Post-Copernican Science in Galileo's Italy

Post-Copernican Science in Galileo’sItaly

Pietro Daniel Omodeo Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

In 2015, two new studies on the scientific and astronomical culture of seventeenth- century Italy appeared: one on the natural philosophy of Galileo Galilei’s follower, the ecclesiastic and philosopher, Giovanni Ciampoli—Federica Favino’s La filosofia naturale di Giovanni Ciampoli (Giovanni Ciampoli’s Natural Philosophy); the other on the anti-Copernican views of the Jesuit astronomer, Giovanni Battista Riccioli—Christopher M. Graney’s Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo. Both publications address themes of fundamental importance for a proper understanding of the rise of modern scientific culture. They deal with issues such as the reception of Copernicus and the impact of his astronomy on natural philosophy, scientific developments in Italy in the years following Galileo’s condemnation and the complex relations between natural scientists and Catholic institutions in a phase of intensified Inquisitorial control and censorship. They aim to open up new perspectives and disclose sources that have been so far neglected to the historians of science.

1. Status Quaestionis The early dissemination of Copernicus’ work and theories is an intricate and multilayered history. The reception of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) (1543), which was the ﬁrst early modern work in mathematical astronomy introducing a heliocentric planetary theory, was not purely technical. Rather, the cultural debates surrounding it were affected by physical, philosophical, ethical, and theological concerns from its inception (cf. Westman 2011; Omodeo 2014; Lerner and Segonds 2015, chap. 4). Georg Joachim Rheticus, who authored the ﬁrst report on Copernicus’ achievement, deemed it appropriate to put a call for independence of spirit on the title page of the Narratio prima (First Report)

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(1540). This call was actually a motto ascribed to Alcinous: Δεῖ δ’ ἑλευθέριον ε~ἶναι τῇ γνωμῇ τòν μέλλοντα φιλοσοφεῖν—“Free in mind must be he who desires to philosophize.” Biblical exegesis made no exception to Rheticus’ appeal to libertas philosophandi. In fact, he ventured into a scriptural defense of Copernicus by writing a vindication of the reconcilability of the new system with the Sacred Scriptures. His De Terrae motu et Scriptura Sacra (Terrestrial Motion and Sacred Scripture) was based on the “principle of accommodation,” according to which the Bible should not be interpreted literally if it appears to be at odds with natural theories (Hooykaas, 1984). Evidently, Rheticus (and Copernicus’ entourage) felt it urgent to discuss the geometrical modeling of heavenly motions, parameters, and the new system, as well as issues per- taining to its physical tenability and its ethical and religious bearing. Indeed, theological criticism soon followed. Such criticism is exemplified by concur- ring philosophical and theological objections raised in Rome by the Maestro di Sacro Palazzo, Bartolomeo Spina, as well as his associate Giovanni Maria Tolosani, and in Wittenberg by Martin Luther and his right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon (cf. Lerner 2002; Thüringer 1997). The reception of Copernicus was certainly multifaceted and varied throughout time, depending on geographical and cultural contexts. Wittenberg, already being home to an established academic network, was the epicenter of an early mathematical reading and dissemination of De revolutionibus.This line of reception was focused on geometrical modeling and parameters at the expense of the acceptance of the heliocentric option as a physical reality (Westman, 1975; see also, Barker and Goldstein 1998; Omodeo and Tupikova 2013). Over the decades cosmological, natural philosophical, physical and theological issues became increasingly relevant in the debates over Copernican astronomy. This was the underlying trend among various theoretical achieve- ments, such as Tycho Brahe’s geoheliocentric planetary arrangement, Giordano Bruno’s inquiry into the philosophical dimension of the new astronomy, Galileo Galilei’s development of a terrestrial dynamics compatible with the geokinetic theory and Johannes Kepler’s Entwurf of a celestial physics (Granada 1996, 2002, 2010; Jardine and Segonds 2008; Bucciantini 2003; Stephenson 1987). René Descartes’ work can be seen as a culminating point of this pro- cess. Descartes successfully constructed a general theory securing the epistemological and ontological foundations of heterogeneous fields of inquiry such as mathematics, physiology, mechanics and post-Copernican cosmology (see, among others, Shea 1991, and Schuster 2013). Pierre Gassendi’satom- istic synthesis is furthermore an instance of a similar scientific and philosophical endeavor. As for the theological impasse, although scriptural difficulties had been lengthily debated, the Roman prohibition of 1616 and Galileo’s condemnation in 1633 led to an increase in the polemics along confessional and

