to stack the deck against him.
Galileo addressed this problem in his famous Letter to Castelli. In
it, Galileo pointed out that Scripture often makes use of
figurative language and is not meant to teach science. This position
was eventually accepted by the Church, and even featured in Leo XIII's
encyclical, "Providentis-sumus Deus". Galileo
accepted the inerrancy of Holy Scripture;
but was mindful of
Cardinal Baronius's quip that the Bible "is intended
to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." Galileo
also pointed out that both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taught
that the sacred writers did not intend to teach a system
of astronomy.
Unfortunately, in 1616, the year of Galileo's first trial Catholic biblical theology was not very sophisticated. The Church had just been through the Reformation. Catholic theologians were in no mood to entertain hermeneutical injunctions from a layman like Galileo. Nevertheless, Galileo threw caution to the winds, and it was on this point: the transgression of a layman on the clerical turf of objective truth, that his enemies were finally able to convict him.
In 1615 Professor Lorini read a copy of Galileo's Letter to Castelli and was disturbed to find that a layman had taken it upon himself to interpret Scripture. He sent an altered copy of the letter to the Inquisition. He made two changes, one of which was from
Nevertheless, the Letter to Castelli. and Caccini's testimony were on the files of the Inquisition, and Rome was buzzing with rumours that the Church was going to condemn both Galileo and Copernicanism. Galileo's friends in the hierarchy, including Cardinal Barberini, the future Urban VIII, warned him not force the issue. Galileo responded by intensifying his campaign to get the Church to accept Copernicanism.
At this point Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, entered the drama. Bellarmine was one of the most important theologians of the Catholic Reformation. As Consultor of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and Master of Controversial Questions, he was unwillingly drawn into the Copernican controversy. In April 1615, he wrote a letter to A. Foscarini, which amounted to an unofficial statement of the Church's official position. He pointed out that: it was acceptable to maintain Copernicanism as a "working hypothesis"; and added:
"Third, I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the centre of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown me." [Feldhay: "Galileo and the Church" CUP (1995), page 35]Bellarmine, in effect, challenged Galileo to prove his theory or stop pestering the Church. Galileo's response was to produce his
On February 19, 1616 two propositions advanced by Galileo were submitted by the Court of the Inquisition to the Holy Office for advice regarding their orthodoxy:
"foolish and absurd philosophically and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many passages......"and judged that the second should
"receive the same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological truth, to be at least erroneous in faith."Pope Paul V told Cardinal Bellarmine to warn Galileo that if he did not abstain from discussing his theory as objective fact, he would be imprisoned. Galileo was intimidated by this warning, and kept quiet for sixteen years.
Fortunately this verdict was suppressed, under pressure of more cautious Cardinals and was not published until 1633, when Galileo forced a second showdown. A milder decree, which did not include the word "heretical", was issued and Galileo was summoned before the Holy Office. A report was put into the files of the Holy Office for February 26, 1616, stating that Galileo was told to relinquish Copernicanism and commanded "to abstain altogether from teaching or defending this opinion and doctrine, and even from discussing it." It is a still unresolved as to whether this document is genuine, or was forged and slipped into the files by some unscrupulous curial official. At Galileo's request, Bellarmine gave him a certificate which only forbade him to "hold or defend" the theory. When, sixteen years later, Galileo wrote his famous Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems, he did not violate Bellarmine's injunction. However, he did violate the command recorded in the controversial secret minute. This was used against him at the second trial in 1633.
Galileo was correct to reject such half baked philosophizing, but he miscalculated Urban's tolerance in writing "The Great Dialogue". In it he ridiculed the defenders of Aristotle and Ptolemy by representing them as a comical figure "Simplicio". Moreover, at the conclusion of the Dialogue he put words that had been spoken to him in private by the Pope into Simplico's mouth: "Just as God chose to make the world in exactly the way it pleased Him, so He chooses to make it appear to operate in the way that He pleases. These have no clear relationship. Observation and experiment can tell us nothing about objective reality." [I paraphrase].
In doing so, Galileo fell into the hands of his enemies. They convinced the Pope that Galileo intended to mock him. The very person that Galileo needed as his protector was turned against him. At the same time, Galileo alienated the Jesuit order with his violent attacks on one of its astronomers, Horatio Grassi, over the nature of comets. In fact, the Jesuit was right: comets are not "exhalations of the atmosphere", as Galileo supposed.
The Inquisition, on June 22, 1633, decreed that Galileo had rendered himself "vehemently suspected of heresy." He was to renounce his errors before the Inquisition, which he did, and be placed under house arrest. The choice of words was debatable, as Copernicanism had never been declared heretical by the Magisterium. In any event, Galileo was sentenced to abjure the theory and to keep silent on the subject for the rest of his life.
Galileo's condemnation was clearly unjust. Just as clearly, Galileo asked for some of the trouble that he got himself into.
Nevertheless, the story does show how Church authorities can
easily mistake "secular common sense"
for Sacred Tradition and defend the former,
to
the extent of using intimidation and attempting to suppress the truth.
It is my contention that this is exactly what is now being done in the
field of friendship,
marriage,
gender,
sexuality
and reproductive ethics.