The Roman Catholic Church and heliocentrism
Copernicus
It is no secret that the Roman Catholic Church helped Nicolaus Copernicus publish his 1543 book on heliocentrism, he states so himself within the first pages of the book. In the same introduction he also makes a plea to the Pope, asking for his protection from those who would no doubt challenge his views using the Bible:
And in order that the unlearned as well as the learned might see that I was not seeking to flee from the judgment of any man, I preferred to dedicate these results of my nocturnal study to Your Holiness [the Pope] rather than to anyone else; because, even in this remote corner of the earth where I live, you are held to be most eminent both in the dignity of your order and in your love of letters and even of mathematics; hence, by the authority of your judgment you can easily provide a guard against the bites of slanderers . . . .
But if perchance there are certain “idle talkers” who take it upon themselves to pronounce judgment, although wholly ignorant of mathematics, and if by shamelessly distorting the sense of some passage in Holy Writ [the Bible] to suit their purpose, they dare to reprehend and to attack my work; they worry me so little that I shall even scorn their judgments as foolhardy. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, otherwise a distinguished writer but hardly a mathematician, speaks in an utterly childish fashion concerning the shape of the Earth, when he laughs at those who have affirmed that the Earth has the form of a globe. And so the studious need not be surprised if people like that laugh at us. Mathematics is written for mathematicians; and among them, if I am not mistaken, my labours will be seen to contribute something to the ecclesiastical commonwealth, the principate of which Your Holiness now holds. (Copernicus)
He [Copernicus] dedicated the book [his 1543 book on heliocentrism] to Pope Paul III, telling the Pope that it was good to ‘follow the example of the Pythagoreans and certain others, who used to transmit philosophy’s secrets only to kinsmen and friends, not in writing but by word of mouth, as is shown by Lysis’ letter to Hipparchus’. In this preface, Copernicus also took the opportunity to criticize those who stupidly argued about mathematical topics without understanding them. In this connection, he briefly criticized Lactantius, an ancient Christian authority, noting that although he was a celebrated writer, he was not a mathematician. Copernicus complained that Lactantius spoke in a childish way about the shape of the Earth, in saying that it is ‘ridiculous’ that its shape is spherical. (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
At the insistence of Clement VII [the Pope] the material [of Copernicus] was expanded into the great work of Copernicus’ career, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which officially proposed a sun-centered theory to the world. The printed book, dedicated to Clement’s successor, Paul III, reached Copernicus just hours before his death on May 24, 1543.
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Not immediately accepted by the majority of scientists, the heliocentric theory proposed by Copernicus eventually gained universal support and led to revolutionary changes in the scientific world. Controversialists who claim the Galileo Case “proves” the Catholic Church opposed scientific advances seem reluctant to note that Copernicus’s work on the heliocentric theory would not have been completed had not Churchmen urged him on. (Wheeler)
Copernicus was a Roman Catholic. He served for a time as a canon of the Church and even obtained a doctorate in canon law or laws issued by the Church:
In reality, Copernicus was himself a Church figure. He was a canon (a church administrative role that at the time required ordination to minor orders) at his uncle’s diocese in Warmia. He held a doctorate in canon law. (Macke)
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Thorn, Poland on February 19, 1473. He was the son of a wealthy merchant. After his father’s death, he was raised by his mother’s brother, a bishop in the Catholic Church. Copernicus studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Krakow. Through his uncle’s influence Copernicus was appointed a canon (church official) of the Catholic Church. . . .
After his return to Poland, Copernicus lived in his uncle’s bishopric palace. While there he performed church duties, practiced medicine and studied astronomy. . . . Sometime between 1507 and 1515, he first circulated the principles of his heliocentric or Sun-centered astronomy. Copernicus’ observations of the heavens were made with the naked eye. . . . Copernicus did not have the tools to prove his theories. (“Nicolaus Copernicus”)
Like the Church he belonged to, Copernicus upheld tradition over the Bible. This point will become clear as we look at the presence of Egypt, Pythagoras, and Trismegistus in the history of the Church.
Egypt
The Church’s respect for Egypt can be confirmed through its Roman heritage and the actions of Popes. The Romans were fascinated with Egypt and invested great efforts in transporting heavy obelisks and other objects from there to Rome. This pattern was continued by future Popes:
Romans imported a multitude of genuine Egyptian objects and created their own “Egyptian” works: Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, built about 125–134 CE, featured an Egyptian garden with Egyptianizing statues of Antinoüs, who had been deified by Hadrian after drowning in the Nile. Romans also built pyramid tombs and worshipped Egyptian deities. Isis, revered throughout the Roman Empire and often shown holding Horus on her lap, even became a prototype for Christian images of the Virgin and Child. (Fazzini and McKercher)
During the time of the Roman emperors, many obelisks were transported from Egypt to what is now Italy. At least a dozen went to the city of Rome itself . . . . (Britannica)
The Egyptian obelisk was carved from a single piece of stone, usually red granite from the quarries at Aswān. It was designed to be wider at its square or rectangular base than at its pyramidal top, which was often covered with an alloy of gold and silver called electrum. All four sides of the obelisk’s shaft are embellished with hieroglyphs that characteristically include religious dedications, usually to the sun god, and commemorations of the rulers. (Britannica)
Obelisks were also considered by the ancient Egyptians to be sacred to the Sun-god, and they may have begun at Heliopolis, the main centre of sun worship (its ruins are near Cairo). The obelisk is a four-sided single piece of stone standing upright and terminating in a small ‘pyramid’ peak. Some pharaohs erected a pair of obelisks on either side of the entrance to a temple and called the western obelisk ‘the setting sun’ and the eastern obelisk ‘the rising sun’. The Roman Emperors were very aware of Egyptian civilisation and they brought to Rome many Egyptian obelisks. In fact, today Rome has more ancient obelisks (13) than any other city, including the largest one now surviving (the red granite Lateran obelisk). (Sidrys)
Popes reerected obelisks in Rome, and Egyptian elements reappeared in room decorations. By the mid-1600s, Bernini was designing pyramid tombs for popes, and sphinxes and obelisks littered Europe’s royal gardens. (Fazzini and McKercher)
Long before then, the obelisks of the city of Rome, which contained more ancient Egyptian obelisks than Egypt, were displaying their bold hieroglyphic inscriptions (with the exception of the uninscribed Vatican Obelisk), inspiring attempts to decipher them. These monuments have been aptly described as beacons pointing the way back to ancient Egypt. (Thompson)
Among the most important of these obelisks is the Vatican Obelisk, sitting at the center of St. Peter’s Square, a circular plaza; the obelisk/sun centered within a circle is solar symbolism that is congruent with heliocentrism. The Pope who set it there actually ordered it be exorcized to “Christianize” it and rid it of paganism:
Every Sunday [sun-day] thousands of faithful Catholics from all over the world crowd into St. Peter’s Square to hear the Pope celebrate Mass. Right in the middle of the throng is an 85-foot red granite spear [obelisk] reaching up to the sky . . . .
