And both daughters spent the rest of their lives there.
They did. And at first, to a modern observer, it just sounds horrific. It sounds like some kind of torture. But then you realize that that was pretty common. It was at least common for young girls to be put in a convent to be educated, to be safe, and to assure their virginity. Of course it wasn't, when you think about what she had to say about the unscrupulous priests.
But it was a common thing in Italy for a girl to go in at a young age, and then at 16, when her parents found her a husband, they would take her out and marry her off.
But of course marriage wasn't in the cards for Galileo's daughters.
No. But I particularly didn't want to view their being in a convent as a sentence of life imprisonment, because I don't think I could have written the book with a feeling of resentment. It wasn't a book about women's issues; it was his story. And what Maria Celeste went through was really a product of those times and not something bad that he did to her.
Other people won't agree with me; there are people who feel that he could have found an easier road for them, that he did not do enough for them. But the relationship was a genuinely loving one; I think there is ample evidence to support that.
By the time of these letters (1623 to 1633), Galileo was already quite famous. Do his scientific works and his stature come up in these letters?
His accomplishments do come up. They don't really talk about science. But he sends her letters he gets from important people, and she loves that. She loves seeing how he is respected in the world. And he also apparently at times asks her to write letters for him—not to compose them but to write them out in her hand or to make copies. So she was very familiar with his correspondence and very proud of him.
Why was this daughter, Maria Celeste, unique among Galileo's three children?
I think she was far brighter than the others. The second child, Arcangela, seems like a really difficult character, and there are no letters from her. Many of the references to her suggest that she was hypochondriacal, difficult to get along with, and probably alcoholic. There is a moment in the story when as the jobs of the convent rotated, it was Arcangela's turn to have charge of the wine cellar. Maria Celeste realizes that this is a formula for disaster and exerts her influence to have Arcangela put in charge of the linens.
There are seven letters from the youngest child, the boy, that survive, but he is an altogether different sort of personality. He has a sense of entitlement, let's call it, and asks for things—big things—in an imperious way: a house, a job, money.
Although both his daughters were nuns, Galileo's discoveries didn't exactly stand him in good stead with the Catholic Church. How did the letters reflect his relationship with the church at that point in his life?
Maria Celeste seems to feel that nothing her father does is really against the Church, which I think is how he felt, as well. When he realizes that the Church is on the verge of banning Copernicus's book, he goes to Rome, not really to fight against the Church but to try to make them see reason—that just because they're theologians doesn't mean that they know about science. The Bible is not an astronomy text, and they should realize this and adopt a different attitude, a less literal interpretation, toward the sections of the Bible that seem to be talking about astronomy.
He was saying, Now that we're getting more evidence about these issues that Copernicus spoke of, don't put him off-limits. If only the Protestants are allowed to read him, then they will figure everything out and the Church will be embarrassed.
Aside from the fact that Galileo had children, was there anything that you found particularly surprising in researching and writing this book?
Just that he didn't have to stop being a Catholic to do what he did. The image of him that I formed as a schoolchild was the modern myth—that he put all that religion and superstition behind him and became the first modern scientist. Well, that's not exactly right.
Throughout his life, he expressed his love of the Church, his belief in God. What does he say when he makes this fantastic discovery with the telescope, when he finds the moons of Jupiter? He thanks God for making him alone the one person in all of history who was the first to see them and know about them.
So in this extraordinary moment of realization, it's also a prayer—a prayer of thanksgiving.
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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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