Galileo's Dream

It was a hard winter journey, that January of 1633. It was his sixth trip to Rome, and again everything was the same but everything different. This time the world gone dark, and made all of mud. Plague was abroad, and a half quarantine held him in Acquapendente for twenty days, living on nothing but bread, wine, and eggs. He was in no hurry to get to Rome, but there was too much time to think, to worry, to regret. How he longed then for the tumble of ordinary days.

In Rome, meanwhile, Niccolini requested an audience with the pope to deliver the grand duke’s protest concerning the makeup of the commission of clerics that had been convened to judge Galileo’s book. This was as close as the grand duke could come to protesting the judgment itself, and although it was not likely to be successful, Niccolini could use the meeting to try to find out what was behind the reversed approval of Galileo’s book, and the sudden call for him to come to Rome. Hopefully a clearer understanding of the cause would help in preparing Galileo’s defense.

The meeting was not a success. Back at the Villa Medici, Niccolini wrote a detailed account of it for the young grand duke and his new secretary Cioli. It had taken place, he wrote,

or … in a very emotional atmosphere. I too am beginning to believe, as your Most Illustrious Lordship well expresses it, that the sky is about to fall. While we were discussing the delicate subject of the Holy Office, His Holiness exploded into great anger, and suddenly told me that our Galilei had dared enter where he should not have, into the most serious and dangerous subjects which could be stirred up at this time.

This was strange, because the pope had personally, and more than once in the last few years, assured Galileo that he could write about the Copernican system of the world. As Niccolini in fact had reminded him.

I replied that Signor Galilei had not published without the approval of his ministers, and for that purpose I myself had obtained and sent the prefaces to Florence.

He answered, with the same outburst of rage, that he had been deceived by Galileo and Ciampoli.

And he went on, Niccolini said, to list in quite knowledgeable detail the ways Galileo had promised an acceptable text and not delivered it, and also the ways Ciampoli and Riccardi had likewise promised to make sure it was so, and all of it traduced by the text itself, and by the lies told by everyone involved.

Niccolini had been forced to take this at face value, although it did not make sense to him, given the many assurances Galileo had made in the book that all his theorizing was only ex suppositione. But Niccolini did not know about the anonymous denunciation of The Assayer, which had accused Galileo of denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. Because of that he continued to press the Copernican matter, as being the ostensible cause of the ban and arrest.

I interjected that I knew His Holiness had appointed a Commission for the purpose of investigating Signor Galileo’s book, and that, because it might have members who hate Signor Galilei (as it does), I humbly begged His Holiness to agree to give him the opportunity to justify himself. Then His Holiness answered that in these matters of the Holy Office, the procedure was simply to arrive at a censure and then call the defendant to recant.

But Niccolini had persisted in Galileo’s defense: “Does it thus not seem to Your Holiness that Galileo should know in advance the difficulties and the objections that brought forth the censure, and what the Holy Office is worried about?”

Urban, red-faced, had replied violently. “We say to your Lordship that the Holy Office does not do these things and does not proceed this way, that these things are never given in advance to anyone. Such is not the custom. Besides, he knows very well where the difficulties lie, if he wants to know them, since we have discussed them with him and he had heard them from ourselves.”

Niccolini had tried reminding the pope, “Please I beg you to consider that the book is dedicated to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.”

Urban snapped at that. “We have prohibited work dedicated to our self! In such matters, involving great harm to religion, indeed the worst ever conceived, His Highness the Grand Duke too should contribute to preventing it, being a Christian prince! He should be careful not to get involved, because he would not come out of it honorably.”

Niccolini held firm. “I am sure I will receive orders to trouble Your Holiness again, and I will do it, but I do not believe Your Holiness would bring about the prohibition of the already approved book without at least hearing Signor Galilei first.”

Urban replied darkly, “This is the least ill that can be done to him. He should take care not to be summoned by the Holy Office. We appointed a commission of theologians and other persons versed in various sciences, who are weighing every minutia, word for word, since one is dealing with the most perverse subject one could ever come across. Write to your prince to say the doctrine in question is extremely perverse, and that His Highness should therefore go slow. And we now impose on you the knowledge that this is secret information we are telling you, which you can share with your prince but which he too must then keep secret. We have used every civility with Signor Galilei, we explained to him what we know to be true, and we have not sent the case to the Congregation of the Holy Inquisition, as would be normal, but rather to a special commission newly created. We have used better manners with Galileo than he has used with us, for we have been deceived!”

Thus I had an unpleasant meeting, Niccolini concluded with a shudder, having written down the conversation in full, and I feel the Pope could not have a worse disposition toward our poor Signor Galilei. I believe it is necessary to take this business without violence, and to deal with the ministers and with the Lord Cardinal Barberini rather than with the Pope himself, for when His Holiness gets something into his head, that is the end of the matter, especially if one is opposing, threatening, or defying him, since then he hardens and shows no respect to anyone. The best course is to temporize and try to move him by persistent, skillful, and quiet diplomacy.

Which is what Niccolini had done through the rest of that fall and winter. From Riccardi he received assurances that all would probably be well, but Riccardi gave him a warning too, which Niccolini passed on to his superiors:

However, above all he says, with the usual confidentiality and secrecy, that in the files of the Holy Office they have found something which alone is sufficient to ruin Signor Galilei completely.

This was presumably Segizzi’s record of Bellarmino’s 1616 prohibition, as Riccardi eventually explained to Niccolini. The hidden card had come out of its hole in the Vatican.

