Refusal of some Favour asked by Galileo.—His pious Resignation.—Continues his scientific Researches.—His pupil Viviani.—Failure of attempt to renew Negotiations about Longitudes.—Reply to Liceti and Correspondence with him.—Last Discussion of the Copernican System in reply to Rinuccini.—Sketch of its Contents.—Pendulum Clocks.—Priority of the discovery belongs to Galileo.—Visit from Castelli.—Torricelli joins Viviani.—Scientific discourse on his Deathbed.—Death, 8th Jan., 1642.—Proposal to deny him Christian Burial.—Monument objected to by Urban VIII.—Ferdinand II. fears to offend him.—Buried quietly.—No Inscription till thirty-two years later.—First Public Monument erected by Viviani in 1693.—Viviani directs his Heirs to erect one in Santa Croce.—Erected in 1738.—Rome unable to put down Copernican System.—In 1757 Benedict XIV. permits the Clause in Decree forbidding Books which teach the new System to be expunged.—In 1820 permission given to treat of it as true.—Galileo’s Work and others not expunged from the Index till 1835. We now come to the last three years of Galileo’s life.
From two documents published by Professor Gherardi,[570] we learn that in 1639 Galileo once more asked at Rome for some favours not specified, but that they were absolutely refused by the Pope. From this time Galileo came no further into direct contact with the Roman curia. He had been compelled to give up all hope of any amelioration of his lot from the implacable Urban VIII. So he ended his days quietly and resigned, as the prisoner of the Inquisition, in his villa at Arcetri. Castelli also, who (as his letters to Galileo of 1639 bear witness)[571] had warmly exerted himself on his behalf with Cardinal Barberini and other influential persons, had probably[300] come to the conclusion that nothing more could be done for his unfortunate friend, for from this time we find nothing in his letters to Galileo but scientific disquisitions and spiritual consolations.[572]
This indicates the two interests which occupied the latest period of Galileo’s life—deep piety and scientific meditations. His utter hopelessness and pious resignation are very clearly expressed in the brief sentence he used often to write to Castelli: “Piace cosi a Dio, dere piacere cosi ancora a Noi.”[573] (If it please God, it ought also to please us.) He never omitted in any letter to his old friend and pupil to commend himself in conclusion to his prayers,[574] and in his letter of 3rd December, 1639, he added: “I remind you to persevere in your prayers to the all-merciful and loving God, that He will cast out the bitter hatred from the hearts of my malicious and unhappy persecutors.”
The lofty genius with which nature had endowed Galileo never displayed itself in so striking and surprising a manner as during these last three years. No sooner were his physical sufferings in some measure relieved, than he occupied himself in scientific speculations, the results of which he partly communicated to his great pupil and subsequent biographer, Viviani, by word of mouth, and partly dictated them to some of those about him. The society of young Viviani, then eighteen years of age, who, by permission of the Inquisition, spent the last two years and a half of the old master’s life near him,[575] was the greatest comfort to him, and he conceived a fatherly affection for the talented youth. We owe it partly to the assistance and stimulus given by Viviani that the aged Galileo worked on to the end in improving and enlarging his[301] “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze,” made a number of additions, and added new evidence of great importance to science in two supplementary dialogues.[576]
During this last period of his life also, he again took up the negotiations with the States-General, broken off by his severe illness in 1638. After he became blind he had given up all his writings, calculations, and astronomical tables relating to the Medicean stars, to his old pupil, Father Vincenzo Renieri, in order that he might carry them further; he was well adapted for the task, and executed it with equal skill and zeal.[577] The new ephemerides were just about to be sent to Hortensius, when Diodati informed Galileo of his sudden death in a letter of 28th October, 1639.[578] The three other commissioners charged by the States-General with the investigation of Galileo’s proposal having also died one after another, in quick succession, it was difficult to resume the negotiations. The interest of the Netherlanders in Galileo’s scheme (perhaps from its acknowledged imperfection) had also evidently cooled, and his proposal to replace the commissioners was not carried out, although he offered to send Renieri to Holland to give all needful explanations by word of mouth. Galileo’s death then put an end to these fruitless negotiations.[579]
