FRIEND OR FOE? Galileo faces the Inquisition in an 1857 painting by Cristiano Banti.
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The astronomical discoveries made by Galileo Galilei in the 17th century have secured his place in scientific lore, but a lesser known aspect of the Italian astronomer's life is his role as a father.
Galileo had three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba—two daughters and a son. The two young girls, whether by their illegitimate birth or Galileo's inability to provide a suitable dowry, were deemed unfit for marriage and placed in a convent together for life.
The eldest of Galileo's children was his daughter Virginia, who took the name Suor Maria Celeste in the convent. With Maria Celeste, apparently his most gifted child, Galileo carried on a long correspondence, from which 124 of her letters survive. Author Dava Sobel translated the correspondence from Italian into English, weaving the letters and other historical accounts into the unique portrait Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love (Walker, 1999).
On the occasion of the International Year of Astronomy, convened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescopic observations of 1609, we spoke to Sobel about Galileo's complex and overlapping relationships with his family and with the Catholic Church, the latter of which would ultimately lead to his condemnation by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
[An edited transcript of the conversation follows.]
How did Galileo's Daughter come about?
While I was doing the research for Longitude, I read a book about Galileo's work on timekeeping and longitude. It's a wonderful book called The Pulse of Time by Silvio Bedini. And Bedini had read the daughter's letters and included one of them in that book because she specifically mentioned having to fix the clock in the convent.
So that was my first introduction to the fact that Galileo had children at all and to the fact that both daughters were nuns. And that astounded me, because I had always just thought he was the enemy of the Church. But the letters bespoke an intimate correspondence, which made me think: What if he did everything he did as a believing Catholic?
I suddenly had a sense that I could look at his story from another perspective, not a strict Church-versus-science angle as it's always pitched, but a look at the full complexity of his situation. And of hers, because if she was really a devout nun, what would she make of his work and his dialogue with the Church?
One Galileo scholar, Albert Van Helden of Rice University, was very encouraging, and he said the great thing, which was, "When you read her letters, they'll break your heart."
And did you find the letters to be heartbreaking?
Yes. The first thing that struck me was that she has an extraordinary writing ability, a tremendously complex style with long sentences and transitions from the most mundane things—the laundry, the cooking—to some vision of the afterlife.
But why did they break your heart?
Her situation in the convent was so difficult. She writes about pulling her own teeth. She was living in poverty and poor health and had a great number of responsibilities. She teaches the novices to sing the Gregorian chants, she leads the choir, she negotiates for the convent for all sorts of things.
In one of the most poignant letters she writes about the priest who comes for confession. They had a series of these unscrupulous characters who had no experience with convent life, and she refers to the way they take advantage of the sisters. It sounds like she's talking about rape. And so her request to Galileo is that when he goes to Rome to meet his friend who is now the pope, would he please intercede for them and make sure that they get a father confessor who is a truly religious individual.
Then there is a letter where she reports the violent suicide attempt of the nun who was in charge of the novices. So things in the convent were really tough. She and her sister might have had an easier life if Galileo had put them in a different order. But it was against the law for natural sisters to be admitted to the same convent and he had an in with the mother abbess at that place. A friend of his who was a cardinal finessed the whole thing, and the two girls were allowed to be together in the same convent—and nearby, so he could visit, because they were only 12 and 13.
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12 Comments
Add CommentNice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspected he was a sincere catholic as well. Though I've also wondered how Galileos faith would have fared had he been exposed to all the opposition to discovery and rational thought in the time since then. Even today, as the church officially becomes more sensible, embracing evolution, astronomy, & physics discoveries, it's followers (and even its new pope) necessarily don't. As time passes, both sides piling on their ammunition and entrenching makes it harder and harder for the rational mind to play for both teams.
Looking forward to the book.
In my humble opinion Galileo is the greatest scientist in history precisely because he was a religious man. That is the reason that he alone can be said he stood on no one's shoulders when he created in fact the method of science. That anyone should be surprised that Galileo was a practicing Catholic is proof that education needs improving. Out of the age of religion people like Galileo created the age of reason. What is amazing is that anyone should be surprised. Ignoring history has it's price such as the writer's surprise at the truth about Galileo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, I am not Catholic. I am a Jewish atheist if you are wondering.
