Read Online Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dava Sobel
Ads: Link
writing the Sunspot Letters, had sought the expert opinion of Carlo Cardinal Conti on the subject of change in the heavens. Cardinal Conti had assured him that the Bible did not support Aristotle’s doctrine of immutability; in fact, he said, Scripture seemed to argue against it.
None of his experience parrying angry attacks from academics prepared Galileo for the intimations of heresy—a crime he considered “more abhorrent than death itself"—that now swirled around him. Given these circumstances, he must have felt relieved in October 1613, when Ottavio Cardinal Bandini, another prelate of his acquaintance, finally secured the dispensation of age for Galileo’s daughters. The immediate admission of both thirteen-year-old Virginia and twelve-year-old Livia into the nearby Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri was apparently facilitated by the coincidence that the mother abbess, Suor Ludovica Vinta, was sister to a Florentine senator who had served as secretary of state under Grand Duke Ferdinando. No sooner were the girls secured within the enclosure walls than the pitch of the Copernican controversy escalated.
In November, Galileo’s best and most beloved student, the Benedictine monk Benedetto Castelli, who had followed him from Padua, left Florence to take over Galileo’s old chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. Castelli not only had devised the safe method of observing the Sun on paper used by Galileo to such good effect, but had actually drawn the numerous sunspot diagrams published in Galileo’s book. Galileo had further relied on Castelli to answer all four published attacks on Bodies in Water. Newly arrived at Pisa, Castelli was warned by the university overseer never to teach or even discuss the motion of the Earth. The monk agreed to these terms, naturally, pointing out that his mentor, Galileo, had followed the same course throughout two-plus decades of lecturing at both Pisa and Padua. Within weeks, however, Castelli found himself specifically questioned on the matter of Copernicus in a private but most influential setting, when the Medici family and full entourage arrived in Pisa for their annual winter visit. Holding court for the season at their Pisan palace, Their Serene Highnesses Cosimo II, Archduchess Maria Maddalena, and Grand Duchess Mother Madama Cristina filled the seats around their table three times a day with interesting conversationalists who could inform them on a variety of subjects.
Benedetto Castelli
“Thursday morning I was dining with our Patrons,” Castelli wrote Galileo on Saturday, December 14, “and when asked about the university by the Grand Duke I gave him a complete account of everything, with which he showed himself much pleased. He asked me if I had a telescope; saying yes, I began to tell about an observation of the Medicean planets I had made just the night before. Madama Cristina wanted to know their position, whereupon the talk turned to the necessity of their being real objects and not illusions of the telescope.”
Instead of receding from court life following the death of her husband, Ferdinando I, in 1609, the influential grand duchess Cristina had changed her dress to black and donned a widow’s cap with a voluminous black veil in place of her ducal crown. She had held fast to her rank of grand duchess, leaving her daughter-in-law— Cosimo’s wife, Maria Maddalena—to be content with the “archduchess” title that had come with her from Austria.
On this particular December morning, Madama Cristina found Castelli’s talk of planets disturbing—despite their ties to the House of Medici. Notwithstanding her fondness for Galileo, who had tutored her son, and over and above her respect for Castelli’s monastic robes, she much preferred the conversation of another breakfast guest from the university faculty, the Platonic philosopher Doctor Cosimo Boscaglia.
“After many things, all of which passed with decorum,” Castelli’s letter continued,
None of his experience parrying angry attacks from academics prepared Galileo for the intimations of heresy—a crime he considered “more abhorrent than death itself"—that now swirled around him. Given these circumstances, he must have felt relieved in October 1613, when Ottavio Cardinal Bandini, another prelate of his acquaintance, finally secured the dispensation of age for Galileo’s daughters. The immediate admission of both thirteen-year-old Virginia and twelve-year-old Livia into the nearby Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri was apparently facilitated by the coincidence that the mother abbess, Suor Ludovica Vinta, was sister to a Florentine senator who had served as secretary of state under Grand Duke Ferdinando. No sooner were the girls secured within the enclosure walls than the pitch of the Copernican controversy escalated.
In November, Galileo’s best and most beloved student, the Benedictine monk Benedetto Castelli, who had followed him from Padua, left Florence to take over Galileo’s old chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. Castelli not only had devised the safe method of observing the Sun on paper used by Galileo to such good effect, but had actually drawn the numerous sunspot diagrams published in Galileo’s book. Galileo had further relied on Castelli to answer all four published attacks on Bodies in Water. Newly arrived at Pisa, Castelli was warned by the university overseer never to teach or even discuss the motion of the Earth. The monk agreed to these terms, naturally, pointing out that his mentor, Galileo, had followed the same course throughout two-plus decades of lecturing at both Pisa and Padua. Within weeks, however, Castelli found himself specifically questioned on the matter of Copernicus in a private but most influential setting, when the Medici family and full entourage arrived in Pisa for their annual winter visit. Holding court for the season at their Pisan palace, Their Serene Highnesses Cosimo II, Archduchess Maria Maddalena, and Grand Duchess Mother Madama Cristina filled the seats around their table three times a day with interesting conversationalists who could inform them on a variety of subjects.
Benedetto Castelli
“Thursday morning I was dining with our Patrons,” Castelli wrote Galileo on Saturday, December 14, “and when asked about the university by the Grand Duke I gave him a complete account of everything, with which he showed himself much pleased. He asked me if I had a telescope; saying yes, I began to tell about an observation of the Medicean planets I had made just the night before. Madama Cristina wanted to know their position, whereupon the talk turned to the necessity of their being real objects and not illusions of the telescope.”
Instead of receding from court life following the death of her husband, Ferdinando I, in 1609, the influential grand duchess Cristina had changed her dress to black and donned a widow’s cap with a voluminous black veil in place of her ducal crown. She had held fast to her rank of grand duchess, leaving her daughter-in-law— Cosimo’s wife, Maria Maddalena—to be content with the “archduchess” title that had come with her from Austria.
On this particular December morning, Madama Cristina found Castelli’s talk of planets disturbing—despite their ties to the House of Medici. Notwithstanding her fondness for Galileo, who had tutored her son, and over and above her respect for Castelli’s monastic robes, she much preferred the conversation of another breakfast guest from the university faculty, the Platonic philosopher Doctor Cosimo Boscaglia.
“After many things, all of which passed with decorum,” Castelli’s letter continued,
Similar Books