But certain spies added to this information that the anonymous denunciation of Il Saggiatore made in 1624 had also been relocated. So Galileo was in trouble on two fronts, only one of them accounted for by Sarpi’s defensive schemes.

Niccolini’s own sources only told him of something mysterious without specifying it, and in a subsequent audience with the pope, he confirmed the suspicion he had expressed to the grand duke and Cioli, that something odd was going on here that they didn’t understand. In this audience, the pope told Niccolini, as the ambassador reported, to warn the grand duke not to let Signor Galilei spread troublesome and dangerous opinions under the pretext of running a certain school for young people, because he had “heard something” (I know not what).

There were forces swirling around Rome, descending on this trial.

The Villa Medici was much the same as it had been eighteen years before: a big blocky white building, surrounded by extensive formal gardens that were full of old Roman statues, slowly melting into smooth marble plinths. The ambassador Francesco Niccolini welcomed Galileo into the place with the greatest of solicitation, in marked contrast to the greetings Galileo had gotten on previous visits. Each time he came to Rome his standing was inexplicably different than it had been the times before. A dreamlike place; and this time a nightmare. But in this nightmare—incongruously, thankfully—there emerged this friendly and generous face.

“I am here to help you in any way I can,” Niccolini said, and Galileo could see in his face that it would be true.

“Where do such good people come from?” Galileo asked Cartophilus that afternoon, as the ancient servant unpacked his bags. Their rooms had east-facing windows this time, and a high ceiling; they were beautiful.

“The Niccolini have always been a force in Florence,” Cartophilus said blandly into the big wardrobe where he was hanging Galileo’s shirts.

Galileo blew air between his lips rudely. “This is no ordinary Niccolini.”

Ordinary or not, he was a generous host and a fine advocate. He arranged meeting after meeting with the crucial cardinals, and joined many of the meetings to ask for the cardinals’ help. He worked around all the edges, and at the center he asked for yet another audience with Urban for himself, to arrange if possible for lenient and swift treatment of the old astronomer, stressing Galileo’s official capacity at the Tuscan Court, and his advanced age.

However, as Niccolini described it in his letter to Cioli in Florence, the pope was unmoved by these appeals.

He replied to me that Signor Galilei will be examined in due course, but there is an argument which no one has ever been able to answer: that is, God is omnipotent and can do anything; and since He is omnipotent, why do we want to bind Him? I said that I was not competent to discuss these subjects, but I had heard Signor Galilei himself say that first, he did not hold the opinion of the earth’s motion as true, and then that since God could make the world in innumerable ways, one could not deny, after all, that He might have made it this way. However, the Pope got upset at that, and told me that one must not impose necessity on the blessed God. Seeing that he was losing his temper, I did not want to continue discussing what I did not understand, and thus displease him to the detriment of Signor Galilei. So I said that, in short, Galileo was here to obey and to retract everything for which he could be blamed in regard to religion; then, in order not to arouse suspicion that I too might offend the Holy Office, I changed the subject.

Before the papal audience was over, Niccolini requested that Galileo be allowed to stay at the Villa Medici even during his trial, but the pope denied the request, saying he would be given good rooms at the Holy Office, inside the Vatican.

When I got home I did not tell Galileo about the plan to move him to the Holy Office during the trial as I was sure this would worry him a great deal and would make him restless until that time, especially since it is not known yet when they will want him.

I do not like His Holiness’s attitude, which is not at all mollified.

Galileo was then left to fret in the Villa Medici and its gardens for over two months. There was nothing to do but sit in the formal gardens and watch the shadows move on the sundials, and think, and endure. Day followed day, all the same.

On April 9, 1633, his old student Cardinal Francesco Barberini appeared at the Villa Medici to break the long silence. He warned Niccolini that the trial would begin soon, and that Galileo would indeed be ordered to stay at the Holy Office during it.

However, Niccolini wrote to Cioli, I could hide neither the ill health of this good old man, who for two whole nights had constantly moaned and screamed on account of his arthritic pains, nor his advanced age, nor the hardship he would suffer as a result.

Niccolini therefore persisted with Urban.

… this morning I spoke to His Holiness about it, who said he was sorry that Signor Galilei had gotten involved in this subject, which he considers to be very serious and of great consequence for religion.

Nevertheless, Signor Galilei tries to defend his opinions very strongly; but I exhorted him, in the interest of a quick resolution, not to bother maintaining them, and to submit to what he sees they want him to hold or believe about any detail of the Earth’s motion. He was extremely distressed by this, and, as far as I am concerned, since yesterday he looks so depressed that I fear greatly for his life.

This whole house is extremely fond of him and feels unspeakably sorry about it.

Spies and rumormongers were spreading every kind of story explaining the situation, but it still was not clear to those in Galileo’s camp what was going on in the Vatican, or why. But understanding or not, the day came; and the trial began. On April 12, 1633, at ten in the morning, Galileo was escorted into the Vatican through the Arch of Bells to the palace of the Holy Office, a domed building on the south side of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Swiss Guards led the little contingent of inquisitors and the accused man down the halls to a small room, walled with white plaster and decorated only by a single large crucifix. A large desk occupied the center of the room; the inquisitors stood behind it, the accused before it, and a Dominican nun serving as recording scribe sat at a tall writing desk to the side. Servants stood in waiting in the hall outside, silent and unnoticed.

The chief inquisitor was one of the cardinals, Vincenzo Maculano di Firenzuola, a thin Dominican about the same height as Galileo. His ascetic life had left the skin of his face so wrinkled, and his eyes so sunken, that he appeared almost older than the aged astronomer, though he was only forty-five. His nose was large, his mouth small.