At the beginning of 1640 Fortunio Liceti, a former pupil of Galileo’s, published a book on the phosphorescent Bolognian stone. In the fiftieth chapter of this work he treats of the faint light of the side of the moon not directly illuminated[302] by the sun, and rejects the view advocated by Galileo in his “Sidereus Nuntius,” that it arises from a reflection of the sun’s rays striking our earth, which the earth reflects to our satellite, who again reflects them to us. Galileo was undecided whether it were not best to take no notice of Liceti’s objections, the scientific value of which he did not estimate very highly, when a letter from Prince Leopold de’ Medici, brother of the reigning Grand Duke, relieved him of his doubts.[580] This prince, who has gained a permanent name in the history of science by founding the celebrated “Accadémia del Cimento,” invited Galileo to give him his views on Liceti’s objections.[581] This challenge sufficed to rouse all the blind old man’s dialectic skill, though he was then seventy-six and bowed down by mental and bodily sufferings. He dictated a reply, in the form of a letter to Prince Leopold, which occupies fifty large pages in the extant edition of his “Opere,” and in fire, spirit, mastery of language, and crushing argument, it is quite a match for the most famous controversial works of his manhood.[582]
A most interesting direct correspondence then ensued between Galileo and Liceti, which was carried on from June, 1640, to January, 1641, in which not this question only was discussed, but Galileo took occasion to express his opinions, with great spirit and learning, on the modern Peripatetic school and philosophy, on Aristotle himself, and his fanatical followers. These letters of the venerable hero of science are characterised by ostensible politeness pervaded by cutting irony, which makes them instructive and stimulating reading.[583]
[303]
Ten months before his death, thanks to an indiscreet question from one of his former pupils, a last opportunity occurred of speaking of the Copernican system. Francesco Rinuccini, Tuscan resident at Venice, and afterwards Bishop of Pistoja, having apparently forgotten that the master had solemnly abjured that opinion, and had even been compelled to promise to denounce its adherents wherever he met with them to the Inquisition, informed him in a letter of 23rd March, 1641,[584] that the mathematician Pieroni asserted that he had discovered by means of the telescope a small parallax of a few seconds in some of the fixed stars, which would place the correctness of the Copernican system beyond all question. Rinuccini then goes on to say, in the same breath, that he had lately seen the manuscript of a book about to appear, which contained an objection to the new doctrine, and made it appear very doubtful. It was this: because we see exactly one half of the firmament, it follows inevitably that the earth is the centre of the starry heavens. Rinuccini begs Galileo to clear up these doubts for him, and to help him to a more certain opinion.
This was the impulse to Galileo’s letter of 29th March, 1641,[585] which, as Alfred Von Reumont truly says,[586] whether jest or mask, had better never have been written. There is no doubt that it must not be taken in its literal sense. Precisely the same tactics are followed as in the letter which accompanied the “Treatise on the Tides,” to the Grand Duke of Austria in 1618, and in many passages of the “Dialogues on the Two Systems.” Galileo conceals his real opinions behind a thick veil, through which the truth is only penetrable by the initiated. The cautious course he pursued in this perilous answer to Rinuccini is as clever as it is ingenious, and appears appropriate to his circumstances; but it does not produce a pleasant impression,[304] and for the sake of the great man’s memory, one would prefer to leave the subject untouched.