The Vatican Obelisk has always been a mystery. Of all the massive obelisks quarried in Egypt, the Vatican Obelisk is the only one uninscribed. No hieroglyphs tell which pharaoh quarried and erected it, and this, in itself, is a puzzle waiting to be solved. Obelisks were erected in pairs at temple entrances to proclaim the pharaoh’s power. Carved on all four faces were the king’s names and formal titles. This is where pharaoh proclaimed himself “King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Son of the Sun, The Golden Horus, Beloved of the Amun, etc., etc.” (Brier)
The show was not yet over. The Pope had ordered that a ritual of exorcism be performed on the obelisk. (Brier)
On the morning of September 26, 1586, Bishop Ferratini held a Mass and then led a procession of more than three-dozen cardinals, bishops, monsignors, and other dignitaries up the obelisk’s earthwork causeway to an altar that had been set up. Between six giant burning candles, holy water and hyssop had been laid in preparation for the ritual. . . .
The bishop purified and blessed the obelisk with holy water. Then, with his hand outstretched to the obelisk he began: “I exorcise you . . .” and performed the ritual of exorcism. (Brier)
During the Renaissance, several of the Egyptian obelisks brought over by Roman emperors were rediscovered and re-erected on the orders of the Vatican. In this way, several popes associated themselves with these glorious symbols of past victories and triumphs – although to be on the safe side, metal crucifixes were often added to the pinnacle of these pagan monuments. (Nielsen)
In addition to being a solar symbol, the obelisk was also a phallic symbol. As a previous study revealed, the Egyptians believed in a sexually-charged creation myth where their sun god Atum brought forth all created things via a sexual act. The obelisk, a sexual symbol of the sun god, reiterates that belief:
The Egyptian obelisk, a phallic symbol of Osiris-Ra, frequently bears at its apex the avian image of his solar offspring, Horus. (Religion, Ritual and)
Obelisks are among the most widely recognized symbols of ancient Egyptian architecture, arguably rivalled only by pyramids. In terms of the Egyptian religion, the obelisks represent the rays of the sun-god Re, or alternatively, the petrified semen of the creator-god Atum. There is no denying the phallic nature of the obelisk. (Nielsen)
In ancient Egypt the obelisk was a solar symbol. It pointed to the sun and punctuated sites of sun worship. Since the obelisk mimics the phallus, Egyptians conflated the former’s solar strength with the phallus’ power to generate life. See Isaiah 17:8; 27:9 for the link between the obelisk and the sun. It is no coincidence that an obelisk from the ancient Egyptian center of sun worship known as Bethshemesh resides on Piazza San Pietro, Rome: it testifies to the importance of solar symbolism to Catholic theology. The Piazza’s eight spokes stand for solar rays. (Corretti)
Re/Ra, Atum, Amun, Horus, and Osiris are all associated, in one way or another, with the sun:
The sun, as the principal force involved in the struggle for existence, took various physical forms. At Iwnw, where he had taken over Atum’s earlier cult-centre, he became Re-Atum and was worshipped as the creator of the world. As Khepri, he appeared as a dung-beetle, and was often shown propelling the sun in imitation of the way in which these beetles pushed dung-balls in front of themselves through the sand. As the symbol of renewal and self-regeneration, Khepri represented the daily rebirth of the sun, while Atum symbolized the sun as the source of all creation. As the mature sun, the god took the form of Re-Harakhte (Re in his horizon) while as Horus, he was king of gods and the predominant force in the world. Each of these different aspects of Re represented facets of the god’s own character and functions, but they all contributed to the process of life, and manifested an aspect of the creative principle of the sun. (David)
One Egyptologist suggests that almost all Egyptian symbolism, including astronomy, relates to Religion and Magic. Another Egypt specialist states that the sun was the most important element in Egyptian religion and many of their major gods were solar deities. This is why the solar disk was very frequently used in Egyptian art and it was manifested in a number of forms. (Sidrys)
The Egyptians had one god – the Sun God – and all other gods were but forms of the Sun God. (Watterson)
Pythagoras
As the early Church fathers began “Christianizing” Greek philosophy, Pythagoras was one of the first philosophers to receive special recognition. The Royal Portal of Chartres Cathedral, finished around 1160, presents him in honorable terms:
. . . a “proto-Christian” Pythagoras emerges, a kind of epitome of the medieval monk, embodying a rigorous moral stance based on strict obedience to divine law. Such a transformation, which would not have been possible without the – quite exceptional – previous approval of Pythagoras by some Church Fathers, nay his “Christianization,” had the paradoxical consequence of making him acceptable when, from the Renaissance onwards, he returned to the philosophical scene in a fully secularized, “heterodox” form. (Brill’s Companion to)
. . . because Pythagorean ideas were respectfully if not enthusiastically transmitted by Christian thinkers from Clement of Alexandria, Saints Augustine and Jerome, and Bishop Isidore of Seville onward, these ideas came to be not only accepted but transformed into the new language of Christianity, that is, Christianized. . . .
Paradoxically, this widespread respectability for Pythagoras in the medieval world allowed the doctrines of Pythagoreanism to become a stimulus for the ingenuity of its superstitions. Corrupted or not, ideas and concepts that had their roots in the Pythagoreanism of Antiquity as well as in Druidism became so embedded in medieval thinking that, it appears, they penetrated all aspects of daily life. The significance of these ideas shows that Pythagoreanism, in a dazzling array of new and varied forms, saturated medieval culture at both the intellectual and popular levels. (Joost-Gaugier)
Augustine was by far the most influential for medieval scholars. . . . In the early De ordine Augustine commends the divus [divine] Pythagoras for having considered the numerical basis of the seven liberal arts and the role of the mathematical sciences in leading the soul to philosophy . . . . (Brill’s Companion to)
The Church Fathers approved of Pythagoras for promoting universal love, teaching the immortality of the soul, and founding the sciences of number. The Royal Portal of Chartres Cathedral (ca. 1160) includes him among ancient masters of the Seven Liberal Arts, and many manuscripts depict him experimenting with the four hammers or sounding the monochord. (The Cambridge Handbook)
The cathedral school of Chartres, an institution of learning that came into its full maturity in the twelfth century, represents an important chapter in Western intellectual history and in the history of Western science. . . .
