For what, exactly, was Galileo threatened with torture?

Factual Questions
41

I agree, to an extent - the motivations for the trial were far more personal than scientific.

Galileo was a great scientist, but not so great as a politician. He was buds with the current Pope at the time of his trial (and the previous one), which gave him a lot of latitude. Unfortunately, he pushed it too far.

The main position of the Church was not anti-helocentrism, it was a sort of overriding conservatism. It simply did not want scholars stirring up controversy over anything, on the theory that controversy could only harm the Church as an institution. The Church was perfectly willing to allow Galileo to publish, but not is such a way as to stir up animosity - everything had to be raised as “hypotheticals”, not stated as facts.

Problem was that Galileo had made lots of personal enemies, who had no hesitation about using the Church’s bureaucracy as a way to stab him in the back - and the Church was, to a point, willing to go along with it, just to keep Galileo (and his enemies) quiet. However, because Galileo was buds with two popes in a row, he was able to avoid significant trouble. In effect, Galileo and his enemies checked each other - neither could force a resolution.

Until, that is, Galileo screwed up, and pissed off his bud the Pope.

What happened was this: Galileo assumed that he had been told he could publish his theories (as “hypotheticals”, with a wink and a nod, to satisfy the Church’s bureaucracy). The Pope, his friend, basically imposed on Galileo to publish his own (silly) theories in his book. Galileo complied - but in such a way as was guaranteed to piss the pope off. He published the theories in the form of a “Dialogue”, and put the Pope’s contributions into the mouth of the character “Simplicio” (meaning, “simpleton”), and made this guy the butt-monkey of ridicule.

Unfortunately for Galileo (in a way), this “Dialogue” became a best-seller, and the ridicule of the Pope widely known.

The Pope, understandably, was unhappy with being portrayed as a fool (and in a best-seller at that), all the more so as he had considered Galileo his personal friend, and so withdrew his protection - leaving Galileo exposed to the malice of his enemies, as expressed through the Church bureaucracy.

42

Apparently one source is:

based upon this article in Eclectic Magazine: *Foreign Literature, : Victim of Torture? *Brewster and Libri

43

Prior to March 1616 there was no official line, but the decree adding works to the Index is then pretty explicit: “This Holy Congregation has also learned about the spreading and acceptance by many of the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture, that the earth moves and the sun is motionless …”
Now an awful lot of ink has been spilt arguing the exact nuances of “altogether contrary to the Holy Scripture” in the early 17th century - so Bellarmine could privately concede that were unambiguous proof of heliocentrism to become available, then the position would have to shift, while clearly not thinking that was a likely eventuality - but that’s now a pretty clear-cut statement of what should not be discussed.

[QUOTE=md2000]
Read my earlier post. Back in the late 70’s or early 80’s, some fellow who was given access to the Vatican archives wrote an article about Galileo’s trial.

Essentially, Galileo promoted the heliocentric model at about the time the church was in the midst of a dispute over heresy with some other group. Zuniga suggested that the church’s interpretation of scripture was wrong, and promoted a numerological philosophy; buried in that was a Greek notion that the sun was the center and the earth went around it.

This wasn’t a trial some “flat earth” type of medieval ignorance. If a noted scientist said that science also suggested that the earth went around the sun, then he gave the heresy a boost at just the wrong time. The pope just wanted Galileo to STFU.
[/QUOTE]

It’s very difficult to believe that Zuñiga was of much significance at all in the whole affair. By 1616 he’d been dead for nearly twenty years and had, of his own accord, explicitly abandoned the Copernican views expressed in the Commentary on Job in a later book. As far as I can see, the only reason his name and book got dragged in was because Carlo Conti had drawn Galileo’s attention to the latter back in 1612, who’d then cited it, more or less in passing, in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina in 1615.
While I’ve only ever read the short section of the book that was at issue - the passage is translated as Appendix II by Richard Blackwell in Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible (Notre Dame, 1991) - I’ve never seen any suggestion that there were ever any significant complaints about the rest of the Commentary. Which is surely why the Index ruling was “suspended until corrected”: it was essentially just the one passage that’d have to be cut. (Incidentally, unlike with De Revolutionibus, there’s no evidence that the actual corrections were then ever issued; it’s at least possible that nobody could be bothered.)
Foscarini - who was literally already writing from prison - was evidently regarded as far more dangerous, hence the complete suppression of his book.

