Galileo's Dream (60 page)
Authors: Kim Stanley Robinson
The written defense Galileo had handed to the Commissary focused mostly on the question of why he had not informed Riccardi that he was writing a book that included a discussion of the Copernican view. He explained that this was because in his first deposition he had not been asked about it, and now he wanted to do that,
to prove the absolute purity of my mind, always opposed to using simulation and deceit in any of my actions
. Which was almost true.
He described the history of the letter he had obtained from Bellarmino, and the reason for its existence: that he had requested it in order to have an explicit guidance for future action. He went on to claim that what it said in print, frequently consulted by him over the years, had no doubt allowed him to forget any supplementary prohibitions that had only been spoken, if they had been, at one of the many meetings Galileo had initiated in 1616. The new and more extensive prohibitions
which I hear are contained in the injunction given to me and
recorded, that is, “teaching” and “in any way whatever,” struck me as very new and unheard. I do not think I should be mistrusted about the fact that in the course of fourteen or sixteen years I lost any memory of them, especially since I had no need to give the matter any thought, having such a valid reminder in writing
.
Very new and unheard, he insisted.
He also reminded the commission that he had handed the manuscript of his book over to the censors of the Inquisition and gotten it approved. Therefore,
I think I can firmly hope that the idea of my having knowingly and willingly disobeyed the orders given me will not be believed by the Most Eminent and Most Prudent Lord Judges
.
Most Prudent, he reminded them.
Then he ended his written defense with the following:
Finally, I am left with asking you to consider the pitiable state of ill health to which I am reduced, due to ten months of constant mental distress, and the discomforts of a long and tiresome journey in the most awful season and at the age of seventy. I feel I have lost the greater part of the years that my previous state of health promised me. I am encouraged to do this by the faith I have in the clemency and kindness of heart of the Most Eminent Lordships, my judges; and I hope that if their sense of justice perceives anything lacking among so many ailments as adequate punishment for my crimes, they will, I beg them, condone it out of regard for my declining old age, which I humbly also ask them to consider. Equally, I want them to consider my honor and reputation against the slanders of those who hate me, and I hope that when the latter insist on disparaging my reputation, the Most Eminent Lordships will take it as evidence why it became necessary for me to obtain from the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Bellarmino the certificate attached herewith.
Despite the pathos of old age stuff, it was on the whole a robust, one might even say defiant, defense. All he had confessed to was
the vain ambition and satisfaction of appearing clever beyond the average popular writers
. To the attentive eye it even seemed he had obliquely alluded to the possibly fraudulent nature of some of the evidence brought against him.
Perhaps it was this defiance that did it; perhaps it was something else. In any case, for whatever reason, the trial did not proceed. A judgment did not arrive.
Weeks passed, and more weeks. No word came from the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Galileo spent his days walking the paths of the Villa Medici gardens, in its layout so much like the legal maze in which he now found himself.
It was late spring by now, and everything was bursting with new life. The white clouds pouring in from the Mediterranean were full of rain. At the Vatican, the Inquisition was presumably preparing its final report to Pope Urban. Or perhaps they were done, and waiting for the Sanctissimus to return from Castel Gondolfo. Around the city, so full of agents and observers, any judgment on Galileo seemed possible.
Meanwhile here he stood, in a big green garden. The vegetable patches were located out against the back wall, used by the cook to help feed the villa's big household, which numbered over a hundred. Galileo strolled down and sat on a stool in the rows of tomato plants, weeding. When hands are dirty the soul is clean. There was nothing he could do but wait. His rheumatism bothered him, as did his hernia. And at night, his insomnia. He had not even brought a telescope on this trip, and if there was one there that he had given an ambassador in earlier visits, no one told him, and he did not ask. Occasionally, despite the garden, he would be overcome with melancholy, or fear, or even terror. The sleepless nights and the days after were especially hard. All day in the garden was sometimes scarcely enough to pull him out of his black apprehension.
May ran out of days. Then in early June, the pope returned to his residence in the Vatican.
Niccolini met with him as soon as permitted, and asked for a speedy end to the trial, and for a merciful judgment. Urban explained he had been merciful already, but that the judgment had to be a condemnation. He promised it would come soon.
“There is no way of avoiding some personal punishment,” he told Niccolini brusquely.
Niccolini came home worried. Something had changed, he could tell. Things no longer seemed to be going so well.