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Something of the orientation of the School of Chartres can be gleaned from the cathedral’s west façade. There each of the traditional seven liberal arts is personified in sculpture, with each discipline represented by an ancient teacher: Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero, Donatus (or, possibly, Priscian), Euclid, Ptolemy, and Pythagoras. In the 1140s, Thierry of Chartres, the school’s chancellor at the time, had supervised the construction of the west façade. Thierry was profoundly devoted to the study of the liberal arts and under his chancellorship Chartres became the most sought-after school of these venerable disciplines. (Woods)
In 1540, three years before the publishing of Copernicus’ book, the Jesuit order of the Church was formed (“Gallery”) and later produced a document called the Ratio Studiorum of 1599 outlining the importance of certain teachings in their schools. They determined that the best way to change people’s minds about certain ideas was through learning or controlling education:
The term “Ratio Studiorum” is commonly used to designate the educational system of the Jesuits; it is an abbreviation of the official title, “Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu”, i.e. “Method and System of the Studies of the Society of Jesus”. The Constitutions of the Society from the beginning enumerated among the primary objects of the Society: teaching catechism to children and the ignorant, instructing youth in schools and colleges, and lecturing on philosophy and theology in the universities. Education occupied so prominent a place that the Society could rightly be styled a teaching order. (Schwickerath)
As early is the Council of Trent, the Jesuits began to be influential. They were disciplined, able, completely devoted to the cause, and skilful propagandists. Their theology was the opposite of that of the Protestants . . . . The Jesuits acquired prestige by their missionary zeal, especially in the Far East. They became popular as confessors, because (if Pascal is to be believed) they were more lenient, except towards heresy, than other ecclesiastics. They concentrated on education, and thus acquired a firm hold on the minds of the young. (Russell)
Over time the rhetorical power of the Jesuits came in for significant criticism from both Protestant and competing Catholic quarters. Their mastery of rhetoric in multiple domains was perceived by some as wily manipulation, and Jesuits were sometimes stereotyped as intriguers who would stop at nothing to win arguments.
By far their greatest public endeavor, however, was the creation of a worldwide system of schooling, the humanistic Jesuit college and university system that became their central ministry. (The Cambridge Encyclopedia)
Their Ratio Studiorum of 1599 states:
- The class contest or exercise should include such things as correcting the mistakes which one rival may have detected in the other’s composition, questioning one another on the exercise written in the first hour, discovering and devising figures of speech, giving a repetition or illustrating the use of rules of rhetoric, of letter writing, of verse making, and of writing history, explaining some more troublesome passages of an author or of clearing up the difficulties, reporting research on the customs of the ancients and other scholarly information, interpreting hieroglyphics and Pythagorean symbols, maxims, proverbs, emblems, riddles, delivering declamations, and other similar exercises at the teacher’s pleasure. (The Jesuit Ratio)
- Competition or exercise will find a place sometimes in the correction of errors that one rival has caught in the other’s speech; sometimes presenting in turn whatever they practiced in the first hour; sometimes in distinguishing and fashioning figures of speech; sometimes in stating and applying the rules of rhetoric or letters or poems or history; sometimes in presenting the more difficult passages of authors and explaining the difficulties; sometimes in investigating issues in ancient culture and matters that belong to the field of scholarly learning; sometimes in interpreting hieroglyphics, symbols, Pythagorean doctrines, apothegms, adages, emblems, and riddles; sometimes in declaiming, and in similar activities, at the teacher’s discretion. (The Ratio Studiorum)
This peculiar encouragement of Pythagorean teachings is corroborated elsewhere:
Hieroglyphic and emblematic studies were a standard feature of the education which young patricians received at the Jesuit colleges, an extension of the humanist education program that was courtly in origin. The Ratio studiorum encouraged professors of rhetoric to teach “hieroglyphics, Pythagorean symbols, apothegms, adages, emblems, and enigmas.” Students who graduated from the Jesuit colleges knew how to “compose emblems,” to “make or solve enigmas,” and, above all, to “exercise themselves in invention.” (Jesuit Science and)
Sources also note that the framework of the Jesuits was not far different from the Pythagoreans:
His [Pythagoras] rules provided for a rigid self-examination and unquestioning submission to a master. Many authorities claim that the influence of the Pythagorean philosophy was strongly felt in Egypt and Palestine, after the time of Christ. “Certain it is that more than two thousand years before Ignatius Loyola assembled the nucleus of his great society [the Jesuits] in his subterranean chapel in the city of Paris, there was founded at Crotona, in Greece, an order of monks [the Pythagoreans] whose principles, constitution, aims, method and final end entitle them to be called ‘The Pagan Jesuits[B].’”
[B] The Pythagoreans are likened to the Jesuits probably on account of their submission to Pythagoras as Master, their love of learning and their austerities. Like the Jesuits, the Pythagorean league entangled itself with politics and became the object of hatred and violence. (Wishart)
It seems more probable that the political Pythagoreans were those who were most qualified for action, and least for speculation. And we may reasonably suppose [that] in the general of the order that skill [was present,] in turning to account the aptitudes of individuals, which two centuries ago was so conspicuous in the Jesuits; to whom, in various ways, the Pythagoreans bear considerable resemblance. All that we can be said to know about their [the Pythagoreans] political principles is, that they were exclusive and aristocratical, adverse to the control and interference of the people; a circumstance no way disadvantageous to them, since they coincided in this respect with the existing government of the city,—had not their own conduct brought additional odium [hatred] on the old aristocracy, and raised up an aggravated democratical opposition, carried to the most deplorable lengths of violence.
All the information which we possess, apocryphal as it is, respecting this memorable club [the Pythagoreans], is derived from its warm admirers; yet even their statements are enough to explain how it came to provoke deadly and extensive enmity. A stranger [Pythagoras] coming to teach new religious dogmas and observances, with a tincture [trace] of science and some new ethical ideas and phrases, though he would obtain some zealous votaries [followers], would also bring upon himself a certain measure of antipathy. (Grote)
Pythagoras may have come to Kroton strictly as a preacher of philosophy; but his precepts and his discipline found here a kindly soil, and many of the noblest citizens became his followers. Formed into a strict, if not an ascetic, brotherhood, retaining their property, yet paying implicit obedience to their general, the members of this society [the Pythagoreans] resembled in some important points the great order of the Jesuits; and like the Jesuits, they acquired, whether justly or not, the reputation of using their religious organisation as a means for gaining political power and controlling the machinery of government. (Cox)
Trismegistus
As Hermetic writings began circulating in the first centuries, notable Church fathers approved of them, making mention of them in their writings:
. . . as part of the Graeco-Roman world, Egypt and Hermeticism were deeply rooted in the cultural self-awareness of late classical antiquity. With the end of the ancient world, however, Hermeticism largely lost these roots. In the fifth century the Roman Empire, or at least the western part of it, collapsed. After Clovis converted to Christianity, the geopolitical center of gravity shifted north of the Alps. In 529 the emperor Justinian closed the Academy of Athens, symbolically putting an end to antiquity. With the end of the ancient tradition, the survival of Hermeticism was endangered. Still it did not disappear entirely from cultural consciousness, especially because the Church Fathers held it in high esteem, and also because Arabic scholars cultivated the image of Hermes Trismegistus. (Ebeling)
—Fragments of Hermetic texts are also preserved in the writings of the Church Fathers. Tertullian in the third century, Lactantius in the early fourth century, and Augustine in the early fifth century handed down Hermetic dicta or supplied accounts of Hermetic doctrine. (Ebeling)
Lactantius . . . made intensive use of Hermetic writings . . . . He praised Hermes for the extraordinary knowledge that had rightfully earned him the title “Thrice-great.” This sage, whose antiquity and dignity outshone even the Greek philosophers, wrote many books about knowledge of the divine, and in them he formulated significant observations that anticipated Christianity:
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For Lactantius, Hermeticism and Christianity do not contradict each other. (Ebeling)
Like Clement [of Alexandria], Lactantius understood Hermeticism, as well as Platonism, which was related to it, as an overture to Christianity. . . .