44

Yes, but the scientific plurality at the time was that Heliocentric model was a load of tosh IIRC and Galileo could not come up with evidence to support the theory and what he did was easily disproved…tides mainly.

My point was it that did they decide to go with the geocentric model (which we still use in certain applications for example in navigation and time keeping) because it was supported by the scienfictic community with scriptural considerations a convenient seal on the deal or was it actual belief in the truth of the argument.

The Church leadership of that time was quite intellectually inclined; hell Jesuits helped Galileo with his early research.

45

Sorry, I’m basing my comment on an article I read over 30 years ago and vaguely remember. But the author’s point was precise - the church was not a bunch of earth-centric medieval flat-earth types. (Just as none of educated class in Columbus’ time thought the earth was flat.) Not that Foscarini’s book:

The key there was “Pythagoras”. The whole numerology stuff that Zuniga argued about was also centered on Pythagoras. The heresy was fairly common apparently among the quasi-educated, involved mystical numerology, and also dragged in the book of Job and some Greeks’ speculation that the universe was heliocentric. Zuniga’s book was also mentioned with Galileo’s as being banned. Basically, Galileo was probably as popular in the Roman hierarchy as an American arguing for worker’s rights would be in the midst of anti-communist hysteria of the 50’s. That he was right, and maybe made sense, didn’t matter. They were fighting a heresy by stamping down any mention of anything that supported that point of view.

Yes, as an obnoxious twat, which apparently he was, Galileo made no friends by pushing the envelope in what constituted a reasoned argument “dialog” in his book.

46

My take on the matter is this: had Galileo been a more politic type of man, he’d have been able to publish no problem, working within the system. Sure, the fact that it was the Church made it hide-bound, but he was offered work-arounds.

It wasn’t science either way that got him in trouble - it was his inability to resist mocking those he knew to be his intellectual inferiors. That’s a problem, when one of them is the Pope, and he was on your side.

47

Apparently one source is:

based upon this article in Eclectic Magazine: *Foreign Literature, : Victim of Torture? *Brewster and Libri

[/QUOTE]

That’s a very sloppy way to dig up a source.

Finocchiaro’s Retrying Galileo is one of the major books on the Galileo Affair published in the last twenty years and is an absolutely essential read (and reference) for anyone interested in. That’s a good start.

However, as Finocchario discusses in thorough detail in surveying the whole historiography, 19th century sources on Galileo and torture are often near useless, with Guglielmo Libri and Sir David Brewster being perhaps the worst examples. In the latter case, a distinguished physicist and prolific writer, Brewster’s early writing on the history of astronomy is now near useless (and I say that as someone who’s read a fair sample of it). Between received Protestant prejudices and a lack of access to any primary sources, Brewster trotted out lots of claims that were just bollocks.
In fairness, he came to realise this and in his later works, like his big biography of Newton, he tried to be more careful (though goodness knows there are still problems enough with that).

No historian of science now accepts most of Brewster’s statements about the trial. He’s certainly citable as an example of what people used to claim, but it’s about a century and a half out-of-date to be citing him as any sort of reasonable source for what happened in 1633.

On the threat of torture, pretty much all we know specifically is the wording at the end of the deposition of 21st June (Finocchario’s translation):

The remainder is wrap-up and his signature.

A wording like “he was threatened with torture” seems fair enough, even if the act was only symbolic. However, exactly how serious the threat was in practice is what nobody can agree on, partly because that is the extent of the evidence in this specific case.

48

It certainly wasn’t the case that Zuñiga “dragged in the book of Job”: the whole 500-page-long book was a commentary on it, with one short section in it that discusses Copernicus because he thought it relevant to the particular passage he was therein commenting on. As I say, I’ve never seen any suggestion in either the primary sources (like Inchofer’s “expert opinion” to the Holy Office in 1633, which, as far as Zuñiga is concerned, entirely concentrated on that single un-mystical and un-numerological section) or in the secondary literature that anyone at the time had any problems with the rest of it.

But, to reiterate, unlike Foscarini’s which was, Zuñiga’s book wasn’t fully banned in 1616. Like Copernicus, it was only “suspended until corrected”.
Furthermore, to be pedantic, the 1616 decree doesn’t explicitly mention Galileo or any of his books at all. That doesn’t mean they thought Zuñiga more important; there’s the plausible possibility that they didn’t want to needlessly embarrass Galileo’s political patrons back in Florence by naming him. Zuñiga, being dead, was another matter.

49

So in short, he was convicted for contempt of court rather than heresy?