As the trial began his gaze was sharp, although his mouth had a relaxed and even a friendly set to it. “Time for a deposition,” he said gently.

Summoned, there appeared personally in Rome at the palace of the Holy Office, in the usual quarters of the Reverend Father Commissary, in the presence of the Reverend Father Fra Vincenzo Maculano of Firenzuola, Commissary General, and of his assistant Reverend Father Carlo Sinceri, Prosecutor of the Holy Office, etc.

Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, Florentine, seventy years old, who, having taken a formal oath to tell the truth, was asked by the Fathers the following:

He was asked: By what means and how long ago did he come to Rome.

Answer: I arrived in Rome the first Sunday of Lent, and I came in a litter.

Cardinal Maculano’s questions were asked, and recorded by the nun, in Latin, while Galileo’s answers were made and recorded in Italian. At the first sound of Galileo’s Tuscan vernacular, Maculano looked up from the desk, surprised; but after a moment’s hesitation he did not stop the answer, or request that Galileo make his replies in Latin. He only spoke his next question in Latin again:

“Did you come of your own accord, or were you called, or were you ordered by someone to come to Rome, and if so, by whom?”

Galileo answered as seriously as if this were the crux of the matter. “In Florence the Father Inquisitor ordered me to come to Rome to present myself to the Holy Office, this being an injunction by the officials of the Holy Office.”

“Do you know, or can you guess, the reason why you were ordered to come to Rome?”

Galileo said, “I imagine that the reason why I have been ordered to present myself to the Holy Office in Rome is to account for my recently printed book. I imagine this because of the injunction to the printer and to myself, a few days before I was ordered to come to Rome, not to issue any more of these books, and similarly because the printer was ordered by the Father Inquisitor to send the original manuscript of my book to the Holy Office in Rome.”

Maculano nodded at this. “Please explain the character of the book on account of which you think you were ordered to come to Rome.”

“It is a book written in dialogue form, and it treats of the constitution of the world—that is, of the two chief systems. Also the arrangements of the heavens and the elements.”

“If you were shown the said book, would you be prepared to identify it as yours?”

“I hope so,” Galileo said. “I hope that if the book is shown to me, I would recognize it.”

Maculano glanced up sharply at him. Was this sarcasm? A feeble attempt at a joke? The accused man’s flat tone and innocent expression did not allow an interpretation. He was intent, on point; this was clearly serious business to him, as well it should be. His gaze was transfixed on the face of Maculano. If there was a part inside him struggling against a sharp rejoinder or sarcastic put-down, it was still bottled in him, and escaping perhaps only in quick uncontrollable squirts, odd statements that were the only shards left of a lifelong habit of skewering opponents in debate.

This opponent was too dangerous to be touched. Maculano let a few more moments go by. Was he appreciating Galileo’s irony, or warning him that this was no time to fool around? It was just as impossible for Galileo to tell what Maculano was thinking, as it had been for Maculano to determine what Galileo had meant. Impassively they stared at each other. Suddenly those of us watching had it brought home to us what this was going to be like; it was rhetoric as chess, but with an executioner standing behind the man playing the black pieces. He was one of the smartest scientists ever to live, but chess is not science; and this was not exactly chess.

And who was the man playing white? Who was this tall emaciated Maculano from Firenzuola? A Dominican from Pavia, a functionary of the Holy Office, a mediocrity unnoticed by anyone until this moment. Once again a new player had stepped out of the shadows, confounding any sense that the cast of characters was fixed in number, or fully known to anybody involved. Or complete.

Having been shown one of the books printed in Florence in 1632, whose title is Dialogue of Galileo Galilei Lincean etc., which examines the two systems of the world, and having looked at it and inspected it carefully, he said:

“I know this book very well. It is one of those printed in Florence; and I acknowledge it as mine and written by me.”

This was said with no inflection at all, but the inspection of the book had been rather drawn out, as if to match Maculano’s delay, perhaps thus to toss Maculano’s silent warning back into his face.

Maculano, seeing this, again waited longer than seemed necessary. Finally he said, with a little press of deliberation or emphasis, as if warning Galileo yet again: “Do you likewise acknowledge each and every thing contained in the said book as yours?”

Now Galileo replied quickly, almost impatiently. “I know this book shown to me, for it is one of those printed at Florence. I acknowledge all it contains as having been written by me.”

“When and where did you compose this book, and how long did it take you?”

“In regard to the place,” Galileo said, “I composed it in Florence, beginning ten or twelve years ago. It must have taken me seven or eight years, but not continuously.”

“Were you in Rome any other times, especially in the year 1616, and for what occasion?”

“I was in Rome in the year 1616,” Galileo confirmed, as if answering a real question; it had been a very famous visit. He listed all his subsequent trips to Rome as well, explaining that the most recent one was to get permission in person to publish the Dialogo. He went on to explain that the visit in 1616 was made of his own accord, because “having heard objections to Nicolaus Copernicus’s opinion on the earth’s motion, in order to be sure of holding only holy and Catholic opinions, I came to hear what was proper to hold in regard to this topic.”

“Did you come of your own accord, or were you summoned, and what was the reason you were summoned?”

“In 1616 I came of my own accord, without being summoned, for the reason I mentioned,” Galileo said firmly, as if correcting a student’s wrong answer in a class. Maculano nodded, and Galileo went on. “I discussed this matter with some cardinals who oversaw the Holy Office at that time, especially with Cardinals Bellarmino, Aracoeli, San Eusebio, Bonsi, and d’Ascoli.”

“And what specifically did you discuss with the above-mentioned cardinals?”