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. . . With Lactantius and Clement, a Christian could admire Hermeticism as a prelude to Christianity. (Ebeling)
Church approval of Trismegistus is very evident in several decorative projects that the Church took up prior to the publishing of Copernicus’ book (“Floor”; “Borgia Apartment”). Although Augustine of Hippo was one of the few Church fathers who had reservations about Trismegistus on account of the magic present in his writings, Augustine’s view was not the majority:
In Augustine’s eyes, the Sibyl [Greek prophetess] was no fit companion for a Christian as long as she kept company with Orpheus and Hermes – though ten Sibyls [Greek prophetesses] would later surround the great image of Hermes [Trismegistus] carved in the pavement of the cathedral of Siena in 1488 by Giovanni di Stefano and also accompany the prophets on Michelangelo’s ceiling of 1512. One reason for Augustine’s ambivalence about the Sibyl was that Lactantius and others had linked her books with Orphica, Hermetica and Chaldaean Oracles which condoned the magical practices that Augustine thought to be the snares of demons. (Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek)
For Augustine, unlike Lactantius and Clement, Hermeticism and Christianity were irreconcilable. (Ebeling)
The fifteenth-century mosaic from the floor of the cathedral of Siena, attributed to Giovanni di Stefano, depicts Hermes in connection with the nine Sibyls, and thus as a prophetic harbinger of Christ. (Ebeling)
The diffusion of these ideas can readily be illustrated, even in the Church. Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) had the Borgia apartments in the Vatican adorned with a fresco full of hermetic symbols and astrological signs. In the entrance to Siena Cathedral, one can still see, in a work on the marble floor dating from 1488, the figure of Hermes Trismegistus as a bearded patriarch. Renaissance writers also regarded the Hermetic treatises as unique memorials of a prisca theologia (ancient theology) in the sense of the divine revelation granted to the oldest sages of mankind and handed down through a great chain of initiates. It was generally agreed that Hermes Trismegistus was a principal among these ancient sages together with Moses, Orpheus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and others in varying orders of descent. (Goodrick-Clarke)
. . . the Siena marbles display Hermes proudly as a herald of Christ. In this sacred spot that houses a heathen god [Trismegistus], what other Hermetic image might have been shown? Is it thinkable that the good burghers of Siena wanted the faithful of their town to pray with an Egyptian wizard, a cousin of the sorcerers who battled Moses and Aaron? (Copenhaver, Magic in Western)
. . . the Pope shared a passion for all things Hermetic. The Borgia Pope even commissioned tell-tale decorations for his personal rooms in the Vatican – the Appartamento Borgia – which survive to this day. In the series of frescoes on mythological themes by Pinturicchio, Hermes Trismegistus is depicted twice, possibly three times if an image of Mercury slaying the giant Argus is intended as a veiled reference to him.
The first Hermetic reference in Alexander’s [the Pope] apartment is in a series of pictures showing the pagan and Jewish prophets who allegedly foresaw Christ’s coming. So far this is conventional: images or statues of Hermes Trismegistus appear in several cathedrals for the same reason. More unexpected is a painting in which Hermes and Moses are shown sitting before Isis, implying that Alexander accepted Hermes’ equal status to Moses and that both drew their wisdom from Egypt. (Picknett and Prince)
. . . [The Appartamento Borgia shows] Hermes Trismegistus and Moses receiving divine inspiration from the Egyptian goddess Isis – somewhat unusual for a pope’s personal rooms. But this does show the extreme veneration that even the head of the Church accorded the demi-god [Trismegistus] of the Hermeticists. (Picknett and Prince)
These frescoes [in the Appartamento Borgia of the Pope] were studied by F. Saxl, who pointed out that within an orthodox programme there are strange allusions. In the first room are twelve Sibyls, uttering their prophecies of the coming of Christ, and twelve Hebrew prophets. I would suggest that Lactantius and the Siena pavement teach us to look for the greatest Gentile prophet, Hermes Trismegistus, as likely to be present in the Room of the Sibyls [in the Appartamento], and I think he is there, as the prophetic figure with the zodiac who ends the series of the planets, above the Sibyls. . . .
But very strange are the Egyptian scenes in the Room of the Saints [in the Appartamento]. The emblem of the Borgia family was the bull, and the Borgia bull becomes identified in this series with Apis, the bull worshipped by the Egyptians as the image of Osiris, the sun god[.] It is by a series of allusive shifts in meaning[,] as the frescoes tell their story[,] that the Egyptian Apis bull, or the sun, becomes identified with the Borgia bull, or the Pope as the sun. (Yates)
The Galileo paradox
Galileo Galilei is a curious figure that comes into this otherwise clear line of history to muddy the waters. As we have seen thus far, the Church approved of Egypt, Pythagoras, and Trismegistus, and helped Copernicus publish his book. Galileo found himself in trouble with the Church when he published a 1632 book in defense of heliocentrism. This book, in fact, had been a petition of the current Pope, his friend:
Galileo’s Dialogue on the Great World Systems [book], published in 1632, was written at the urging of the pope . . . . (Woods)
There are several oddities in the official narrative that do not add up. Foremost, Copernicus had done the same about 90 years earlier without any repercussions from the Church. Galileo, like Copernicus, was a fan of the Pythagoreans:
Did Galileo hold any Pythagorean beliefs other than the Earth’s motion? Yes – quietly, secretly, he did. In April 1615 Galileo confided to one of his supporters:
It seems to me that in nature there is found a most spiritual substance, most tenuous and most rapid, which, spreading itself throughout the universe, penetrates into all without distinction, warming, vivifying and giving fecundity to all living creatures; and about this spirit of which the senses themselves show that the body of the Sun is its foremost reservoir, from which an immense light expands throughout the universe, accompanied by this spirit that heats and penetrates into all vegetative bodies, and gives them life and fecundity.
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Galileo connected these beliefs to the Sun’s centrality. He wrote that the Sun is located at the centre of the universe precisely ‘because’ there it can receive, focus and strengthen the ‘fertilizing spirit’ to project it outwards. He said that sunspots might well be ‘nourishments’ or ‘excrements’ of the Sun. . . . And Galileo noted, ‘I could provide many testimonies from philosophers and serious writers, in favour of the marvellous force and energy of this spirit.’ (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
Isaac Newton would employ similar language in the seventeenth century to describe his concept of the force of gravity:
. . . Newton identified gravity as:
a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them; by its force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous; and electrical [i.e., electrified] bodies act at greater distances, repelling as well as attracting neighboring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies. . . .