We will now examine this interesting letter more closely. When we call to mind the disquisitions on the relation of Scripture to science, which Galileo wrote to Castelli in 1613, and to the Grand Duchess Christine in 1615, the very beginning is a misrepresentation only excusable on the ground of urgent necessity. He says: “The incorrectness of the Copernican system should not in any case be doubted, especially by us Catholics, for the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture is opposed to it, as interpreted by the greatest teachers of theology, whose unanimous declaration makes the stability of the earth in the centre, and the revolution of the sun round it, a certainty. The grounds on which Copernicus and his followers have maintained the contrary fall to pieces before the fundamental argument of the Divine omnipotence. For since this is able to effect by many, aye, endless means, what, so far as we can see, only appears practicable by one method, we must not limit the hand of God and persist obstinately in anything in which we may have been mistaken.[587] And as I hold the Copernican observations and conclusions to be insufficient, those of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and their followers appear to me far more delusive and mistaken, because their falsity can clearly be proved without going beyond the limits of human knowledge.”[588]
After this introduction Galileo proceeds to answer Rinuccini’s question. He treats that argument against the Copernican system as delusive, and says that it originates in the assumption that the earth stands still in the centre, and by no means from precise astronomical observation. He[305] refutes, therefore, the scientific objection to the new doctrine. Speaking of the assumed discovery of Pieroni, he says, that if it should be confirmed, however small the parallax may be, human science must draw the conclusion from it that the earth cannot be stationary in the centre. But in order to weaken this dangerous sentence, he hastens to add, that if Pieroni might be mistaken in thinking that he had discovered such a parallax of a few seconds, those might be still more mistaken who think they can observe that the visible hemisphere never varies, not even one or two seconds; for such an exact and certain observation is utterly impossible, partly from the insufficiency of the astronomical instruments, and partly from the refraction of the rays of light.
As will be seen, Galileo takes great care to show the futility of the new arguments brought into the field against the Copernican system. It therefore seems very strange that some writers, and among them the well-known Italian historian, Cesare Cantu, suppose from this letter that at the close of his life Galileo had really renounced the prohibited doctrine from profound conviction![589] The introduction, and many passages thrown in in this cautious refutation, must, as Albèri and Henri Martin justly observe, be regarded as fiction, the author having the Inquisition in view; it had recently given a striking proof of its watchfulness by forbidding the author of a book called “De Pitagorea animarum transmigratione,” to apply the epithet “clarissimus” to Galileo, and it had only with great difficulty been persuaded to permit “notissimus Galileus”![590]
A short time before the close of Galileo’s brilliant scientific career, in spite of age, blindness, and sickness, he once more[306] gave striking evidence of the genius which could only be quenched by death. It will be remembered that the inadequacy of his proposed chronometer had been the chief obstacle to the acceptance by the States-General of his method of taking longitudes at sea. Now, in the second half of the year 1641, it occurred to him, as is confirmed beyond question by Viviani, who was present,[591] though the idea is generally ascribed to Christian Huyghens, of adding a pendulum to the then very imperfect clocks, as regulator of their motion. As this was sixteen years before Huyghens made known his invention of pendulum clocks, priority indisputably belongs to Galileo. But it was only permitted to the blind master to conceive the great idea—he was not to carry it out. It was his intention to employ the eyes and hands of his son Vincenzo, a very clever mechanician, to put his idea in practice, and he told him of his plan. Vincenzo was to make the necessary drawings according to his father’s instructions, and to construct models accordingly. But in the midst of these labours Galileo fell ill, and this time he did not recover.[592] His faithful pupil, Castelli, who probably foresaw the speedy dissolution of the revered old man, came to see him about the end of September, 1641. In October, on the repeated and urgent invitation of Galileo, Torricelli joined Castelli and Viviani, not to leave the Villa Arcetri until they left it with Galileo’s coffin. Torricelli was then thirty-three, and the old master had discerned his eminent talents from a treatise on the theory of motion which he had sent him.[593] Castelli was[307] not permitted to stay till the close. At the beginning of November he had to return to Rome, leaving Galileo, Torricelli, and Viviani eagerly occupied with the completion of the “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze.”
On 5th November Galileo was attacked by an insidious hectic fever, which slowly but surely brought him to the grave.[594] Violent pains in his limbs threw him on a sick bed, from which he did not rise again. In spite of all these sufferings, which were augmented by constant palpitation of the heart and almost entire sleeplessness, his active mind scarcely rested for a moment, and he spent the long ho............