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Crime of Galileo

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A great book! It appears that Galileo is not the perfect icon, after all, for atheistic, modern day academia. The book shows how academia itself, with complete indifference for truth, erupted against Galileo in an effort to protect cherished allegiances to long held Aristotelian philosophies and misguided ideas. It demonstrates how academia was primarily responsible for the inquisitions and suppressions filed against Galileo, and how they used rhetoric and demagoguery to incite church authorities to become involved. "Those he feared," according to the author, "were the professors," not ecclesiastical authorities (p 8). And "like Galileo, Copernicus had foreseen resistance not at all from the Church authorities but from vested academic interests"(p 16). "It was not ... religious convictions that stood in the way but simply ... Aristotelian conditioning and ... fear of scandal" (p 104). The author supports his case with a thorough and chronological review of the letters and legal records of the time.

If you're just looking for a casual read then perhaps Dava Sobel's 'Galileo's Daughter' or Arthur Koestler's 'The Sleepwalkers' would be more entertaining. But this is where Koestler gets most of his information so why not go straight to the source?
Giorgio de Santillana is obviously a terrific Galileo scholar, making reference to original documents held in the Vatican and other worthwhile resources which put this book on the forefront of academic debate (despite its age).
Santillana's line, that the inquisition was moved to action by Aristotelians (many of whom were Dominicans or Jesuits), though not universally accepted, is well argued. The fact that Pope Urban VIII had been one of Galileo's closest supporters and even opposed the censoring of Copernicus when he was Cardinal Maffeo Barberini makes Santillana's the most plausible explanation. To argue that all the church authorities were adamantly opposed to the Copernican cosmology is to ignore this fact. Though one must also allow for the petulant character of Urban who did not like having his instrumentalist views put into the mouth of a simpleton. These are the two factors which conspired to have Galileo tried for heresy and not simply the scriptural objections.

Giorgio di Santillana was Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) when this book was written in December 1953.

This is an in-depth, scholarly study. Something of a master artist with words, Di Santillana brings his characters vividly to life, and follows the machinations of Galileo's enemies with the keen instinct of a political scientist. His view is that "both the authorities and the scientist had the mutual impression of being ambushed, and in neither case was it true. The ambush, in so far as there was one, had been carefully laid by third parties, who carefully exploited the critical situation of the times."

In the previous half-century, following the Reformation, the Catholic church had set up the Roman inquisition and the Index of banned books to prevent "innovators" from putting forward new interpretations of scripture, as the Protestant reformers had done. Against this background, Galileo asserted that certain biblical passages, including those apparently denying that the earth moved, should be understood "figuratively".

There are about 220 footnotes, some lengthy and extended, and containing fascinating and little-known material. The narrative also uses many direct quotations, so that these 17th-century figures - articulate, expansive, often extremely considered and thoughtful - speak to us in their own words. Only 3 pages are given to the first 46 years of Galileo's life, so that effectively the book starts in 1610, when Galileo's telescopic discoveries had suddenly brought him to public prominence. One of the 16 chapters is devoted to Roberto Bellarmine, the cardinal who in 1616 laid on Galileo the "command" not to hold or defend the heliocentric theory. Chapters IX and X recount how in 1630, as Galileo sought a licence to print his "Dialogue", something abruptly changed behind the scenes: Urban VIII, who over many years had shown him signs of unmistakable warmth and friendship, became persuaded that Galileo had actually deceived him and possibly even mocked him in the "Dialogue". The author clearly has some sympathy with this pope, who was distracted with the 30 years war: "...troubles piled up for him... such as would have given a lesser man a nervous breakdown..."

Alongside this book, I read other accounts of Galileo's life by Ronan, Reston, Fr. Brodrick, and Shea and Artigas. They tell the same story, and I found nothing that I could call bias in any of them, yet even within this small group we see some very different opinions on the cast of characters, It is probably a good thing to read several accounts. "The Crime of Galileo" is a superior book, and a good place to start.

