The Sleepwalkers (209 page)

This,
then,
is
the
incident
which
touched
off
the
drama.
As
on
that
previous
occasion,
when
Lorini
had
remarked
on
"Ipernicus
–
or
whatever
his
name
is",
Galileo
was
at
once
up
in
arms.
His
counter-blast
to
the
dinner-table
chirpings
of
the
obscure
Dr.
Boscaglia
(who
is
never
heard
of
again),
was
a
kind
of
theological
atom
bomb,
whose
radioactive
fall-out
is
still
being
felt.
It
took
the
form
of
a
Letter
to
Castelli
,
enlarged
a
year
later
into
a
Letter
to
the
Grand
Duchess
Christina
.
It
was
intended
to
be
widely
circulated,
which
indeed
it
was.
Its
purpose
was
to
silence
all
theological
objections
to
Copernicus.
Its
result
was
the
precise
opposite:
it
became
the
principal
cause
of
the
prohibition
of
Copernicus,
and
of
Galileo's
downfall.

As
a
work
of
polemical
literature
the
Letter
is
a
masterpiece.
It
starts:
^*

"Some
years
ago,
as
Your
Serene
Highness
well
knows,
I
discovered
in
the
heavens
many
things
that
had
not
been
seen
before
our
own
age.
The
novelty
of
these
things,
as
well
as
some
consequences
which
followed
from
them
in
contradiction
to
the
physical
notions
commonly
held
among
academic
philosophers,
stirred
up
against
me
no
small
number
of
professors
–
as
if
I
had
placed
these
things
in
the
sky
with
my
own
hands
in
order
to
upset
nature
and
overturn
the
sciences...

Showing
a
greater
fondness
for
their
own
opinions
than
for
truth,
they
sought
to
deny
and
disprove
the
new
things
which,
if
they
had
cared
to
look
for
themselves,
their
own
senses
would
have
demonstrated
to
them.
To
this
end
they
hurled
various
charges
and
published
numerous
writings
filled
with
vain
arguments,
and
they
made
the
grave
mistake
of
sprinkling
these
with
passages
taken
from
places
in
the
Bible
which
they
had
failed
to
understand
properly..."
¹³

____________________

Galileo
then
developed
the
argument
which
Kepler,
too,
had
constantly
used,
namely
that
certain
statements
in
the
Bible
should
not
be
taken
literally
because
they
were
couched
in
language
"according
to
the
capacity
of
the
common
people
who
are
rude
and
unlearned":

"Hence,
in
expounding
the
Bible,
if
one
were
always
to
confine
oneself
to
the
unadorned
grammatical
meaning,
one
might
fall
into
error.
Not
only
contradictions
and
propositions
far
from
true
might
thus
be
made
to
appear
in
the
Bible,
but
even
grave
heresies
and
follies.
Thus
it
would
be
necessary
to
assign
to
God
feet,
hands,
and
eyes,
as
well
as
corporeal
and
human
affections,
such
as
anger,
repentance,
hatred,
and
sometimes
even
the
forgetting
of
things
past
and
ignorance
of
those
to
come...
For
that
reason
it
appears
that
nothing
physical
which
sense-experience
sets
before
our
eyes,
or
which
necessary
demonstrations
prove
to
us,
ought
to
be
called
in
question
(much
less
condemned)
upon
the
testimony
of
biblical
passages
which
may
have
some
different
meaning
beneath
their
words."
¹⁴

In
support
of
this
thesis,
Galileo
quoted
at
length
St.
Augustine
as
a
witness
–
not
realizing
that,
theologically,
he
was
walking
on
extremely
thin
ice
(
see
below
,
p.
443).
Then
comes
a
breathtaking
passage,
where
one
can
almost
hear
the
ice
cracking
under
his
feet:

"...
I
question
whether
there
is
not
some
equivocation
in
failing
to
specify
the
virtues
which
entitle
sacred
theology
to
the
title
of
'queen'.
It
might
deserve
that
name
by
reason
of
including
everything
that
is
learned
from
all
the
other
sciences
and
establishing
everything
by
better
methods
and
with
profounder
learning...
Or
theology
might
be
queen
because
of
being
occupied
with
a
subject
which
excels
in
dignity
all
the
subjects
which
compose
the
other
sciences,
and
because
her
teachings
are
divulged
in
more
sublime
ways.

That
the
title
and
authority
of
queen
belongs
to
theology
in
the
first
sense,
I
think
will
not
be
affirmed
by
theologians
who
have
any
skill
in
the
other
sciences.
None
of
these,
I
think,
will
say
that
geometry,
astronomy,
music,
and
medicine
are
more
excellently
contained
in
the
Bible
than
they
are
in
the
books
of
Archimedes,
Ptolemy,
Boethius,
and
Galen.
Hence
it
seems
likely
that
regal
pre-eminence
is
given
to
theology
in
the
second
sense;
that
is,
by
reason
of
its
subject
and
the
miraculous
communication,
by
divine
revelation,
of
conclusions
which
could
not
be
conceived
by
men
in
any
other
way,
concerning
chiefly
the
attainment
of
eternal
blessedness.