Newton saw the actions of this “most subtle spirit” as functioning in harmony with the reasons God had placed the planets in their respective orbital positions. (Henson)
One makes another great, yet not uncommon, historical-contextual error if one underestimates or discounts Newton’s use of the ancient wisdom of alchemy, just as one must not discount the influence of his theology when formulating the Principia’s syntheses. Newton’s prime alchemical concern was to find evidence of an active vegetative principle sought by the great alchemists and natural philosophers whose works he so diligently studied. This vegetative principle was a secret, animating, universal spirit by which God continuously crafted the universe according to providential design. (Henson)
Galileo’s talk of solar fecundity is also echoed by Copernicus who states the following in his book:
The Earth moreover is fertilized by the sun and conceives offspring every year. (Copernicus)
It is noteworthy that the Egyptian obelisks littered throughout Rome also represent solar fecundity/fertility.
Although Copernicus did not explicitly name the master Pythagoras in his book and instead referred to his followers, Galileo took it a step further:
But in the proceedings against Galileo this idea [heliocentrism] became described as ‘Pythagorean’. Galileo himself had attributed it to ‘Pythagoras, and all of his sect’. Copernicus and Kepler had merely credited the Pythagoreans, but Foscarini and Galileo took an extra step, they gifted the credit to Pythagoras himself. Others too, like Thomas Digges, had not distinguished between the Sun and the ‘central fire’ of the Pythagoreans . . . . (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
Galileo wrote that ‘with absolute necessity’ the Pythagoreans were right that the planets orbit the Sun. While Copernicus had credited some Pythagoreans, Galileo took it a step further: he gifted credit to Pythagoras. (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
Johannes Kepler, a contemporary of Galileo, affirmed this belief as well:
Kepler had dubbed Pythagoras “the grandfather of all Copernicans [heliocentrists],” . . . . (Ferguson)
Kepler also believed that the Pythagoreans’ central fire (the Hearth discussed in a previous study) was a veiled reference to the actual sun. By this implying that the Pythagoreans understood Copernican cosmology and were doing what secretive sects normally did, concealing their grand teachings:
This is the reasoning of the Pythagoreans according to Aristotle: the more worthy place is due to the most worthy and most precious body. Now the sun—for which they used the word “fire,” as sects purposely hiding their teachings—is worthier than the Earth and is the most worthy and most precious body in the whole world . . . . (Kepler)
And accordingly we, following the advice of Aristotle, have picked out the sun; and neither the Pythagoreans in their mystical sense nor Aristotle himself are against us. And when we ask in what place in the world the sun is situated, Copernicus, as being skilled in the knowledge of the heavens, shows us that the sun is in the midpart [center]. (Kepler)
In 1633, Galileo’s book was placed on a blacklist and he was sentenced to house arrest for the remaining few years of his life. Oddly enough, the sentence given to him was very merciful, considering the Church’s history handling past heretics. In the aftermath, a Jesuit theologian moved to explain the decision:
On June 22, 1633, at the Dominican convent of S.Maria sopra Minerva, kneeling down before the cardinals and other officials of the Holy Office, Galileo heard the sentence of condemnation and then read the formula of abjuration. The Dialogue [his book] was put on the Index of Forbidden Books, and Galileo was condemned to house arrest in his residence near Florence, until his death on January 8,1642 [sic].
As a whole, Galileo’s process was carried out in an objective way and with unusual consideration paid to Galileo (who was spared the prison at the Holy Office and torture). (Encyclopedia of the)
The trial occurred in 1633, with the Pope himself presiding. Galileo’s attempt at a plea bargain was rejected, and he was sentenced to house arrest after publicly abjuring the heresies in the Copernican system. (Oddly, those heresies were never specifically outlined.) (The Cambridge Encyclopedia)
In the summer of 1633, Melchior Inchofer, a Jesuit theologian who had testified against Galileo published a book justifying the Catholic opposition to the heliocentric theory, “to rally everyone as soldiers of religion.” Among various objections, Inchofer complained that “since the Pythagoreans have gradually come to oppose the faith, it must be shown that the truth is found in the Scriptures, and as our major authors knew, is opposed to them.” He required that “the Copernican theory and its related Pythagorean philosophy should not be taught at all.” The Commissary General of the Roman Curia promptly approved the book for publication, noting, “This theologian has given a Christian refutation of these Pythagoreans. And he shows rightly that mathematics and the human sciences should be subordinated to the rule of Sacred Scripture.” (Martinez, Science Secrets: The)
What a momentous reversal from the Church! What had changed for such a strong position to have been warranted? Considering the tame punishment of Galileo and the Church’s past approval of Pythagoras, the most pressing danger at the time would have been the towering influence of the Protestant Reformation. The Jesuit statement above sure sounds a lot more like a Protestant speaking and not a Roman Catholic. If the Church did not censor Galileo in light of a growing public suspicion over the origin of heliocentrism, it would have been in greater trouble. By 1616, Copernican cosmology had in fact been labeled “the false Pythagorean doctrine.” Someone had to take one for the team in 1633 and that was Galileo. Ironically, the teaching of a spherical world, which was also distinctly Pythagorean, was not touched during these polemics and continued on, unquestioned:
Yet it seems that he [Copernicus] practised their [the Pythagoreans] secrecy as he painstakingly developed the [heliocentric] theory that he attributed to them. And in writing, by explicitly referring to the Pythagoreans, he effectively connected the new and radical astronomy to the legendary pagan cult. In turn, the critics and admirers of Copernicus both linked his theory to the Pythagoreans. (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
. . . sympathizers with Copernican cosmology in the early seventeenth century were referred to as “Pythagoreans,” and Pythagoras and his sources came to be identified as a historical fount. (Ben-Zaken)
Consider again the Decree of the Inquisition of 1616, which banned “the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture.” (Martinez, Science Secrets: The)
Thus, the Pythagoreans seem to have assumed the existence of a mass of fire at the center of the world. . . . Beyond the earth, lie the moon, sun, and the other planets, all moving around the central fire. . . .
. . .
