Could Galileo have been Executed?

[timoneill]

This is a question that comes up occasionally, usually as an assumption by a Conflict Thesis fan along the lines of "he recanted because he didn't want to be burned at the stake". Of course, the example of Bruno shows that you have be pretty determined to get yourself burned. But I've noted some comments by Finocchiaro in his essay in Numbers' Galileo Goes to Jail that make me wonder if Galileo was under any threat of execution at all. When discussing the evidence that Galileo was not tortured and was never going to be tortured, he writes:

"Finally, another rule held that defendants could not be tortured during the investigation of an alleged crime unless the transgression was serious enough to require corporal punishment. Galileo's crimes fell short of formal heresy, which would have justified corporal punishment; therefore torturing him would have been inappropriate" (p. 77)

This is a little confusing though. Firstly, what does Finocchiaro mean by "corporal punishment" here? He seems to be referring to "capital punishment", since I doubt the Inquisition was going to send Galileo to the headmaster's office for six of the best. Secondly, I can't find anything in the documents about Galileo being accused of being "vehemently suspect of heresy", just that this was the conclusion of the Inquisition in its sentencing statement. So exactly what Finocchiaro is referring to by his "alleged crime" doesn't seem to me to be explicit. Finally, if "corporal punishment" means "capital punishment" does this mean execution was only reserved for the highest grade of heresy- "formal heresy" - which was one step in seriousness above "vehemently suspect of heresy"?

Thoughts?

[jonkon]

That Galileo was not executed reflects on the precarious position of Pope Urban himself, having authorized the publication of the Dialogue the previous year with full knowledge of the issues involved. While still a cardinal, Pope Urban had defended the Copernican thesis at meetings of the Accademia dei Lincei as well as personally interceding on Galileo's behalf in his 1616 trial. Pope Urban himself had set down the conditions of his release, whose alleged violation was the legal grounds of the 1633 trial. The trial itself was the result of very bad timing on Galileo's part, as revealed by a side-by-side comparison of Galileo's fall from grace leading to the trial with that of the events of the Thirty Years War. Urban was made pope through the efforts of the French and Bavarians with the express mandate to disengage the Church from the fighting going on in Germany. To this end The Dialogue was an effort to discredit the theology of Thomas Aquinas to force Roman Catholic Church doctrine to align with Protestant theology. Unfortunately for Galileo, Cardinal Richelieu's backup plan was to invite Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to invade Germany on behalf of the Protestant German princes to further French foreign policy of keeping Germany weak and divided. Continued Protestant battlefield success led the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand to prod the Spanish ambassador to openly question Urban's devotion to Roman Catholicism. After the politically disastrous move of ordering the Swiss Guard to clear the meeting room, Urban tried to confiscate all copies of the Dialogue that were then being distributed among booksellers. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, Urban was forced to bring Galileo up on trumped up charges to defuse the situation.

[timoneill]

Apr 10, 2016 17:40:50 GMT jonkon said:

That Galileo was not executed reflects on the precarious position of Pope Urban himself, having authorized the publication of the Dialogue the previous year with full knowledge of the issues involved. While still a cardinal, Pope Urban had defended the Copernican thesis at meetings of the Accademia dei Lincei as well as personally interceding on Galileo's behalf in his 1616 trial. Pope Urban himself had set down the conditions of his release, whose alleged violation was the legal grounds of the 1633 trial. The trial itself was the result of very bad timing on Galileo's part, as revealed by a side-by-side comparison of Galileo's fall from grace leading to the trial with that of the events of the Thirty Years War. Urban was made pope through the efforts of the French and Bavarians with the express mandate to disengage the Church from the fighting going on in Germany. To this end The Dialogue was an effort to discredit the theology of Thomas Aquinas to force Roman Catholic Church doctrine to align with Protestant theology. Unfortunately for Galileo, Cardinal Richelieu's backup plan was to invite Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to invade Germany on behalf of the Protestant German princes to further French foreign policy of keeping Germany weak and divided. Continued Protestant battlefield success led the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand to prod the Spanish ambassador to openly question Urban's devotion to Roman Catholicism. After the politically disastrous move of ordering the Swiss Guard to clear the meeting room, Urban tried to confiscate all copies of the Dialogue that were then being distributed among booksellers. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, Urban was forced to bring Galileo up on trumped up charges to defuse the situation.

I'm aware of pretty much all of the above, though they were hardly "trumped up charges" and I have never heard of Urban trying to "confiscate all copies of the Dialogue that were then being distributed among booksellers" and somehow failing (why? he was the Pope) and so having to "trump up charges". Why all of what you've written above leads to the conclusion "therefore Galileo was not executed", however, is not clear.

But my question is a legal one. I'm asking if the charges were ever going to attract the death penalty and, if so, in what circumstances.