Galileo took a deep breath. “They wanted to be informed about Copernicus’s doctrine, his book being very difficult to understand for those who are not professional mathematicians and astronomers. In particular they wanted to understand the arrangement of the heavenly spheres according to Copernicus’s hypothesis—how he places the sun at the center of the planets’ orbits, how around the sun he places next the orbit of Mercury, around the latter that of Venus, then the moon around the earth, and outside this Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And in regard to motion, he makes the sun stationary at the center and the earth turn on itself and around the sun, that is, on itself with the diurnal motion, and around the sun with the annual motion.”

Maculano watched Galileo very closely, but the old man said all this as calmly as could be. “What then was decided about this matter?”

“It was decided by the Holy Congregation that this opinion, taken absolutely, is repugnant to Holy Scripture and is to be admitted only ex suppositione,” Galileo using the Latin phrase here, as the term had a precise theological and legal meaning. Then he added, “In the way that Copernicus himself takes it.”

This was the first of Galileo’s lies under oath. Copernicus had made it quite clear in several places in his books that he regarded his explanation of planetary movement to be both mathematically expedient and also literally true in the physical world. Galileo knew this. Very possibly Maculano knew it also.

If so, Maculano brushed it aside. He said slowly, “And what did the Most Eminent Bellarmino tell you about this decision? Did he say anything else about the matter, and if so, what?”

Galileo replied firmly, “Lord Cardinal Bellarmino told me that Copernicus’s opinion could be held ex suppositione, as Copernicus himself had held it. His Eminence knew that I held it ex suppositione, namely in the way that Copernicus held it.”

Three times the lie, like Peter denying Christ. Now Maculano was frowning heavily. But Galileo forged on. He quoted from the letter Bellarmino had written to the Carmelite Father Foscarini, after the meetings of 1616 had ended; Galileo had brought a copy of this letter with him, and now he pulled it from his small stack of documents to read from it: “It seems to me that Your Paternity and Signor Galileo are proceeding prudently by limiting yourselves to speaking ex suppositione and not absolutely.”

Maculano shrugged this off. “What was decided and then made known to you precisely, in the month of February 1616?”

Galileo answered readily. “In the month of February 1616, Lord Cardinal Bellarmino told me that since Copernicus’s opinion, taken absolutely, was contrary to Holy Scripture, it could be neither held nor defended, but it could be taken and used ex suppositione. In conformity with this I keep a certificate by Lord Cardinal Bellarmino himself, dated May 26, 1616, in which he says that Copernicus’s opinion cannot be held or defended, being against Holy Scripture. I present a copy of this certificate, and here it is.”

With that he showed Maculano a sheet of paper with twelve lines of writing on it. “I have the original of this certificate with me in Rome,” he added, “and it is written all in the hand of the above-mentioned Lord Cardinal Bellarmino.”

Maculano took the copy and entered it as evidence in the case, marking it Exhibit B. His face was impassive; one could not tell if this letter’s existence was news to him or not. Certainly a signed certificate from Bellarmino allowing Galileo to discuss Copernicanism ex suppositione would seem to constitute unassailable evidence that if Galileo had written something hypothetical about Copernicus, the Church had allowed him to write it; which would mean that the accusation that had brought him here was incorrect. Which would make the Holy Office guilty of a mistake—or even of a malicious unfounded attack.

But Maculano did not look disturbed. He asked Galileo how he had been warned by Bellarmino, and if there had been anyone else there to witness it. Galileo described the conversation in Bellarmino’s chambers, including Segizzi and the other Dominicans who had been there.

Maculano said, “If I read to you a transcript of what you were ordered, would you remember it?”

“I do not recall that I was told anything else,” Galileo said, with just a trace of uneasiness at this persistence. “Nor can I know whether I shall remember what was then told me, even if it is read to me.”

Maculano then handed him a paper of his own, which he said was the actual text of the injunction given to him by Bellarmino. “You see,” he said while Galileo was quickly reading it, “that this injunction, which was given to you in the presence of witnesses, states that you cannot in any way whatever hold, defend, or teach the said opinion. Do you remember how and by whom you were so ordered?”

Galileo’s ruddy complexion had gone pale. He had never seen this document before, and had not known of its existence. Supposedly a record of the warning given in the meeting, it prohibited him from even teaching Copernicus, either orally or in writing. The ban on teaching or discussing was not in Bellarmino’s certificate to Galileo.

This new injunction was not actually signed by Bellarmino, however, nor by anyone else. Galileo noted this, and saw also that it had been written on the back side of another document. This, together with the lack of any signature, made him suspicious. Segizzi must have added it to the file without Bellarmino’s knowledge. Or possibly it was even a forgery, written later, on the back of a document with a date from that time, and added to the file to give weight to any later case against him. It could have been written the previous week.

Galileo looked quizzically at both sides of the document, turning it back and forth rather ostentatiously. He began his reply very slowly, as if working his way around the edges of a trap. For the first time his answers included some admissions of uncertainty. That he could speak at all after such a shock was yet another testament to his quickness of mind.

“I do not recall that the injunction was given to me any other way than orally by Lord Cardinal Bellarmino. I do remember that the injunction was that I could not hold or defend … and maybe even that I could not teach. I do not recall, further, that there was the phrase in any way whatever, but maybe there was. In fact, I did not think about it or keep it in mind, having received a few months thereafter Lord Cardinal Bellarmino’s certificate dated 26 May, which I have presented, and in which is explained the order given to me not to hold or defend the said opinion. Regarding the other two phrases in the said injunction now produced, namely not to teach and in any way whatever, I did not retain them in my memory, I think because they are not contained in the said certificate, which I relied upon and kept as a reminder.”