Because of the attribution of such opinions and beliefs to the Pythagoreans, the term “Pythagorean” became synonymous with the heliocentric system of Copernicus during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in Galileo’s struggle with the Church. (Grant)
Although viciously attacked by Protestants for its alleged opposition to Holy Scripture, the Copernican system was subject to no formal Catholic censure until the Galileo case. (Woods)
The Church, sensitive to Protestant charges that Catholics did not pay proper regard to the Bible, hesitated to permit the suggestion that the literal meaning of Scripture—which at times appeared to imply a motionless Earth—should be set aside in order to accommodate an unproven scientific theory. Yet even here the Church was not altogether inflexible. (Woods)
Whereas the Church had not censured Copernicus’s book previously, it now censured it, partly because the cardinals had become more intolerant towards any deviations from the official interpretation of scriptures. The Catholics had lost half of Europe to the Protestant reformers, so the Catholic bureaucracy became increasingly authoritarian. (Martinez, Burned Alive: Giordano)
. . . representatives of the Society of Jesus [the Jesuits] said that Galileo’s vile book was “more harmful to the Holy Church than the writings of Luther and Calvin.” But why? . . . The Catholic Church had lost half of Europe because of the influence of Luther and Calvin. (Martinez, Science Secrets: The)
Thus it is understandable that some Jesuits denounced Galileo’s book as more vile and harmful than the writings of the heretical reformers. At least the Protestants did not defend a pagan system of the world [the heliocentric system]. (Martinez, Science Secrets: The)
In a masterful move the Church assumed the conservative position, placing the Bible over tradition, something it had never done before. The results of this play had ramifications centuries after in ways that are only now apparent. For example, Galileo, a Roman Catholic, was eventually counted as an honorary Protestant in the court of public opinion for having stood up to the tyranny of the Church. This is a story that is often recounted today without examining the finer details:
The one-sided version of the Galileo affair with which most people are familiar is very largely to blame for the widespread belief that the Church has obstructed the advance of scientific inquiry. But even if the Galileo incident had been every bit as bad as people think it was, John Henry Cardinal Newman, the celebrated nineteenth-century convert from Anglicanism, found it revealing that this is practically the only example that ever comes to mind. (Woods)
The waters were muddied further by the desire of these Protestant writers not to give an ounce of credit to Catholics. It suited them to maintain that nothing of value had been taught at universities before the Reformation. Galileo, who thanks to his trial before the Inquisition was counted as an honorary Protestant, was about the only Catholic natural philosopher to be accorded a place in English-language histories of science. (Hannam)
Individuals and institutions that were seen as impeding the progress of science, especially through their adherence to Aristotelian principles [the older Greek cosmology], were dismissed as villains in this story. The Catholic Church was a blatantly evil institution because it not only opposed Copernican astronomy but persecuted Galileo for promoting it. (Rabin)
Working in the shadows
What went on behind the scenes after the Galileo trial of 1633 is just as interesting. After the trial, some Roman Catholic scientists continued to espouse the idea of a moving world/earth without much trouble:
A 1633 decree [of the Church] did so further, excluding all mention of the earth’s motion from scholarly discussion. But because Catholic scientists like Father Roger Boscovich continued to use the idea of a moving earth in their work, scholars speculate that the 1633 decree was likely “aimed personally at Galileo Galilei” and not at Catholic scientists as a whole. (Woods)
Perhaps the most curious and famous of these was the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, a staunch admirer of mystical Egypt and Trismegistus:
The last practitioner of speculative music, in the classic, Pythagorean sense, was a Geneva-born Jesuit antiquarian named Athanasius Kircher. Whereas Robert Fludd was a dyed-in-the-wool devotee of Hermetism, Kircher, a churchman who carried out most of his work in Rome in the era immediately following the execution of Giordano Bruno and actually during the trial and condemnation of Galileo, had to be very careful about not straying into theological error. The Society of Jesus [the Jesuits], in its way almost as mysterious and aloof an organization as the Rosicrucians, gave Kircher a measure of independence and therefore intellectual freedom, but his greatest protection was afforded him by the extreme erudition of his works.
. . .
Like Fludd, Kircher was an aficionado of all things Egyptian and a firm believer in the antiquity of Hermes Trismegistus, whom he placed as a contemporary of Abraham (a rather strange belief, it might seem, nearly half a century after Casaubon’s debunking of the Corpus Hermeticum). He wrote a number of fat books purporting to decipher the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Kircher’s “translations” were pure invention; he discovered sublime Neoplatonic hymns in the texts of obelisks that, 170 years later, when Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone, were revealed to be nothing more than a boring list of rulers and their conquests. In one treatise on the subject, the Oedipus Aegyptiacus (the strange title presumably refers to the riddling nature of the hieroglyphs), Kircher indulges in a final burst of enthusiastic Hermetism, enumerating for the last time in a work of any intellectual respectability the Ficinian catalogue of the great teachers of divine wisdom, commencing with Hermes [Trismegistus], followed by Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and the others. (James)
Kircher was careful to sing the same tune as the Church in public, but admitted something entirely different to friends in the following record:
In 1633, Kircher had admitted to friends in Avignon that several of the most prominent Jesuit astronomers, including Clavius and Scheiner, actually believed in a Sun-centered, Copernican universe; the tone of Kircher’s remark suggests that he must have shared these Copernican convictions as well. Whatever these men’s private beliefs may have been, a conservative Jesuit curriculum, adopted in 1599 [the Ratio Studiorum], compelled them to teach an Earth-centered cosmology, as Kircher explained:
The good father Athanasius [Kircher] . . . could not restrain himself from telling us, in the presence of Father Ferrand, that Father Malaperti and Father Clavius themselves in no way disapproved the opinion of Copernicus—indeed they would have espoused it openly had they not been pressed and obliged to write according to the premises of Aristotle [the older Greek cosmology in the Ratio Studiorum]—and that Father Scheiner himself did not comply except under compulsion and by obedience.
. . . For his first twenty years in Rome, Kircher refused adamantly to write specifically on the subject of cosmology . . . . (Athanasius Kircher: The)
The very Ratio Studiorum mentioned earlier, although it contained approval of Pythagorean teachings, the official cosmology it endorsed was that of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, which posited a stationary spherical world. This limitation may have held the Jesuits and the Church back, but it had the unintended benefit of also protecting them from associations with Pythagorean cosmology, something Copernicans were being accused of. Secretly, however, Jesuits like Kircher were supporters of Copernicus’ work, and, in turn, also Galileo’s. The time was not right to endorse those opinions publicly like before with Protestants in the way.
Kircher also believed in a solar “panspermia.” This panspermia emanated from the sun, like a sort of cosmic sperm, and fertilized everything that exists:
. . . [Kircher’s book] described panspermia not as a passive quality of the womblike Earth, but as an active quality carried on the liquid fire by which the Sun’s rays penetrated liquid space to reach the Earth’s surface:
The whole mass of this solar globe is imbued, not with one single property, but rather with a certain universal seminal power (panspermatica quadam virtute), by means of which, as the nature of the various parts of the sun, in various ways, hides its riches within the hidden bowels of the Solar World, a fiery liquid, blended in various ways, touches things below by radiant diffusion . . . and produces various effects.
