)

1633 Letter Resolves the Legend About the Galileo Case, Says Vatican Aide: Urban VIII Was Sensitive Toward Astronomer's Health, Document Indicates (Zenit.org, , AUG. 21, 2003)

A recently discovered letter confirms that Pope Urban VIII was concerned that the case brought against Galileo Galilei be speedily resolved given the astronomer's frail health.

The letter was discovered days ago by historian Francesco Beretta, professor of the history of Christianity of the German University of Freiburg. He found it in the archives of the former Holy Office, now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [...]

In a past interview with ZENIT, Cardinal Poupard said that "of course, Galileo suffered much; but the historical truth is that he was condemned only to 'formalem carcerem' -- a kind of house arrest. Several judges refused to endorse the sentence, and the Pope at the time did not sign it."

"Galileo was able to continue to work in his science and died on Jan. 8, 1642, in his home in Arcetri, near Florence," the cardinal added. "Viviani, who stayed with him during his illness, testified that he died with philosophical and Christian firmness, at 77 years of age."

The Vatican commission that served to rehabilitate Galileo stated that "the abjuration of the Copernican system by the scientist was due essentially to his religious personality, which tried to obey the Church even if the latter was in error. Galileo did not want to be a heretic; he did not want to be exposed to eternal damnation and therefore accepted the abjuration so as not to sin," Archbishop Amato said.

Following the commission's investigation and the Holy Father's rehabilitation of the famous astronomer, Galileo's case can be considered closed, the archbishop said.

This episode, he concluded, has taught us not to highlight "the opposition but rather the harmony that must reign" between reason and faith, "the two wings with which the Christian can fly to God," as "John Paul II has synthesized it in the encyclical 'Fides et Ratio.'"

In the end, of course, there is and must be harmony.

MORE:
Contrarian's Contrarian: Galileo's Science Polemics (GEORGE JOHNSON, August 12, 2003, NY Times)

Arthur Koestler, an iconoclastic thinker who could always be counted on for a catchy title, called his history of cosmology "The Sleepwalkers." The way mankind lurched and stumbled toward the truth reminded him "more of a sleepwalker's performance than an electronic brain's."

Obsessions and fixations were as common as brilliant chains of reasoning, and every step forward seemed to be countered by two steps sideways and a half step back.

The most erratic of the somnambulists on this zigzag trail was the man often called the father of modern science, Galileo. Far from being the selfless hero of popular legend who championed scientific truth over blind religious faith, he comes off in Koestler's book, published in 1959, as a vainglorious self-promoter spoiling for a fight.

The primary reason he was hauled before the Inquisition, Koestler argued, was not for teaching Copernicus's view that Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun, but for offending so many of his sympathizers -- and, most important, for insisting that Copernicanism was not just a theory, but an indisputable truth.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2003 6:48 PM