It was the best he could do, and it was a pretty good defense at that. He had a signed injunction, after all, while the Inquisition did not. He pursed his lips and stared back at Maculano, still a bit pale, and with a sheen of sweat now on his forehead. Probably it had not occurred to him until that moment that they might forge evidence to get him. It was a bad realization.

Maculano let the moment hang for a while. Then he said, “After the issuing of the said injunction,” gesturing at his document, not Galileo’s, “did you obtain any permission to write the book identified by yourself, which you later sent to the printer?”

“After the above-mentioned injunction,” Galileo said, gesturing at his own certificate, not Maculano’s, “I did not seek permission to write the above-mentioned book, which I have identified, because I did not think that by writing this book I was contradicting at all the injunction given me not to hold, defend, or teach the said opinion, as after all I was refuting it.”

Maculano had been looking down at the injunction—now his head shot up. Staring incredulously at Galileo, he started to speak, paused; put a forefinger to his lips. He returned his gaze to the papers on the table, stared at them for a long time. He picked up the pages covered by his notes.

Finally he looked up again. His expression now was hard to puzzle out, as he seemed both pleased and upset that Galileo had been so bold or so foolish as to utter a bald-faced lie while under oath before the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Up until this point, Galileo had been saying that his book described the Copernican view suppositionally as one of two equally possible explanations. That was already questionable. Now he was claiming that he had actually been refuting Copernicus’s view! In the Dialogo, a book containing hundreds of pages of gentle criticism and sharp scorn aimed at poor Simplicio! It was so untenable a point that it could be taken as insulting. The book itself would easily serve as proof of the lie, and so … Possibly Maculano’s anger was not only at being insulted, but at the way Galileo had put both of them in a very tricky situation, having said such a dangerous thing. He stared at Galileo for a long time, long enough for Galileo also to grasp the possible repercussions of his rash answer.

Finally Maculano spoke. He backtracked, as if to give Galileo another chance to avoid such a spectacular error. “Did you obtain permission for printing the same book, and if so by whom, and for you or for someone else?”

Galileo, buying time in order to rethink the matter, launched into a long, detailed, and impressively coherent description of the complicated interactions he had had with Riccardi and the Holy Office in Florence. The book had been approved by all of them. To that he added a detailed account of the convoluted chain of events by which the book had finally been printed in Florence rather than Rome, blaming this shift on the advent of the plague, rather than on Cesi’s death. This was a very little lie, compared to the other one, and perhaps not important; although it was true that since Cesi’s death the Linceans had fallen far out of favor with the Jesuits, so that here and now it was perhaps better not to mention him.

After perhaps ten minutes of steadily talking his way through the previous couple of years—really a testament to his powers of mind, as he had to be thinking hard about other things, Galileo finished. “The printer in Florence printed it strictly observing every order given by the Father Master of the Sacred Palace.”

Maculano nodded. Implacable, he returned to his question a third time.

“When you asked the above-mentioned master of the Sacred Palace for permission to print the above-mentioned book, did you reveal to the same Most Reverend Father Master the injunction previously given to you concerning the directive of the Holy Congregation, just mentioned?”

Now Galileo, his eyes bulging slightly outward, swallowed and then spoke slowly. “When I asked him for permission to print the book, I did not say anything to the Father Master of the Sacred Palace about the above-mentioned injunction, because I did not judge it necessary to tell it to him—having no scruples, since with the said book I had neither held nor defended the opinion of the Earth’s motion and the sun’s stability. On the contrary, in the said book I show the contrary of Copernicus’s opinion, and show that Copernicus’s reasons are invalid and inconclusive.”

He was sticking with the lie.

The room was silent. For a moment they all seemed frozen.

Maculano put down his notes and the copy of the injunction. He looked over at Father Sinceri, stared again at Galileo. His silence grew longer and longer; his face reddened slightly. Galileo held his ground and did not look away, or blink, or spread his hands. He did not make any move at all. His face was pale, that was all. For what seemed an endless moment everyone was still, as if they had all together fallen into one of Galileo’s syncopes.

“No,” Maculano said. He gestured to the nun.

With this the deposition ended, and Signor Galilei was assigned a certain room in the dormitory of the officials, located in the Palace of the Holy Office, in lieu of prison, with the injunction not to leave it without special permission, under penalty to be decided by the Holy Congregation; and he was ordered to sign below and was sworn to silence.

I, Galileo Galilei, have testified as above.

His handwriting in this signature was very shaky. By the time he had finished scratching out the letters of the sentence, Maculano had left the room.

For Galileo to assert under the stricture of an oath both legal and sacred that in his Dialogo he had been trying to refute Copernicus’s world system was astonishing to everyone who heard about it. Maculano had not been expecting it; no one could have, it went so against the grain of the evidence in hand, there on almost every page.

What did Galileo expect them to do? Accept a blatant lie? Did he think they could not tell it was a lie, or would not say it was if they knew it? Or did he think that the existence of a few feeble disclaimers in his final pages would obscure the work of the previous three hundred? Could anyone be that stupid?

No. No one could be so stupid as to miss the point of the Dialogo. Galileo had been very deliberate when he wrote it. As in all of his writing, he had worked hard to achieve clarity and to be persuasive, to win the debates with his philosophical foes by means of impeccable logic and telling examples. All his gifts as a writer had been put to use, and in Tuscan Italian at that, so anyone could read it and not just scholars trained in Latin. Everyone could see that the book’s purpose was clear.

