Galileo's Dream

The streets of Rome 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 ‘the 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. So—the 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 ago—that 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 questions—as 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 decision—to haul him in for this added interrogation and confession—ultimately 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 groan—although 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 course—he’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 also—and 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 joints—and away.

There was already a Roman expression for this kind of turning of a method onto its usual perpetrators; it was called to poison the Borgias.

Galileo was called to the convent of Minerva by a little phalanx of Dominicans who showed up at his dormitory. The black-and-white Dogs of God looked as grim as executioners. Before leaving his chamber, they gave him the white robe of the penitent to put on over his own clothing. Nothing of his own could appear outside the robe, they said; and he had to be bareheaded.

So it was time for the sentence.

They surrounded him wordlessly then, and led him on the short walk to the room of judgment. Inside that room it was much more crowded than during any of the depositions; most of the Holy Congregation was there to witness the ruling. Pope Urban VIII was not present, of course.

Maculano read the judgment:

Maculano, reading the judgment aloud, went on to describe how Paul V had used Bellarmino’s injunction to warn him, also to issue a decree against the publishing of any books about the matter. Then:

The missing signatures, therefore, were from Francesco Barberini, Laudivio Zacchia, and Gasparo Borgia.

A compromise had prevailed.

The white-robed old man was then handed his abjuration, to be read aloud in the formal ceremony ending the trial. It was as formulaic as any mass or other sacrament, but Galileo first read over it silently, very intent on it, turning the pages as he went. His face was pale, so that in his white robe, and with his previously reddish hair all mixed now with white and gray, and gaunter than he had ever been, he looked like a ghost of himself. It was a cloudy day, and the massed candles and light from the clerestory windows still left the room slightly in gloom, so that he stood out.

While he read, Cartophilus was standing outside the open door with the other servants, shaking Buonamici by the hand and breathing deeply for the first time in months, maybe years. Confinement, book banned, et cetera: success.

But then Galileo suddenly gestured to Maculano. Cartophilus sucked down a breath sharply and held it, as Galileo began to tap hard at one of the pages of his abjuration. “What is he doing?” Cartophilus whispered in agony to Buonamici.

“I don’t know!” Buonamici whispered back.

Galileo spoke loudly enough that all the cardinals in attendance could hear him, indeed everyone in the room and in the hall outside. His voice had a hoarse ragged edge, and his lips were white under his mustache.

“I will abjure my error willingly, but there are two things in this document that I will not say, no matter what you do to me.”

Dead silence. Out in the hall Cartophilus was now clutching Buon-amici’s arm in both hands, whispering, “No, no, why, why? Say whatever they want, for Christ’s sake!”

“It’s all right,” Buonamici whispered, trying to calm him. “The pope only wants him humiliated, not burned.”

“The pope may not be able to stop it!”

They held each other as inside the room Galileo showed the relevant page to Maculano, poking at the objectionable phrases. “I will not say I am not a good Catholic, for I am one and I intend to stay one, despite all that my enemies can say and do. Secondly, I will not say that I have ever deceived anybody in this affair, especially in the publishing of my book, which I submitted in full candor to ecclesiastical censure, and had it printed after legally obtaining a license for it. I’ll build the pyre and put the candle to it myself if anyone can show otherwise.”

Maculano, taken aback at the penitent’s sudden ferocity, looked to the cardinals. He took the abjuration over to them, pointed out the passages Galileo had objected to. Out in the hallway Cartophilus was hissing with dismay, almost hopping up and down, and Buonamici had stopped trying to reassure him and was peering anxiously through the doorway at the cardinals.

Bentivoglio was whispering to the others. Finally he nodded to Maculano, who took the document to the scribe and had her mark two passages for deletion. While she did so, Maculano faced Galileo with a stern eye that seemed also to contain a gleam of approbation. “Agreed,” he said.

“Good,” Galileo said, but not thank you. Tears suddenly poured from his eyes down his cheeks into his beard, and he wiped them away before taking the revised document from the commissary general. “Give me a moment to compose myself.” He looked over the document again while he wiped his face and whispered a prayer. He pulled a small necklace crucifix out from under his white robe to kiss and then replace it. After that he nodded to Maculano and walked to the center of the room, before the table where the pad for kneeling had been placed. He crossed himself, handed the abjuration to Maculano, kneeled on the pad, adjusted his penitential robe, and took the document from Maculano. He held it in his left hand, put his right hand on the Bible that stood on a waist-high stand before him. When he spoke his voice was clear and penetrating, but flat and void of all expression.

“I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, seventy years of age, arraigned personally for judgment, kneeling before you Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinal Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity in all of Christendom, having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God’s help I will believe in the future all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church holds, preaches, and teaches.

“However, whereas, after having been judicially instructed by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold, defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way; therefore, I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and motionless, and the earth is not the center and moves.

“Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of Your Eminences and every faithful Christian this vehement suspicion, rightly conceived against me, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and in general each and every other error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Church; and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, orally or in writing, anything which might cause a similar suspicion about me; on the contrary, if I should come to know any heretic or anyone suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office.

“I, the above-mentioned Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and obliged myself as above; and in witness of the truth I have signed with my own hand the present document of abjuration and have recited it word for word in Rome, at the convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June 1633.

“I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above, by my own hand.”

And he took the pen from Maculano and carefully signed the bottom of the document.

In the hall outside, Cartophilus collapsed into Buonamici’s arms. Buonamici stood stalwart and held the old man to his chest, whispering to him, “The wound was small, if we consider the force behind the dart.”

Cartophilus could only clutch his mouth and nod. It had been a close-run thing. He could feel the younger man’s heart pounding hard; he too had been shaken. We had seen what could happen. We had seen too much.

At the Villa Medici that night, Ambassador Niccolini wrote to Cioli in Florence to give him the news of the trial’s conclusion. It is a fearful thing to have to do with the Inquisition, he concluded. The poor man has come back more dead than alive.