Fertility, in other words, was projected like light and heat on the rays of the Sun. (Athanasius Kircher: The)
. . . Kircher observes that awareness of panspermia first developed in ancient Egypt, and it was symbolized by that ubiquitous Egyptian image of the scarab beetle rolling his ball of dung:
The figure of a scarab with spread wings is taken from the primeval school of Egyptian mystagogues [mystics], which they called the sun-god . . . because of the similarity and analogy between the work of this beetle and the work of the sun. . . . For just as the scarab gives life and fertility to his ball while rolling it from East to West by infusing it with seed, so the sun-god, by orbiting the globe, gives it life and fertility by the means of the same panspermia rerum, and fills it with every kind of thing.
The scarab and his ball of dung thus provided a vivid demonstration of Kircher’s conviction that putrefaction bred life, by spontaneous generation as well as sexual reproduction; his own fertile imagination thereby matched that of those ancient Egyptians who had originally turned a ball of dung into a symbol of the Sun. (Athanasius Kircher: The)
Like was traditional of Jesuits, Kircher employed cunning arguments to defend his fanciful ideas of ancient Egypt and panspermia. Unlike Galileo, Kircher was a Jesuit priest and was allowed to wield the Bible more liberally:
But the cosmic sperm of panspermia rerum also exploited a verbal distinction with a subtlety that might only be called Jesuitical [cunning]. Kircher employed a Greco-Roman compound phrase, panspermia rerum, to describe the universal seeds of things, but he also used the phrase semina rerum, and this was one of the terms by which the Epicurean poet-philosopher Lucretius had referred to atoms . . . .
. . .
. . . He continually quoted the Bible in support of his contentions, no matter how radical, and unlike Galileo, who as a layman was discouraged from speculating on theology and exegesis of the Bible, Kircher was a Jesuit priest, entitled to expound on theology and the Bible to his heart’s content. But Kircher also brought in Talmud, scarabs, obelisks, and experimental evidence, and he cowed his opponents with Babel towers of fact, working the subtleties of argument with the deftness that has been proverbially associated with his Order [the Jesuits]. (Athanasius Kircher: The)
For another example, consider the pressure on Kircher not to speak in favour of the Copernican model of the universe, after Galileo’s silencing and house arrest (1633-42). Yet the Father [Kircher] cunningly conveyed his heliocentric views in a piece of visionary fiction, Itinerarium exstaticum coeleste (1656), and in doing so he taught that stars were like suns in an overwhelmingly vast universe and that our sun unleashed the ‘panspermic’ powers of the earth . . . showing better than anyone else at the same time—and it is a neglected point—that pro-Copernicanism [heliocentrism] was not usually espoused simply out of ‘scientific rationalism’. (Fletcher)
A new Protestantism
The Church remained an endorser of Aristotelian cosmology until it was finally safe to assume the Copernican. This was a long process as only the passing of several generations would guarantee a more certain outcome:
It took more than two hundred years to see the works of Copernicus and of Galileo removed from the Index of Forbidden Books (1835). It took another three hundred fifty years for the frank recognition of the Church’s responsibilities for its unjust treatment of Galileo made by Pope John Paul II in 1979 and later, in a conclusive way, in 1992. (Encyclopedia of the)
Though Copernicus’s work was published in 1543, . . . its influence began to make itself felt only later in the XVII [seventeenth] century, by way of a dispute lasting for approximately two hundred years. (The Reception of)
To achieve sweeping acceptance of heliocentrism, the very obstacle that was in the way, Protestants, had to endorse it first. Remarkably, this is precisely what happened in the centuries that followed the Galileo trial. Galileo became a Protestant icon of sorts and, with time, the pagan origin of “the false Pythagorean doctrine” or heliocentrism was forgotten:
In the long run it was Protestantism which for semi-technical reasons had an elasticity that enabled it to make alliance with the scientific and the rationalist movements, however. That process in its turn greatly altered the character of Protestantism from the closing years of the seventeenth century . . . . (Butterfield)
From the beginning of the 17th century, this problem [of heliocentrism] was continuously discussed [in Polish schools], though in various ways, from negation, through a gradual acceptance, finally to a complete approval at protestant schools from 1722, and at Catholic schools from 1782. (The Reception of)
Catholic schools in Poland up to the middle of the 18th century, rather carefully observed the Aristotle-scholastic line in lectures on natural science. Protestant schools were much more liberal in this respect. (The Reception of)
Around the middle of the 18th century, Jesuit professors began to depart more and more distinctly from the principles of Aristotelian and scholastic science, and to accept elements of modern philosophy and natural history. The process neither proceeded easily nor in all centres uniformly. . . . Meanwhile, the new science was a product of laymen, mostly of the Protestant persuasion. (The Reception of)
In the course of the progress of knowledge, modern astronomy supplied more and more views controversial with the Bible. This especially concerned the heliocentric theory. Many verses of the Bible clearly imply that the Earth is immovable and by God fixed once and for ever in its foundations, while the Sun is in motion. In such a controversial situation the only way of preserving the authority of the Bible, and at the same time of accepting the results of the discoveries of modern natural sciences was to recognize an allegoric, metaphoric interpretation of the verses of the Bible concerning natural phenomena. The traditions of such a metaphoric interpretation of the Bible go back in Christian philosophy to St. Augustin. To this tradition Galileo referred in his well known letter of 1615 to Christine, Duchess of Tuscany. (The Reception of)
The earlier triumph of the Copernican system in the Protestant milieus was due in large measure to the greater liberalism of the more enlightened part of Protestant theologians on questions of allegorical interpretation of the Bible . . . . (The Reception of)
From this period also there developed in a remarkable way and with extraordinary speed the tendency to a new type of Protestantism—the more liberal type . . . . It was a Protestantism married to the rationalising movement, and so different from the original Protestantism that it now requires an effort of historical imagination to discover what Martin Luther had in mind. (Butterfield)
The idea that the Catholic Church was opposed to science really began with the trial of Galileo in 1633. The trial became the supreme symbol of conflict between religion and science, and it was used by Protestants and anticlericals to argue that Catholicism was opposed to science specifically and intellectual development in general. This criticism was ironic since the biblical literalism eventually used to condemn Galileo was more characteristic of Protestantism than Catholicism. . . . by the late seventeenth century, Galileo was looked on as a martyr to freedom of thought against papal despotism in Protestant countries. (Burns)
Although the Protestant Reformers began a great work, placing the Bible first with their motto “Sola Scriptura” (meaning “the Scriptures alone”), the Reformers stopped reforming. They did not do away entirely with the Greek heritage that had been carried by the Church for centuries, including its cosmology:
The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Its sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. (Russell)
The end result of Galileo’s trial
Popular retellings of these events often suggest that the survival of true science was at stake in the Galileo trial, but even Jesuit priest and astronomer George V. Coyne admits this was not the case:
In his detailed study of the origins of modern atheism Michael Buckley (Buckley 1987) concludes that it was paradoxically precisely the attempt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to establish a rational basis for religious belief through arguments derived from philosophy and the natural sciences that led to the corruption of religious belief. Religion yielded to the temptation to root its own existence in the rational certitudes characteristic of the natural sciences. . . . Although the Galileo case, as it is called, is thought to provide the classical example of confrontation between science and religion—actually in the trial of 1633 science was not at the table—it is really in the misappropriation of modern science by such as Isaac Newton to mistakenly establish the foundations for religious belief that we find the roots of a much more deep seated confrontation. From these roots, in fact, sprang the divorce between science and religion in the form of modern atheism.