The special commission of three clerics that Urban had convened to report on the book was now called on, and they were unanimous in judging it to be a piece of advocacy for Copernicanism, not that it took Jesuitical expertise to do so. The first commissioner, Oreggi, made his evaluation in a single paragraph, concluding the opinion is held and defended which teaches that the earth moves and the sun stands still, as one gathers from the whole thrust of the work.

The second commissioner, Melchior Inchofer, was a livid, choleric, second-rater of a priest, pulled out of the inner depths of the Holy Office of the Index specifically for this job. His report on Galileo’s book was a vituperation that filled seven dense pages, complaining bitterly that Galileo ridiculed those who are strongly committed to the common scriptural interpretation of the sun’s motion as if they were small-minded, unable to penetrate the depth of the issue, half-witted, and almost idiotic. He does not regard as human those who hold the earth’s immobility.

This last statement referred to one of Galileo’s jokes, a passage in the book where he said some of the anti-Copernican arguments were not worthy of man’s definition as homo sapiens: “rational animals,” he wrote, here has only the genus (animals) but lacks the species (rational). Inchofer did not appreciate the joke.

The third commissioner’s report, by one Zaccaria Pasqualigo, was less angry than Inchofer’s, but even more detailed, and ultimately the most devastating. It described the Dialogo argument by argument, pointing out errors in fact and logic, the best of which was: He tries to show that, given the earth’s immobility and the sun’s motion along the ecliptic, the apparent motion of sun spots cannot be saved. This argument is based on a premise about what de facto exists and infers a conclusion about what de facto may exist.

In other words, a tautology. What joy for a theologian to identify a tautology in Galileo’s supposedly superior reasoning!

So these three commisioners’ reports lay there on the desks of the Vatican like coffin nails, along with the nun scribe’s transcript of the first deposition. Galileo versus the evidence of his own book. An assertion under oath that black was white. It was so blatant it could even be taken as insolence, as contempt of the court. He wasn’t stupid, he must be enacting some kind of a plan—but what? And what should the Inquisition do in response?

Day after day passed in which nothing seemed to happen, while behind the scenes the machinations of the Holy Office gnawed at the situation with a grinding that was almost audible throughout the city. The accused was under arrest in the Vatican, and going nowhere. Only his single servant was allowed him. The more time that passed, the more nervous he might become concerning his supremely risky tactic, whatever it was.

During these suspended days, which slowly turned into weeks, Niccolini reported what he could to Cioli and Grand Duke Ferdinando. He had inquired of Maculano’s secretary what could be expected next. Maculano’s secretary had replied that the matter was being considered by His Holiness the Pope, but that Galileo was being treated in extraordinary and agreeable ways, being held in the Vatican as opposed to Castel Sant’Angelo, where those on trial before the Inquisition were usually held. They even allow his servant to wait on him, to sleep there, and what is more, to come and go as he pleases, and they allow my own servants to bring him food in his room. But Signor Galilei must have been enjoined from discussing or disclosing the contents of the cross-examination, since he did not want to say anything to us, not even whether he can or cannot speak.

More days passed. It resembled an impasse. By ordering Galileo to come to Rome and face trial, Urban had already committed the Church to rendering a judgment against him; this was understood by all, including Galileo. That was why he had tried so hard to dodge the summons. Now that he was here, some kind of judgment was going to be rendered. It was not possible to find that the Church had made a mistake and Galileo therefore innocent of all wrongdoing. Yet that was what he was claiming had happened.

Did he not realize he could make things tremendously worse?

More days passed. The Church had all the time in the world. Archbishop de Dominis had been held for three years, before dying after an interrogation. Giordano Bruno had been held for eight years.

Galileo’s room was in one of the little Vatican dormitories used by priests working in the Holy Office. The dormitory had been evacuated for the period of his confinement, so Galileo had the entire drafty hall to himself. His servant Cartophilus was on hand, but none of his Roman friends and acquaintances were allowed to call, and none of the Vatican’s clerics visited him either. It was very close to solitary confinement.

The quarters themselves were adequate, but the hours stretched out and grew long. Again Galileo had time to think—too much time, which of course was the point. He began to lose his appetite, and as a result his digestion and excretion. His sleep was disrupted. He was always prone to insomnia, and it often hit him in times of crisis. Now, in the depths of the chill spring nights, Cartophilus would be called in to him, asked to bring a basin of warm water, or a loaf of bread. In the candlelight Galileo’s bloodshot eyes stared as from out of a deep cave. Once Cartophilus came back from the little brazier he kept outside the entryway, balancing a basin of steaming water, only to find the old astronomer frozen in something like one of his syncopes. “What’s this?” the servant said wearily.

But it was only an ordinary trance or dream, the old man asleep on his feet. He whimpered once or twice as Cartophilus helped him out of his paralysis and put his hands in the warm water.

In this suspended manner sixteen long days passed, during which nothing whatsoever happened, as far as anyone outside Maculano’s office could tell. Of course the spies were everywhere, but they were now hearing almost nothing, and what they heard was contradictory. Galileo frequently urged Cartophilus to find out more, and the ancient one had been trying, but his opportunities from inside the Vatican were limited. Galileo’s nerves had begun to fray by the third or fourth day of his confinement. By the end of the second week, he was a wreck.

“You have to sleep, maestro,” Cartophilus suggested for the thousandth time.

“I have the certificate from Bellarmino himself, signed by him, forbidding me from holding the belief but not from discussing it ex sup-positione.”

“Yes you do.” This had been said at least a thousand times.