He wrote to Cioli:
So far to Signor Galileo I have only mentioned the imminent conclusion of the trial and the prohibition of the book. However, I told him nothing about the personal punishment, in order not to afflict him by telling him everything at once; furthermore, His Holiness ordered me not to tell him in order not to torment him yet, and because things will perhaps change through deliberations. Thus I also think it proper that no one there at your end inform him of anything.
Day followed day followed day.
Then, halfway through June, word came: he was to prepare for a fourth deposition.
This was a surpriseâa new and unwelcome development, in that it extended beyond the proscribed form for a heresy trial; also beyond the deal that Maculano had outlined in their private meeting. It seemed something had gone awry. Everyone in the villa could feel it.
That night, when all the people of the Villa Medici were asleep, Cartophilus slipped out the back gate, and made his way toward the Vatican.
T
HE STREETS OF
R
OME
were never entirely empty, even between midnight and dawn. People and animals made their solitary ways. Partly this was frightening, as the possibility of footpads or assassins was all too real; partly it was reassuring, as most of those out were simply doing the night business of the city, like removing the offal and dung, or bringing in the food and supplies for the day to come. It was possible to follow carts, drays, mule trains, donkeys that were apparently working on their own recognizance, and by doing so, and staying at the verge of the illumination coming from various scattered torchlights, to move unseen and unmolested. The wild cats of the streets were doing the same thing, picking their way from scent to scent, and one had to avoid kicking them as one darted from one shadow to the next.
In the flickering shadows down near the Vatican's river gate, Cartophilus met with his friend Giovanfrancesco Buonamici, who was now sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Cardinal Francesco Barberini.
“Something's changed,” Buonamici said.
“Yes,” Cartophilus replied shortly. “But what?”
“I don't know. Ganymede, I suppose.”
“But where is it coming from? The Jesuits?”
“Of course. But it's more than them. The
chiusura d'istruzione
has been sent up to the Congregation and to His Holiness, and the thing is, it wasn't written by Maculano. It was written by the assistant, Sinceri.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. And none of the depositions or supporting documents were sent up with it. Only a little stiletto in prose from âthe magnificent Carlo Sinceri, Doctor of Both Laws, Proctor Fiscal of this Holy Office,' as he styled himself in his signature.” Buonamici snorted and spat on the ground beside him.
“And what did he report?” Cartophilus said, mouth tight.
“It was all the same old shit, all the way back to Lorini and Colombe. How he said the Bible is full of falsehoods, and God is an accident who laughs and weeps, and the saints' miracles didn't happen, and so on.”
“But that isn't even what the trial has been about!”
“Of course not. As to that, it puts all the prohibitions in the injunction they forged as being in his certificate from Bellarmino, so the distinction he was trying to make there has been destroyed.”
“Jesus. Soâthe whole Sarpi defense is knocked aside just like that.”
“Yes. They're going for heresy.”
Cartophilus thought it over. “And Sinceri sent it up where?”
“To Monsignor Paolo Bebei, of Orvieto. He's just replaced Mon-signor Boccabella as the Assessor of the Holy Office. Boccabella who was friendly to us.”
“So, yet another change, then. I mean, we already knew about Sinceri.”
“Yes, but I thought he wouldn't matter. Obviously I was wrong.”
“So they have the Assessor, and Sinceri. And they've stacked the Congregation. And the pope is only hearing what the Congregation tells him. And he's still angry.”
“As usual. He'd be out of his mind right now anyway. There was another bad horoscope published in the
Avvisi
, and now he's having all his food tested. He's perfectly primed, what can I say.”
Cartophilus nodded. For a long time he stared at the paving stones, thinking things over.
“What are we going to do?” Buonamici asked.
Cartophilus shrugged. “Let's see what happens in this fourth deposition. I don't think there's any way we can avoid that one. Depending on how it goes, we'll see. We may have to intervene.”
“If we can!”
“If we can. We've got Cardinal Bentivoglio in place, and Gherardini. They should be able to help, if we need it. All right. Keep your ear cocked and find out what you can. Let's be in touch right after the fourth deposition is over.”
And he slipped back into the unquiet Roman night.
On Midsummer's Day of 1633, six weeks after his third deposition, Galileo was summoned back to the Vatican to submit to a fourth one.
Maculano said, “Do you have anything to say?”
Galileo, sticking to Italian and holding to an impassive manner that hid his irritation and fear, replied, “I have nothing to say.”