Thus science served to corrupt religious belief. (Georges Lemaître: Life)
This important observation is also echoed by other scholars:
The condemnation of Galileo in 1616 and again in 1633 as “vehemently suspected of heresy” was more important symbolically than intrinsically, a sign of the alienation between science and theology. (Marty et al.)
Now the Bible would be forced to take a back seat and accept the teachings of the modern scientist, not the other way around. Never would it interfere again with the conclusions of the intellectual. When the two were found not to be in agreement, such as with cosmology, either the Scriptures were entirely discarded (giving rise to atheism) or they were allegorized (giving rise to liberal Protestantism).
Confessions from Galileo
It is worth reviewing Galileo’s own words to determine if this saint of science was really so inclined toward the Bible as some think. In a number of lengthy letters, he wrote:
. . . I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures . . . . (“The Authority of”)
. . . it vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures . . . . (“The Authority of”)
. . . I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages . . . . (“Letter to the”)
For that reason it appears that nothing physical . . . ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages . . . . (“Letter to the”)
Galileo viewed the Bible as “a dreadful weapon” and called for certain measures to be taken against those who wielded it or dared to exhibit it in arguments:
If I may speak my opinion freely, I should say further that it would perhaps fit in better with the decorum and majesty of the sacred writings to take measures for preventing every shallow and vulgar writer from giving to his compositions (often grounded upon foolish fancies) an air of authority by inserting in them passages from the Bible . . . . (“Letter to the”)
. . . why do they [Galileo’s opponents], in the thick of the battle, betake themselves to a dreadful weapon [the Bible] which cannot be turned aside, and seek to vanquish the opponent by merely exhibiting it? (“Letter to the”)
Some credit must be given to Galileo here for unintentionally affirming Scripture:
Hebrews 4:12
King James Version
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
He tells us himself about the special significance of Pythagoras on his beliefs:
No one should be scorned in physical disputes for not holding to the opinions which happen to please other people best, especially concerning problems which have been debated among the greatest philosophers for thousands of years. One of these is the stability of the sun mobility of the earth, a doctrine believed by Pythagoras and all his followers . . . . (“Letter to the”)
Speaking of Copernicus, he called him the “restorer and confirmer” of heliocentrism, verifying for us once again the antiquity of the idea:
In order to facilitate their designs, they [Galileo’s opponents] seek so far as possible (at least among the common people) to make this opinion [heliocentrism] seem new and to belong to me alone. They pretend not to know that its author, or rather its restorer and confirmer, was Nicholas Copernicus; and that he was not only a Catholic, but a priest and a canon. (“Letter to the”)
Further, they [Galileo’s opponents] have endeavoured to make the theory [heliocentrism] peculiar to myself, ignoring the fact that the author, or rather restorer, of the doctrine was Nicholas Copernicus, a Catholic, and a much-esteemed priest . . . . (“The Authority of”)
Galileo also reassured that the Church had no apparent problem with heliocentrism prior to his theatrical trial:
When printed, the book [of Copernicus] was accepted by the holy Church, and it has been read and studied by everyone without the faintest hint of any objection ever being conceived against its doctrines. (“Letter to the”)
And to ban Copernicus now . . . after this opinion [heliocentrism] has been allowed and tolerated for these many years . . . . (“Letter to the”)
If I am correct, it will stand them [my opponents] in no stead to go running to the Bible to cover up their inability to understand (let alone resolve) their opponents’ arguments, for the opinion which they fight [heliocentrism] has never been condemned by the holy Church. (“Letter to the”)
Besides, it is not enough to say that the [Church] fathers accept the Ptolemaic doctrine; it is necessary to prove that they condemned the Copernican [heliocentrism]. Was the Copernican doctrine ever formally condemned as contrary to the Scriptures? (“The Authority of”)
Conclusion
The Roman Catholic Church played its important part in the revival of Pythagorean/Copernican cosmology. Like the chameleon, it shifted and changed its color when it was necessary to retain its ecclesiastical authority. Under its sincere guise were the machinations of Jesuits and Roman Catholic scientists eager to adopt the new Copernican cosmology. They achieved this not in a day or a year, but over several generations as the Reformers stopped reforming. The Church now proudly wears the success of Copernicus on her sleeves, something she had to temporarily put off for what seemed like a brief moment in history.
Nevertheless it was a churchman, Nicholas Copernicus, who first advanced the contrary doctrine that the sun and not the earth is the centre of our system, round which our planet revolves, rotating on its own axis. His great work, "De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium", was published at the earnest solicitation of two distinguished churchmen, Cardinal Schömberg and Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Culm. It was dedicated by permission to Pope Paul III in order, as Copernicus explained, that it might be thus protected from the attacks which it was sure to encounter on the part of the "mathematicians" (i.e. philosophers) for its apparent contradiction of the evidence of our senses, and even of common sense. He added that he made no account of objections which might be brought by ignorant wiseacres on Scriptural grounds. Indeed, for nearly three quarters of a century no such difficulties were raised on the Catholic side, although Luther and Melanchthon condemned the work of Copernicus in unmeasured terms. Neither Paul III, nor any of the nine popes who followed him, nor the Roman Congregations raised any alarm, and, as has been seen, Galileo himself in 1597, speaking of the risks he might run by an advocacy of Copernicanism, mentioned ridicule only and said nothing of persecution. (Gerard)
By the time of his trial, Galileo was sixty-nine years old. Throughout his life he had counted churchmen among his most ardent supporters, and, despite his tactlessness toward the Jesuits, he still had powerful ecclesiastical friends. . . . However, because he was a famous philosopher, and not some village witch, he never spent a day in jail and was housed in luxury during his hearings. On the final day of the trial, the Inquisitors knew beforehand that Galileo had decided to retract his forbidden statements. The threat of torture that was read to him was purely a legal formality. This does not of course make the action justifiable, but it is important to understand that the whole business was a lot less dramatic than is often imagined. There was no one busy in the basement stoking a pyre or oiling the rack. On the appointed day, Galileo formally abjured his beliefs, and the inquisitors let him go.
That the Church never intended to hurt Galileo or to interfere with his scientific work is shown by the fact that his punishment was to spend the last years of his life under house arrest at his own villa. . . . While house arrest is certainly a curtailment of liberty, it hardly constitutes a war against science. Those who bristle at the treatment of Galileo should spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of women burned at the stake as witches. (Wertheim)
The error of the theologians of the time [concerning Galileo], when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. (“Address to the”)
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