“Their own supposed injunction wasn’t signed by anyone. It was written on the back of some other document, a letter with a 1616 date on it. I’m sure it’s a forgery. They pulled out something from the files from that year and wrote it up, probably this winter, to frame me, because they have nothing.”

Cartophilus said, “It must have been a shock when you saw it.”

“It was! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everything became obvious the moment I saw it. Their plan, I mean.”

“And so you decided to deny everything. You claimed that your book refutes Copernicus.”

Galileo frowned. He knew perfectly well that the claim was absurd and unsupportable. Possibly it had been a panic response to Maculano’s sudden deployment of the forged injunction. Possibly it was a move that he now regretted. Sixteen days was a long time.

Cartophilus persisted. “Didn’t Ambassador Niccolini advise you to go along with them, to say whatever they wanted? To allow them to slap you on the ear and let you go?”

Galileo growled.

Cartophilus observed him wrestling with all this. “You know they cannot admit the accusation was wrong.”

Another growl, his bear’s growl.

“Perhaps you could write to the pope’s nephew,” the old one suggested. “Didn’t you help him to get his doctorate, and his position in Padua?”

“I did,” Galileo said grimly. After a time he said, “Bring me paper and ink. Lots of paper.” Even at the best of times, Galileo’s letters could be very long. This one would be thick, but not as thick as some; Cardinal Francesco Barberini was already familiar with the situation.

As Niccolini had reported to Florence, servants from the Villa Medici were allowed to cross town and bring Galileo his meals every day, and so it was no great difficulty to get messages back and forth. Word finally came by way of this conduit, conveying Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s reply to Galileo’s appeal for help. His Holiness was still too angry about the matter to be approached. A way would have to be found within the normal procedures of the Holy Office. Given Galileo’s stated position, impossible to believe—and an affront to the process—it would be difficult. Happily, given all this, a letter from Maculano to Francesco had recently arrived, which made it clear that Maculano too was trying to broker a solution. A manuscript copy of this letter was enclosed, under the cloth holding a loaf of bread in a basket:

I reported to the Most Eminent Lords of the Holy Congregation, and then they considered various difficulties in regard to the manner of continuing the case and leading it to a conclusion, for in his deposition Galileo denied what can be clearly seen in the book he wrote, so that if he were to continue in his negative stance it would become necessary to use greater rigor in the administration of justice, and less regard for all the ramifications of this business.

Meaning if they had to torture him to obtain a confession, not only would it be bad for him, but as he was one of the most famous people in Europe, and had been so for twenty years, it would be bad for the Church. More important still, it would be bad for Urban. Urban had favored Galileo as something like his personal scientist for many years. If Galileo’s punishment was harsh, it would be obvious to all that Urban had been made to sacrifice one of his people to satisfy the Borgia, and this would weaken him further in his struggle against the Spanish. So in his own interest, Urban could not be forced into harming Galileo too much—not even by Galileo himself, in the form of his most egregious lie under oath before the Holy Office.

Was this Galileo’s point? Could he have risked so much to force the realization of this truth on Urban? Was this what he had been hoping for? If so, it was one hell of a gambit.

Finally I proposed a plan, Maculano continued, namely that the Holy Congregation grant me the authority to deal extrajudicially with Galileo, in order to make him understand his error and, once having recognized it, to bring him to confess it. The proposal seemed at first too bold, and there did not seem to be much hope of accomplishing this goal as long as one followed the road of trying to convince him with reasons; however, after I mentioned the basis on which I proposed this,

—a basis which Maculano did not identify in the letter, although it was easy to assume that he meant the threat of torture; but he might have had something else in mind. In any case, as he wrote to conclude his letter to Cardinal Barberini—they gave me the authority.

This time it was truly a private interview. No scribe was on hand, no transcript recorded, no witnesses of any kind. Only Maculano and Galileo, in a small office of the dormitory next to the Holy Office; though if one were at hand in the servant’s closet, waiting for Galileo if he called, the ability to hear what was going on in the little inner room had long since been established.

Galileo was eager to talk. His voice was louder than Maculano’s, his tone animated, inquisitive, intense. He wanted to know what had been going on, he wanted to know where he stood, he wanted to know why Maculano was visiting him—and all at once.

Maculano sounded conciliatory. He told Galileo that he was there to discuss the next stage of the trial with him, to make sure that Galileo knew where he stood, so that no further problems would accidentally arise as a result of any misunderstandings.

“I appreciate your courtesy,” Galileo said. After a pause, he said, “My student and friend, Fra Benedetto Castelli, conveyed to me that he earlier met and spoke with you about these matters.”

“Yes.”

“He said that you were a good and devout man.”

“I am glad he thought so. I hope it is true.”

“He also wrote that he had spoken to you about my book, and that he had spoken as vehemently as he knew how against any persecution of my book, and in favor of the Copernican view, and that you had said to him that you agreed with him—that you too believed the Copernican explanation.”

“That is neither here nor there,” Maculano said calmly. “I am not before you as Father Vincenzo Maculano di Firenzuola, Dominican. I am before you as Commissary General of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. As such, I need you to understand what is required of you for a successful completion of your trial.”

After a pause, Galileo said, “Tell me then.”

“Privately, then—just between you and me, as men talking over a matter of mutual interest—you made a mistake at the end of your first deposition, by speaking of what you did or did not intend to say with your book. Understand me. If you focus your answers on your intentions, you put yourself more and more in the hands of your enemies. I am not your enemy, but you have enemies. And for reasons of state, they must be satisfied—or better, they must be put off in a way that is not too unsatisfactory to them. A judgment of some kind is going to be rendered against you. If it is a matter of the intention of your book, it will be very easy to convict you of heresy.”