There was a long silence. Maculano spent the time looking down at his notes on the table. Finally he said, very slowly, as if reading, “Do you hold, or have you held, and for how long, that the sun is the center of the world and the earth is not the center of the world, but moves also with diurnal motion?”
Galileo too hesitated before speaking. This was a new line of attack, a
direttissima
. When supposedly they already had a deal.
Finally he replied, “A long time agoâthat is, before the decision of the Holy Congregation of the Index, and before I was issued that injunction, I was undecided, and regarded the two opinions, those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, as disputable, because either the one or the other could be true in nature. But after the above-mentioned decision, assured by the prudence of the authorities, all my uncertainty stopped, and I held, as I still hold, as very true and undoubted Ptolemy's opinion, namely the stability of the earth and the motion of the sun.”
Once again, a very questionable assertion under oath.
Maculano tapped the fat copy of the
Dialogo
on the table for emphasis. “You are presumed to have held the said Copernican opinion
after
that time, from the manner and procedure in which the said opinion is discussed and defended in this book you published
after
that time, indeed from the very fact that you wrote and published the said book. Therefore you are asked to freely tell the truth about whether you hold or have held that opinion.”
Therefore you are asked
. Maculano seemed to be distancing himself from these questionsâas well he might, considering how they broke the deal he had made. These were not his questions; he had had these questions pressed on him from somewhere above. Galileo could either take comfort from that realization or be newly afraid, depending on which aspect of it he considered. Meanwhile he had to answer very, very carefully.
“In regard to my writing of the
Dialogo
already published, I did not do so because I held Copernicus's opinion to be true,” he said steadily. “Instead, deeming only to be doing a beneficial service, I explained the physical and astronomical reasons that can be advanced for one side and for the other; I tried to show that neither those in favor of this opinion or that, have the strength of a conclusive proof, and that therefore to proceed with certainty one would have to resort to the determination of more subtle doctrines. As one can see in many places in the
Dialogo.”
This was not actually true, but what else could he say? His ruddy complexion had turned beet red, and he stared at Maculano as if to burn holes in him.
Maculano, however, now kept his eyes on his notes. The trial had gone over his head.
Galileo saw this, and went on. “So for my part, I conclude,” as if studying it objectively from the outside, “that I do not hold, and after the determination of the authorities I have not held, the condemned opinion.”
Maculano paused, then read on from the sheet he held as if he had not heard Galileo's response.
“From the book itself, and the reasons advanced for the affirmative side, namely that the earth moves and the sun is motionless, you are presumed, as it was stated, that you hold Copernicus's opinion, or at least that you held it at the time you wrote. Therefore you are now told, that unless you decide to proffer the truth, one would have recourse to the remedies of the law and to appropriate steps against you.”
The instruments of torture were laid out on a table against the side wall of the room. All this was according to the strict laws governing the Inquisition; first the warnings, then the display of the instruments of torture; only after that, if the accused persisted in obstructing the judgment, came the use of the instruments. As the Inquisition's manual “On the Manner of Interrogating Culprits by Torture” stated it:
The culprit having denied the crimes, and the latter not having been fully proved, in order to learn the truth it is necessary to proceed against him by means of a rigorous examination. The function of torture is to make up for the shortcomings of witnesses, when they cannot adduce a conclusive proof against the culprit.
As, for instance, now. But Galileo could not admit to more than he already had admitted to, without putting himself in extreme danger of admitting to heresy. His back was already to the wall.
Also, unfortunately, he was getting more and more angry at Maculano, and at those above Maculano who had ordered this move; you could see it in the way the back of his neck went dark red, and in the set of his shoulders. Anyone who had ever worked for him would have exited the room immediately.
He spoke tightly, grimly, the words chopped each from the next. “I do not hold this opinion of Copernicus, and I have not held it after being ordered by injunction to abandon it. For the rest, here I am in your hands; do as you please.”
“Tell the truth!” Maculano ordered. “Otherwise we will have recourse to torture.”
Galileo, with no idea of what the pope might want him to confess, drew himself up. “I am here to submit, but I have not held this opinion after the determination was made, as I said.”
Silence in the room.
And since nothing else could be done for the execution of the decision, after he signed he was sent to his place.
The execution of the decision, the scribe had written. Which decisionâto haul him in for this added interrogation and confessionâultimately
must have been Urban's. But why that had been decided, no one but Urban seemed to know.
