Galileo and Gitmo

By Scott Horton

Marking the International Year of Astronomy (2009), Florence’s historic Palazzo Strozzi has opened a remarkable exhibition entitled “Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope,” which will continue through the end of August. The exhibition is about much more than the celebrated Italian man of science: it charts the history of astronomy from Mesopotamia through the seventeenth century, when the advent of modern instruments converted astronomy from a matter of philosophical and religious speculation into real science. But of course Galileo Galilei stands firmly in the center of that transformation. He hardly invented the telescope, but he did refine it considerably, and he demonstrated the practical uses of the instrument—both those which could easily be grasped by his contemporaries (the military application) and many that would only really be appreciated by later generations (mathematics and celestial mechanics). The central theme of the exhibition parallels the life of Galileo, a struggle of science to free itself from the silencing bands of religion and to place itself in the service of humanity.

The exhibition also tells the story of one of the greatest trials in human history: the proceedings in the Holy Office or Inquisition against Galileo, relating to his exploration and embrace of Copernican theory. The case stretches over a long period, with the first chapter playing out in 1615–16 and the final proceedings, leading to Galileo’s condemnation and abjuration, in 1632–33. This story has been written and rewritten by hundreds of historians and artists, most notably by Bertolt Brecht in one of his best plays, The Life of Galileo, done in collaboration with Charles Laughton in 1945–47.

The affair arose at the peak of the religious wars in Europe, when the authority of the Papacy was under withering attack. Protestants fancied themselves the party of free inquiry and the Protestant zone of Northern Europe the area of scientific innovation. Catholics were ridiculed as superstitious and intellectually timid. But the truth is more complicated. Even in the area of astronomy, the greatest accomplishments of the era had come from a Catholic cleric, Nicholas Copernicus, and in the succeeding generations from a Protestant who worked under the patronage of a Catholic lord (and who suffered from superstitious allegations of witchcraft from Protestants), Johannes Kepler. Contemporary accounts show Galileo to be a convinced Catholic who was concerned about the consequences for his faith and homeland that followed from the use of Scripture as a source of scientific truth. But Galileo’s writings also reveal a man profoundly critical of the abuse of religion as a cover for temporal and particularly political aspirations.

Galileo’s discoveries seem today so simple that it is hard to imagine their revolutionary importance for his day. But the controversy surrounding Galileo was not simply about whether one viewed the earth as revolving around the sun or vice versa. It was about scientific method and attainment itself. Brecht summed it up with these lines:

For the last hundred years it is as if mankind itself has been poised. Mankind has been waiting, stuck away in his corner. And now the moment is here. At last we are able to say: “just because something is so, that does not mean it will remain so for ever…” Everything is in motion again!

But this kinetic view of the world presented a challenge to those who held power. How would authority, secular and sacred, deal with this aspiring man of science? In the center of the exhibition we come to a horrific painting by Peter Paul Rubens from the year 1636, shortly after the trial and recantation of Galileo. “Saturn Devours Its Young” has the power of the still more famous painting by Goya that also usually hangs in Madrid’s Prado Museum, but it is still more gripping. Rubens’s Saturn is cold and calculating, not crazed like Goya’s. And in the background, Rubens paints Saturn as a constellation of three stars. A contemporary would have understood the significance of that gesture immediately: it is Galileo’s discovery that “the star of Saturn is not a single star, but is a composite of three, which almost touch each other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than the lateral ones, and they are situated in this form: oOo.” (Galileo to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, letter of July 30, 1610). Rubens, of course, was a convert to Catholicism, but his attitude towards the church was rather complicated. Was this painting a graphic portrayal of his concerns about the church’s treatment of Galileo? The images could not be better chosen.

Peter Paul Rubens, Saturn Devours Its Young (1636)

How exactly was the church destroying its own? Consider the details of Galileo’s trial, the procedures used and the evidence taken. Many of the decisive details have become known only in modern times, since the Vatican agreed to make public its secret file on the case. These documents, which have been collected, translated and published as The Galileo Affair by Maurice Finocchiaro for the University of California Press, make for fascinating reading. Galileo’s defense is a masterpiece of well-reasoned argument that strains to be humble and give no offense to the church. On the other hand, the denunciations against Galileo are marked by a pervasive dishonesty—the product of minds unwilling or unable to grasp the subtle complexities of his scientific work. They reflect a wild fear of the uncertainties that science brings, of the risk that their dogma will be challenged effectively or proven false. Yet the fear that inhabits them is as much political as theological. They live in a world in which Protestantism is a mortal threat, seen lurking behind any new ideas, especially those which have their origins north of the Alps. They are settled upon its extirpation, not intellectual confrontation.

The process followed by the Holy Office is revealing. Everything has a strong feel of procedural correctness about it. Questions are taken on oath, the deponent is probed for ulterior motive and is pressed for corroboration. But three things are striking about Galileo’s trials, and for a contemporary American they have a haunting ring of familiarity. They are the badges of the system the Bush Administration constructed in Guantánamo.

• The absence of confrontation and use of secret evidence. Galileo is given only vague and general information about the charges against him. He is not supplied with all the names of the witnesses who appeared before the Inquisition and testified against him, nor of their accusations. He therefore is unable to properly and credibly refute their charges. The Inquisition therefore takes as true a number of false statements. Secret evidence is the hallmark of the proceedings, including specifically the charge on which Galileo ultimately was convicted—of having failed to abide by an injunction that was imposed upon him following the first proceeding. However, the evidence that this injunction was imposed is at least very doubtful, and possibly even a forgery.

• The use of torture to extract false statements. Galileo was not tortured. But the record reveals that with the explicit authority of Pope Urban VIII, Galileo was subjected to questioning “under the formal threat of torture.” Why was the threat of torture used? Certainly not to elicit the truth from the subject, though that was the pretext for its use. Torture was threatened to insure that Galileo would do as his questioners wished, ultimately giving a formal and public denunciation of his own writings.

• The lack of independence in the tribunal; a pre-ordained result. The record shows that the idea that the tribunal that tried Galileo was acting as an impartial body committed to learning the truth and meting out a punishment is farcical. In fact, the proceedings were coordinated at each stage with the Pope and reflected his judgment. They were rigged from start to conclusion. The trial served a political purpose—to enhance the power and authority of the Papacy. This is underscored by the curious fact that three of the cardinal-inquisitors refused to sign the sentence against Galileo, including the two most powerful figures on the body, Francesco Barberini and Gaspare Borgia.

When carefully studied, the politically motivated show trial of Galileo brings credit to Galileo but not his accusers. The trial marked a low point in the history of the church, when the love of doctrine appears to have fully supplanted the doctrine of love. But the trial of Galileo reflects an important lesson of history learned again over the last eight years—that those who would subvert justice by the use of torture to confirm their preconceptions, through the use of secret evidence and the convening of a tribunal which is little more than a kangaroo court–stand to be condemned by history’s judgment. True justice, it seems, has much more to do with the scientific practices that Galileo advocated: it requires that we see clearly before we judge.

Sì perché l’autorità dell’opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d’autorità i decreti de’ passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l’avessero, avrebbono diversamente determinato. (For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.)

—galileo