He let that statement hang there for a while.

“If, on the other hand, it is merely a matter of you forgetting to obey in every respect the injunction levied against you in 1616—if you confess to that error, then this is not such a serious thing.”

“But I have the certificate from Bellarmino himself!” Galileo protested.

“There is the other injunction.”

“Nothing of that was ever said to me at the time!”

“That’s not what the other injunction says.”

“I never saw that injunction! It isn’t signed by me or by Cardinal Bellarmino!”

“Nevertheless, it exists.”

A long silence.

“Remember,” Maculano said unctuously, “there has to be something. If the trial moves to the matter of your intentions concerning your book, the decision of the special commission that investigated it is unanimous and overwhelming. You advocated for the Copernican view, not just ex suppositione, but factually and in earnest. You don’t want to try to contest that.”

No reply from Galileo.

“And listen further,” Maculano said with a sharper tone. “Listen closely. Even if the license you received to publish your book, and the disclaiming sentences you added to the first and last pages, were to prevail in our judgment, this might not save you. It might only shift the inquiry into even more dangerous areas.”

“What do you mean?” Galileo exclaimed. “How so?”

“Remember what I said; something must be found. You say there was no second injunction, you say your book was licensed and included the proper disclaimer. Maybe so. But what then? For something must be found.”

No reply from Galileo.

“Well, then,” Maculano said, “something will be found. For there are other problematic areas in your work. There are some, for instance, who insist that the theory of atomism that you advocated in your book Il Saggiatore constitutes a direct contradiction of the doctrine of the transubstantiation as defined by the Council of Trent. This is a very serious heresy, as of course you know.”

“But that has nothing to do with this!”

Maculano let the silence go on for a while. “Something must be found,” he repeated gently, “so you cannot say that. Everything is germane to this case. It is a question of your beliefs, your intentions, your promises, your actions. Your whole life.”

Silence.

“That being the case, the best possible outcome is to stay focused on the procedural issue that you seem to have tripped over, having to do with the injunction of 1616. That you may have inadvertently forgotten an order, and created a misunderstanding concerning the theory of Copernicanism, is, in other words, the least bad of your alternatives.”

“I obeyed the injunction given to me.”

“No. Don’t keep saying that. Recall that if you continue to insist on that point, things get worse. The examinations of the Holy Office include rigorous questioning, as you know, including methods that I would not want to see used in your case. These examinations always yield the answers they desire, and then it is a matter of throwing yourself on the mercy of the Holy Office. That could be lifetime imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo. It has often happened. Or, it could be worse yet. That would be a disaster for all concerned, wouldn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“So, if you were to plead forgetfulness, and perhaps a lapse of judgment—too much pride, or complacency, or carelessness; whatever venial sin you choose—then this would be a basis to go forward. Your punishment could be to recite the seven penitential Psalms weekly for some years, or something like that.”

“But I got the license to publish! I discussed the situation with His Holiness himself!”

It was getting repetitive now, as in one of those endgames in chess where the stronger side has to slowly and patiently grind the opponent’s king into a spot where it has no more options.

“I need to keep reminding you, this is not a good avenue for you to pursue. The book has been read with the closest attention to logic, reason, rhetoric, mathematics, and incidentals, by learned scholars and judges, and their reports have been unanimous in asserting you made a case for the Copernican view. You cannot add a few words to the end of such an argument and hope to change the effect of the whole. Especially not since most of your ameliorative equivocations are put in the mouth of a character named Simplicio, an Aristotelian who has been shown to be foolishly wrong everywhere else in the book. Indeed a kind of dunderhead, a simpleton in fact as well as name! Urban’s words, his doctrine, put into this person’s mouth! It will not do. Your own book, as written, makes things so very clear. You are a good Catholic, and yet you have disobeyed an injunction from the Holy Office, as judged by officials of that Holy Office. This could lead to a disastrous consequence. As I hope you know.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Do you understand me?”

“I understand.”

“And so? What then do you intend to do about it?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! You tell me what I should do!”

There was a long silence. Who sighed it was hard to tell. Both men were breathing heavily, as if they had been tossing each other around like wrestlers.

“Tell me, then. Tell me what I should do.”

Checkmate.

To His Eminence Cardinal Francesco Barberini:

Confession of sin; examination concerning intentions; the guilty party’s defense of his actions; the pronouncement of punishment. These were the formalized steps taken in heresy trials. They all had to be taken.

That night in the empty dormitory, Galileo groaned, shouted, whimpered, cursed. When Cartophilus went to his little room and asked if there was anything he could do, Galileo threw a cup at him.

Later in the night, however, the moans grew to shrieks, and Cartophilus hustled to the old man’s room, alarmed. The maestro did not answer either calls or knocks on his door, but instead went suddenly silent.

Cartophilus forced the door open, and entered into the dark room holding a candle before him.

Galileo pounced on him, held him fast. The candle fell and went out. In the dark the old astronomer growled, “Send me to Hera.”

Cartophilus did it. He made the entanglement, then got the old man slumped onto his bed, half on the floor, almost as if praying. A foam of spittle drooled from Galileo’s open mouth, and his open eyes stared fixed at nothingness. Another syncope to be endured; Cartophilus shook his head, muttered under his breath.

He pulled a blanket over the inert body. He closed the door, went back and sat on the bed by Galileo’s side, checking the old man’s pulse, which was slow and steady. He gazed into the little screen on the side of the box. There was no way to know how long he would be gone.