Galileo is the greatest scientist precisely because he was a practicing Catholic. This is the main reason he stood on no one's shoulder when he created the method of science. Everybody latches at his telescope when instead they should have a hard look at his method of science, a much more important invention, all his. That the writer is surprised by Galileo's religiousness is appalling because it shows the failure of education. Galileo is a product of the age of religion and one of the major characters that created the age of reason. We owe him our gratitude. By the way, I am not Catholic. I am a Jewish atheist who likes to keep the record straight
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe book was very intriguing, but Matson seems not to have read it. There would only be a contradiction if Galileo were the heretic that they claimed he was, which from the book he was most assuredly not. He subscribed to common sense and reason, perhaps more than any before and most since his time, but he was a devout and faithful man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I hadn't known in getting a physics degree is how much of our modern scientific method is attributable to this one man. We hear always of Newton and Einstein's contributions, but Galileo in a way set the stage by giving them a model for the disciplined application of observation and reason.
where does anyone get the idea that anyone - even a Galileo -- is somehow not a man of his times? Let alone consider it a common belief? This speaks profoundly to ignorance and lack of historical perspective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you really want to look for the early examples of the scientific method, look up Roger Bacon the thirteenth century Franciscan. He even has a walk on part in "The Name of the Rose"! While, like Galileo, he got into trouble with the Catholic Church authorities, this seems to have been to do with quasi-political wrangling around the meaning of religious poverty rather than his scientific work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA sideline on the Galileo trial is that the Jesuit astronomers in Rome fully understood what he was on about but were having their own problems and simply kept their heads down. The dispute had as much to do with a political fight between Dominicans and Jesuits as between religion and science. Galileo just got caught in the middle.
Reading about Galileo's rebel-like causes of his days is the reason I pursued the interest of science searching for the truth through a combination of deductive reasoning, Mathematics, Physics, and Perseverance. As with all great men before him Galileo was influenced by the unfinished work of his predecessors and primarily from the work of Nicolaus Copernicus. In the field of science he was a mentor to us all including Sir Isaac Newton's. We are all thankful that the musical world missed the opportunity of having a genius practice its arts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo hear about Galileo correspondence with his children is a refreshing new incite that humanizes him even more.
Delighted to find this article in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN; Sobel's work has been out some time, and, as a Catholic octogenerian religious sister who was schooled with nary a hint that science and faith were incompatible, I read it with great pleasure --as I did this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalileo's real quarrel was not with the church, but with the academic establishment of his day, dominated by the Scholastic philosophy derived from Aristotle. The Scholastics, like Aristotle, were very progressive in their day, but that day, when they were new, was 500 years before Galileo's time, and now they were an entrenched system. Galileo was a very fiesty man and made enemies among them as he pushed for his new ideas. They responded in the way that was standard for their time -- try to get the rival in trouble with the Church. They succeeded, though there is some evidence that the Inquisition suspected it was being manipulated and gave Galileo extra chances to back out. It all started out as a game of Renaissance politics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Church's strategic problem was that it had so thoroughly embraced Scholastic philosophy. Back in the day of St. Thomas Aquinas, it was very much an open question whether the Church would tolerate rationalistic Greek philosophy at all. Aquinas and others campaigned for the idea that there were not two kinds of truth, religious and philosophic, but only one kind of truth. So, in their time, science and religion made peace. Unfortunately, no one at that time had the idea that systems of thought might change over time.
Galileo was an scientist, Aquinas a philosopher, and philosophy is just another kind of literary product, such as romantic novels or science-fiction that has its readers and writers. The problem with philosophers is that most of times they try to be normative and set rules and commands, and to drive social relationships and politics. Catholic philosophers approached the issue of transformation of bread into Christ flesh in the consacration of Hostia by inventing a non-existant thing they called "substantia". There is matter, there is Spirit, all the rest are mankind inventions to entertain the hours
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept of substance vs accidents predates the life of Jesus of Nazareth by 300yrs and was formulated by a Greek pagan.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience rests on several dogmas produced by both pagan (the principle of non-contradiction, which cannot be proven nor demonstrated and is an a priori neccessity for practising any scientific method) and christian philosophers (that the Universe is consistent and knowable by human reason.)
If jgrosay is indicative of the level of education in the modern West, we are screwed, and royally.
Galileo was ordered to recant because 1) he made powerful political enemies and 2) because he couldn't prove his laws of planetary motion. The proof only came from Kepler, a generation after Galileo (who, interestingly, made a living as an astrologer). Considering what was happening in England at the same time, house arrest in a mansion beat the pants off of being hung, drawn and quartered.
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