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Knowledge vs. The Church: A Fresh Look at a Perennial Struggle, August 17, 2005
This review is from: Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics (Hardcover)
Innovations in science by individuals like Galileo, Francis Bacon, and William Harvey amounted to an attack on the European intellectual establishment in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Tension centered on the relation between knowledge and religious faith. In terms of political power, some, like Thomas Hobbes, were developing theories of government based on concepts of "natural law". At the same time, there were older forms of knowledge competing with the new ones: occult, philosophy, alchemy, and astrology. All of these intellectual and religious strands combined to produce a rather volatile period. It is within the upper echelons of the political and religious circles of this period that the life and times of Orazio Morandi took place. His story, eloquently re-told and interpreted by Brendan Dooley in his book, "Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics" (2002), attempts to explain the seemingly contradictory vicissitudes of a complicated era. Indeed, one of Dooley's primary goals is to explain why a figure like Galileo, a one-time friend of the pope, quickly fell out of favor and found himself condemned to house arrest.
Dooley's book opens like a crime novel in the tradition of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", wherein the reader witnesses the crime at the outset and the remainder of the narrative focuses on attempts by the authorities at solving the case. In our story, the crime is the astrological prediction of Pope Urban VIII's death in 1630. Although the prediction is released anonymously, many individuals in astrological circles and elsewhere were aware that it was issued by Orazio Morandi, abbot of the Santa Prassede monastery in Rome. At this point in his career, Morandi was considered an authority on many astrological subjects and his word held considerable weight. In response, Spain and Germany sent delegations of Cardinals to Rome in anticipation of an upcoming conclave. However, the predetermined date passed and the pope remained alive and well. Clearly upset, the pope ordered the arrest of Morandi and a trial was launched. When Morandi was found dead in his cell in November of that year, the trial was immediately halted. In the following April, the pope issued the harshest papal bull against astrology ever put forth, thus setting the stage for Galileo's subsequent reception.
The incident damaged the discipline of astrology on several fronts. The increasing view of astrology as an "entrepreneurial" science began to affect its credibility with regard to other disciplines (the reader is reminded here of Anthony Grafton's comparison of astrology with economics). Additionally, the stringency of Urban's 1631 bull served to push astrology further from mainstream practice, in effect securing Morandi's place as one of the last great Roman astrologers.
The power of the bull was soon tested on a new case: the trial of Galileo. Galileo had held favor with Urban VIII, as an acquaintance and quite possibly his friend. Upon publication of Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", the pope "exploded into great anger" (p. 183). Dooley argues that Urban's reaction should be seen in light of the Morandi affair. Most scholarly treatments of the Galileo case have been "examined largely from the point of view of the history of philosophy" (p. 185). If the Galileo case is "examined from the point of view of the history of elites within the culture and society of Baroque Italy," the many "facts of the case begin to make sense for the first time" (p. 186). In this light, the different personalities involved become fleshed out and we finally begin to "discern the true contours of the complex cultural world in which new ideas were explored" (p. 186). The relationship between practitioners of natural philosophy and officials of the Church has always been a tenuous one. With Galileo's book arriving on the heels of Morandi's excessive behavior, Dooley argues that "in the heat of conflict between the philosophers and their accusers, the various strands within Renaissance culture that had been bound together by a thread began to come undone" (p. 186). In the early 1630s, religion proved to be "an easily controllable terrain for carrying on the struggle" to rein the philosophers in. Subsequent events have shown, however, that the "philosophers were not going to go away" (p. 186).
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