[labarum]

One of the issues involved with the Galileo affair is that the controversial dialogue placed the words of the pope in the mouth of a character who was portrayed as a simpleton and ridiculed. Urban VII had been a supporter of Galileo but the latter had a habit of making enemies of his supporters. In an earlier incident, he had viciously attacked a young Jesuit astronomer in print when they had been an early ally of his ideas. When some in the Vatican pointed out the circumstances of the aforementioned quotation of Urban VII, the pope stopped protecting him. Making enemies of both the pope and the Jesuits in early seventeenth century Italy was not a good career move. My guess is the idea was not to kill Galileo but to humiliate and make an example of him.

[timoneill]

Apr 10, 2016 22:50:40 GMT labarum said:

One of the issues involved with the Galileo affair is that the controversial dialogue placed the words of the pope in the mouth of a character who was portrayed as a simpleton and ridiculed. Urban VII had been a supporter of Galileo but the latter had a habit of making enemies of his supporters. In an earlier incident, he had viciously attacked a young Jesuit astronomer in print when they had been an early ally of his ideas. When some in the Vatican pointed out the circumstances of the aforementioned quotation of Urban VII, the pope stopped protecting him. Making enemies of both the pope and the Jesuits in early seventeenth century Italy was not a good career move. My guess is the idea was not to kill Galileo but to humiliate and make an example of him.

Finocchiaro makes a pretty good case that the whole "Urban was offended by being associated with a simpleton" thing actually doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I'd have to dig out the relevant argument, though I believe it was in Retrying Galileo.

But I'm still trying to get to whether he was ever in any danger of being executed, rather than why it was that he was imprisoned rather than burned. These are two separate questions.

[James Hannam]

Apr 11, 2016 7:57:23 GMT timoneill said:

But I'm still trying to get to whether he was ever in any danger of being executed, rather than why it was that he was imprisoned rather than burned. These are two separate questions.

Hi Tim,

My view of the legal issue is as follows.

It was quite hard work to be handed to the secular arm by the inquisition. You either needed to be an obstinate heretic or have offended more than once. Bruno, for instance, was both of these things and even then could have saved himself at the last minute if he had recanted again.

Galileo's conviction was the result of a plea bargain. By recanting, he was demonstrating he was not a heretic although his previous actions meant he was still vehemently suspected.

If he had refused to recant, the trial would have continued and the charge would now, I expect, have been heresy. Inquisition trials were an iterative process whereby charges could be developed as the investigation proceeded. The very fact that he refused to recant under the advice of the inquisition would have been strong evidence he was a heretic. Given the evidence against him, torture would have been a possibility but likely unnecessary since his refusal to recant could be taken as a confession.

I think it is very likely he would have been found guilty of heresy under these circumstances and then given a further chance to recant. If he didn't take it he would be locked up under close confinement, probably for some time, as the inquisition continued trying to persuade him to confess and recant. Bruno was imprisoned for ten years. If Galileo continued to stick to his guns, at some point he would have been handed to the secular arm for execution. This of course, assumes he was treated as an ordinary prisoner and ignores the political angle. And, given his age, he is more likely to have died in prison.

So yes, Galileo could have been burnt if he refused to recant.

Best wishes

James

[jonkon]

In trying to explain the reason for the 1633 trial, conventional historians have erred in focusing on the relationship between Galileo and the Pope rather than on the broader scope of the political climate the Pope was facing. This error with little doubt is a consequence of the anti-Christian bias of early historians of science, who were promoting the idea of a "war" between "Science" and "Religion." Thus they were more than eager to assume that Galileo was in fact guilty of heresy, pointing to his alleged rejection of a "literal" interpretation of Scripture, as evidenced by his Letter to Christina. This allegation ignores that the issue Galileo was facing was that the Bible documents a scientifically accurate description of the phenomenon - thus it is readily observed that it is the Sun, not the Earth, that is moving!

There was no need of an execution since the trial itself accomplished the political objective of diverting attention away from Pope Urban's support of French foreign policy. The "legal" basis of the trial, which in reality needed no justification, was minutes of the 1616 hearing that were never signed nor notarized, and thus were potentially fraudulent, much less legally binding. Executing Galileo in fact would have been an act of cold-blooded murder.

The Pope's efforts to confiscate all copies of the Dialogue were documented in Santillana's book, The Crime of Galileo. Such an effort was doomed to fail, however, because Galileo's home of Padua was under the control of the Republic of Venice, which, since the First Crusade, had every reason to thumb its nose at the Pope.

[timoneill]

Apr 11, 2016 18:04:47 GMT jonkon said:

In trying to explain ...

You don't need to "explain" that because I'm well aware of everything you said. It just wasn't relevant to the question I asked. James has answered my actual question.

[himself]

Heresy was not on the table and was not among the charges. The bill of particulars spelled out a series of piddly items, most of which vanished during the trial. The actual issue was obedience to an injunction. The whisper of heresy was something added to the Summary that was not in any of the documents of the proceedings. A chronology of the events before and after the trial, gleaned from several books on the affair, can be found here: tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/8-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-trial-and.html