According to a survey by the Council of Europe conducted among science students in all the countries of the Community, almost 30% of them are convinced that Galileo Galilei was burned alive at the stake by the Church. Almost all of them (97%), in any case, are convinced that he was subjected to torture. Those who — really, not many — have something more to say about the Pisan scientist recall as an “absolutely historical” phrase an “Eppur si muove!”, proudly hurled, after the reading of the sentence, at inquisitors convinced that they could stop the movement of the Earth with theological anathemas.
These students would be surprised if someone told them that we are now in the fortunate position of being able to date with precision at least this last false detail: the “historical phrase” was invented in London in 1757 by Giuseppe Baretti, a journalist as brilliant as he was often quite unreliable.
On June 22, 1633, in Rome, in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, after hearing the sentence, the “real” Galileo (not the one of the myth) thanked the ten cardinals — three of whom had voted in favor of his acquittal — for such a moderate penalty. For he was also aware that he had done everything possible to irritate the tribunal, among other things by trying to make fools of those judges — among whom there were men of science of his own stature — by assuring them that, in reality, in the challenged book (which had been printed with an ecclesiastical approval obtained by deception), he had maintained the opposite of what one might believe.
What is more: in the four days of discussion, he presented only one argument in favor of the theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. And it was wrong. He said that the tides were caused by the “shaking” of the waters, due to the movement of the Earth. A laughable thesis, to which his fellow judge-scholars opposed another, which Galileo judged to be “for imbeciles”: and which, however, was the correct one. That is, the ebb and flow of seawater is due to the attraction of the Moon. Precisely as those inquisitors said, whom the Pisan insulted with contempt.
Apart from this erroneous explanation, Galileo was unable to provide any other experimental, verifiable arguments in favor of the centrality of the Sun and the movement of the Earth. Nor should this be surprising: the Holy Office was not at all opposing scientific evidence in the name of theological obscurantism. The first experimental, indisputable proof of the Earth’s rotation dates from 1748, more than a century later. And to “see” this rotation, one would have to wait until 1851, with that Foucault pendulum so appreciated by Umberto Eco.
In that year 1633, the year of Galileo’s trial, the Ptolemaic system (the Sun and the planets revolve around the Earth) and the Copernican system (the Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun) were two hypotheses of equal weight, on which one had to wager without having decisive proofs. And many Catholic religious were in favor of the “innovator” Copernicus, condemned instead by Luther.
Moreover, Galileo was not only wrong when he referred to the tides; he had already fallen into another serious scientific error when, in 1618, comets appeared in the sky. Basing himself on a priori assumptions connected with his Copernican “wager,” he insisted that they were only optical illusions and harshly attacked the Jesuit astronomers of the Roman observatory, who said instead that these comets were real celestial objects. He would later be wrong again with the theory of the movement of the Earth and the absolute fixity of the Sun, when in reality the latter also moves around the center of the galaxy.
No titanic phrases (the all too famous “Eppur si muove!”), in any case, except in the lies of the Enlightenment writers and then of the Marxists — see Bertolt Brecht. They deliberately created a “case,” useful to a propaganda that wanted (and still wants) to demonstrate the incompatibility between science and faith.
Tortures? Prisons of the Inquisition? Stakes? Here too the European students in the survey would be in for a surprise. Galileo did not spend a single day in prison, nor did he suffer any kind of physical violence. Rather, when called to Rome for the trial, he stayed (at the expense of the Holy See) in a five-room dwelling overlooking the Vatican gardens and with a personal servant. After the sentence he was lodged in the marvelous Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill. From there the “condemned man” moved, as a guest, to the palace of the archbishop of Siena, one of the many eminent ecclesiastics who loved him, had helped and encouraged him, and to whom he had dedicated his works. Finally he reached his elegant villa in Arcetri, whose significant name was “Il gioiello” (“The Jewel”).
He did not lose the esteem or friendship of bishops and scientists, many of them religious. He was never prevented from continuing his work, and he made use of this by continuing his studies and publishing a book — Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences — which is his scientific masterpiece. Nor was he forbidden to receive visitors, so the best colleagues in Europe went to see him and discuss matters with him. Soon the prohibition against leaving the villa as he pleased was lifted. Only one obligation remained: to pray once a week the seven penitential psalms. In reality, even this “penalty” ended after three years, but he continued it freely, as the believer he was, a man who had been the favorite of the Popes for a large part of his life; and who, instead of setting himself up as a defender of reason against clerical obscurantism, as the later legend claims, could truthfully write at the end of his life: “In tutte le opere mie non sarà chi trovar possa pur minima ombra di cosa che declini dalla pietà e dalla riverenza di Santa Chiesa”. (“In all my works no one will be able to find even the slightest shadow of anything that departs from piety and reverence for Holy Church”). He died at seventy-eight, in his bed, with the plenary indulgence and the Pope’s blessing. It was January 8, 1642, nine years after the “condemnation.” One of his daughters, a nun, received his last word. It was: “Jesus!”
Author: Vittorio Messori.
Source: Leyendas negras de la Iglesia, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona 1997, 4th edition, pp. 117-120)