Galileo was again confined to the rooms of the Dominican dormitory where he had been held during the time of his first three depositions. This was a bad sign, retrograde and ominous. There was no way to tell what would happen next, or when. Whatever deal or understanding there had been was obviously gone.
He sat on his bed, staring at the wall, eating a bit of his supper, drinking his cup of wine thoughtfully. He lay down late in the night, and only after he fell asleep did he moan and groanâalthough it has to be said that he often moaned and groaned while he slept, no matter what the circumstances. His sleep was not comfortable to him. But his insomnia was even worse.
The Congregation of the Holy Office was composed of ten cardinals, and since the Borgia was one of them, it was not a sure thing that Urban's will would determine their judgment. Borgia wanted Urban brought down so badly that the possibility of Urban being poisoned was on quite a few minds, most of all Urban's. It was entirely conceivable that faced by this bitter animosity Urban might cast Galileo into the fire, to clear the area around him so that he could fight on without liabilities.
Buonamici had access to the Vatican at night, because of his job with Cardinal Barberini. Inside the walls of the holy fortress, it was possible for him to disguise himself as a Dominican, and thus make his way everywhere in the silent grounds, including through the hallways to Galileo's room. From there, he could lead Cartophilus out and behind Saint Peter's, where they could skulk in the shadows and visit any chamber they chose, if care was taken.
“They're still in the Sele of the Congregation talking it over,” Buonamici said to Cartophilus in a low voice. “It's gotten pretty vicious. The cardinals who are implacable are the Jesuits. Scaglia, Genetti, Gessi, and Verospi. They're all Romans, and they don't like Florentines.”
“And the Borgia?”
“He's their leader, of course. But he's gone to the Villa Belvedere to get some sleep.”
“Can any of the Jesuits be turned?”
“No, I don't think so. They can only be opposed by the cardinals on our side. My master Barberini, of courseâhe's really furious, because his solution to the problem has been overthrown, so that he will look to the grand duke like a liar. Then Zacchia, I'm sure he will refuse to sign anything he doesn't agree with. Bentivoglio alsoâand as he is the general, he could probably force a compromise sentence, because if he refused to sign, it would look too bad to go forward. It would look like Urban was forcing it, which could only mean that he had caved to the Borgia. So Urban doesn't want that. He wants it to look like he came in all merciful at the last moment. And Bentivoglio could make the implacables accept a compromise, I think. Of course it would be much, much more certain if the Borgia were absent for the rest of the debate. That would probably do more than anything else we could manage. That, and provide the substance of a compromise to Bentivoglio, something for him to work with.”
“See to that part, then. I'll be back in at dawn.”
The Villa Belvedere was an enormous complicated pile, anchoring one corner of the Vatican's outer wall. There were the usual night watchmen at its gates and doors, of course; but none were stationed around the back side of the villa, which stood as a four-story cliff overlooking the outer wall, fortresslike in its vertical mass.
But in the dark it was easy enough to jump from a tree to the outer wall, then crawl over a branch to the building itself, and there inch along the narrow ledge left by the stonemasons on the wall of the villa. There it was possible to use expanders in the vertical cracks between the huge blocks of sandstone that formed the villa, and ascend the blank side of it.
The window casements high on the wall were enormous, and made it possible to sit outside the windows, which were closed against mosquitoes and the mephitic vapors of early summer. In some comfort, catching one's breath, a person could work a knife between the window frames and push up the latch holding the windows closed. And then slip inside.
Where it was dark as a cave. In the infrared, shapes were redblack in the blackred. Possible then to make one's way to the fourth floor, where a sleeping pair of bodyguards lay across the doorway of the Borgia's bedroom. Possible to very gently mist the men with a soporific, and step over them; unbolt the inside bolt on the door by the use of a magnet; enter the room. Information provided by household members, which had included this bedroom's location, also described the cardinal's daily habits, which included a cup of wine mixed with citron water to break his fast and start each new day on a right note. More substantive fare would soon follow. So: mist the face on the boulderlike head sticking out of the blankets. Small injection. Lift the jug by the bed to estimate the volume of liquid, unstopper a vial of a more powerful kind of soporific, touched with an amnestic, both of them tasteless and colorless. Leave a drop at the bottom of the cup next to the jug as well, just in case a new jug was called for. Make sure not to underdose; the massive lump snoring under the blankets was a constant reminder what a heavy man Gasparo Borgia was. Then retreat, rebolt the door, retrace steps, climb out the window and downclimb the wall, the most difficult part of the whole operation, tough on old jointsâand away.