In 1616 Galileo got the necessary imprimatur for his publication of the famous "Dialogue" from the Roman Catholic Church, with Pope Urban VIII's approval. The Church was shying away from burning heretics, as happened to Giordano Bruno only 16 years earlier in Rome's Campo dei Fiori, whose crime of heresy was punished severely (he said the universe is infinite with no edge and every point its center, among other things Copernican), so Urban agreed that in principle Copernican ideas could be entertained, along with mathematics, as 'speculations' not to contradict Scripture. The Scholars of the time were uncomfortable with this, in addition to which there was scholastic-political contest going between the Jesuits and Dominicans, and 16 years after publishing the Dialogue, Galileo was summoned by the Holy Inquisition to Rome. By then he was already an old man approaching 70, well respected socially; the trip was a great hardship on his frail health, but he did go and answer the call. He really had no choice, and though supported by some members of high social and academic standing who believed he was in the clear, there was an element of dread to this journey. The rest of it is exceptionally fascinating reading, well researched with only a few pieces missing, or guessed at, to bring to completion Galileo's trial and sentencing. I found the book riveting to the end and languished on the last few pages for the joy of reading it. Though de Santillana wrote this book more than half a century ago, it is timely for our day when once again religious dogmas, some of which had been dormant since the Enlightenment, are re-surfacing to challenge the reason of Science, including Sharia sympathizers. The 'trial' appears not yet over.

I am enjoying this book very much- it is a gem of historical scholarship, though the writing is a bit odd and overindulgent at points. Santillana even engages in a bit of docudrama, as he imagines how some conversations might have gone for which there is little or no evidence. He does make the age and the people come alive, and seems to be relatively fair-minded. The extensive quotes alone are fascinating.

I have to say that the other commentators appear to have the story and lesson of this book a bit wrong. Galileo did indeed receive strong sympathy from the higher-ups in the church, since he had no problem with Catholicism per se, and was a leading raconteur among the educated elite. The problem comes in when one characterizes the Dominicans and Jesuits of the day as "academics". Nothing could be farther from our current conception of an academic, since their first duty was to proselytize, maintain, and defend the faith, not scholarship. It seems to have been the Dominicans who attacked Galileo first and hardest, and after them, the Jesuits who then got the pope's ear.

To put this into the setting of the current day, it would be as if creationists like Ken Ham or Phillip Johnson were minor functionaries of the state, (perhaps if the Discovery Institute was a branch of a theocratic NIH), and could goad their superiors into banning Darwinist thought. That the highest levels of the church were reluctant to accede to the demagoguery and scandal-mongering of their monastic bretheren does not absolve either party of historical responsibility.

I don't like getting used books, but this one is an older book and was available only that way. It worked out very well---it's in good shape!

Rena Yount's review is the one correct view that I have read among these reviews. The author is an apologist for the Catholic Church who tries to put the Church and Inquisition in as positive a light as possible. For the author, the world view of the church and that of Galileo are both equally valid. When they clash, there is therefore blame to be assigned to both sides, even though he acknowledges that the primary goal of the Church apparatus is to destroy the mind and if necessary the person of the dissenter, as with Giordano Bruno.

He is actually complimentary towards the Inquisition's administration of "justice," and distorts the whole nature of its criminal machinery, describing it in a way that can only be called sympathetic. I felt a profound disgust at the way in which he injected his biases into the narrative of Galileo's troubles with the Church. The key point is that the Church and Inquisition strove to control everyone's thought and to punish anyone who dared to assert independence of thought, even with torture and death. Forcing the free and independent mind to submit through the threat and use of the instruments of torture is the theme of Galileo vs. the Church.

This book offers a selective and distorted history, apparently in an effort to keep the Catholic Church from suffering blame for unsavory little errors in its past. It is true that Galileo's critique of Aristotelian thought played a strong role, along with his Copernican beliefs, in fueling the attacks on Galileo. But to say that "It was not ... religious convictions that stood in the way but simply ... Aristotelian conditioning and ... fear of scandal" -- that is a baseless and willful rewriting of events. The claim that academics had to "incite church authorities" against Galileo is mere nonsense. Church authorities up to and very specifically including the Pope were adamantly opposed to the Copernican cosmology (which violated the doctrine of biblical inerrancy), and they punished Galileo in order to supress it. Like it or not, that's what happened.

Those interested in what Galileo accomplished and how it got him in trouble might want to try "Galileo Galilei : First Physicist" (Oxford Portriats in Science), by James MacLachlan. This book discusses both the Copernican and Aristotelian controversies. It also gives some background on what was going on in the Catholic Church (pressures generated by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, etc.) It doesn't simply point a finger at the Church and yell, "Bad!" But it's not a whitewash, either. Unless you're looking for a whitewash, you don't need Santillano's book.