Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 113
Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.’ 30 A tougher
line, although also closely reasoned and susceptible of its own nuances of
interpretation, was taken by Cardinal Bellarmine in a letter to Paolo Foscarini, a
priest who had espoused Copernicanism.
The Council [of Trent] prohibits interpreting Scripture against the common
consensus of the Holy Fathers; and if Your Paternity wants to read not only
the Holy Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms,
Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing in the literal
interpretation that the Sun is in the heavens and turns around the Earth with
great speed, and that the Earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless
at the center of the world. 31
In 1616 the matter had become sufficiently serious for Rome to take a hand, and
the Theologians to the Inquisition, after what may seem indecently hasty
deliberations, reported that the proposition that ‘The Sun is the centre of the
world and completely devoid of local motion’ was ‘foolish and absurd in
philosophy, and formally heretical’, and that the proposition that ‘The Earth is
not the centre of the world nor motionless, but it moves as a whole and also with
diurnal motion’ should receive ‘the same judgement in philosophy and that in
regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith’. 32 What precisely
happened next as regards Galileo himself is debatable, but at the least he was at
the Pope’s behest officially informed of the judgement and acquiesced therein.
And so the matter rested for several years. Galileo did not exactly refrain from
controversy, and in fact carried on a bitter dispute centring on the nature of comets
but taking in many aspects of what constituted proper scientific procedure with
the Jesuit Horatio Grassi, but he kept quiet on the question of the motion of the
Earth.
In 1623 there was a change of Pope, and Maffeo Barberini, an old friend and
supporter of Galileo’s, ascended to the Throne of St Peter with the title of Urban
VIII. Galileo visited Rome and was granted several audiences, from which he
seems to have come away with the impression that he could say what he liked
about the Copernican system provided that he treated it as hypothetical and did
not bring in scriptural arguments (which should be left to the theologians). He
then set to work on one of his most important books, which, after a little sharp
practice in getting it past the censor, was published in 1632 as Dialogo…sopra i
Due Massimi Sistemi Del Mondo Tolemaico, E Copernicano. This was in the
form of a dialogue lasting for four days between three friends, Salviati, Sagredo
and Simplicio. Salviati can usually be taken as acting as spokesman for Galileo,
Sagredo as an intelligent layman and Simplicio as the Aristotelian, but not one
that is too stupid, for after all there is no honour in winning arguments over
fools. The burden of the first three days is basically to show that everything
would appear to happen the same whether or not the Earth was moving, and if
the book had stopped there (and the Preface had been strongly modified), there