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cultural divides. Alcinous’ phrase was reprinted on the frontispiece of the Latin and English editions of Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) in 1635 and 1661, alongside Seneca’s sentence (Q Nat 4b.3.6) “Inter nullos magis quam inter philosophos eſſe debet aequa libertas”—“Equal freedom ought to exist among philosophers more than any other group” (Galileo 1635; 1661). In his widespread Apologia pro Galilaeo (Apology for Galileo), the philosopher and theologian Tommaso Campanella had already fought for the freedom of natural research during the Galileo Affair, which ended with the 1616 censorship of Copernicus (Firpo 1968; Corsano 1965, 1974; Ernst 2010). In those years, Campanella was a prisoner of the Inquisition along with many other intellectuals, who were often the victims of the Inquisition’s ever-growing interference with culture. Inquisitorial persecution of scientists and learned scholars had begun in the 1570s with trials against reputed scholars such as the polymath Girolamo Cardano and the natural philosopher Giovanni Battista della Porta. The measures of cultural control were intensified through the Inquisitorial investigation as well as the censorship of all major exponents of the Italian philosophical and scientific culture. It culminated with the trials against the neo-Platonic professor in Rome, Francesco Patrizi (accused, among others, of Copernicanism as early as 1592) and the repeated actions against the unorthodox Padua professor of Aristotelian philosophy, Cesare Cremonini, the condemnation and execution of the theologian Francesco Pucci and the philosopher Giordano Bruno, the censure of Bernardino Telesio’s naturalistic works, and the ban of Paolo Antonio Foscarini’s theological defense of Copernicus. These epi- sodes and their underlying institutional and political developments are well known to historians, as they have been subjects of many in-depth studies.1 In regards to the strained relations between the Catholic establishment and the exponents of early-modern scientific culture in Italy, scholars today benefit from helpful research endeavors, such as Ugo Baldini and Leen Spruit’s collection of documents from the Archives of the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office and the Index (Baldini and Spruit 2009). This edition, which complements earlier studies on the Italian Inquisition, has helped historians obtain a more complete picture of the interactions between early modern scientific and philosophical innovators and the Church, as well as the mechanisms of control and censorship used during that time.2

1. The list of studies on the cultural environment of seventeenth-century Galilean science is long. Among the studies worth mentioning, see Galluzzi 2014; Bucciantini 1995, 2003; Bucciantini, Camerota and Giudice 2011, and Guerrini 2009, 2010. See also McMullin 2005. 2. Among the documents on famous trials, those concerning Bruno (Firpo 1949) and Galileo (Pagano and Luciani 1984) are particularly relevant for the Copernican question.

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This was the Zeitgeist also informing the political, confessional and mis- sionary endeavors of the Jesuits, specifically their scientific production and educational system (cf. among others Harris 1988). The broad context of Jesuit scientific production and teaching, along with the negotiations between central constraints, institutional agendas, and individual commitment have been discussed in a great deal of accurate studies on early modern scientific culture (see above all Feingold 2003). Beginning in the sixteenth century, a Jesuit system of colleges more or less directly affiliated with the Collegium Romanum was established across Europe and beyond, propagating a cultural and political vision in line with post-Tridentine Scholasticism and creed (O’Malley et al. 1999; Baldini 2000; Brizzi and Greci 2002. See also Grendler 2009). Jesuit scholars engaged with astronomy from the very beginning and later gained immense visibility through the promulgation of the Gregorian calendar by Christoph Clavius (1582). Thanks to Clavius’ efforts, mathematics became a relevant teaching subject at Jesuit colleges (Romano, 1999). Cosmology reached its peak with the speculations of a Universalgelehrter such as Athanasius Kircher and the neo-Ptolemaic astronomy of Riccioli.3 The confrontation and polemics of Jesuit astronomers with Galileo showed the solidarity among scholars belonging to the Order and raised the question of the connection between their scientific production and ecclesiastical institutions of censorship and control (Drake and O’Malley, 1960). In this respect, the cultural activities of learned men such as Antonio Possevino and Roberto Bellarmino are early manifestations of how Jesuit intellectual work was embedded in agendas of cultural hegemony (Balsamo 2006; Godman 2000).

2. A Reassessment of Giovanni Ciampoli Federica Favino’s study (2015) expands our knowledge about Italian philosophy and science in the seventeenth century. It gives an insight into the cli- mate of suspicion and censure that affected science in Rome and the cultural struggles involving scientiﬁc and religious innovators linked to Galileo and the Accademia dei Lincei. She makes her readers appreciate the intellectual stature of Giovanni Ciampoli, who was a loyal disciple but not servile imi- tator of Galileo. Ciampoli was also a member of the Lincean sodality who was later exiled for his decisive role in the publication of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. In the late 1620s and early 1630s, Ciampoli had occupied one of the uppermost positions in the Papal Curia. As one can read in detail in chapter one, he was a diplomat to Gregory XVand a secretary and

Besides classical studies on the Inquisition by Ginzburg (1976) and Prosperi (1996), it is worth mentioning Del Col’s overarching reconstruction (Del Col 2006). The English-speaking reader can also see Black (2009). 3. On Kircher, see Siebert 2008, and Leinkauf 2012. On Riccioli, see Borgato 2002.

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trusted confidant of Urban VIII. An accomplished poet and a cultivated scholar devoted to natural philosophy, he used his position to promote the new science. Between 1629 and 1632, he surrounded himself with a circle of lively intellectuals, with whom he discussed his philosophical ideas. The pillars of his natural philosophy were as such: the emancipation of natural inquiry from scholastic theology; physical atomism; adherence to the heliocentric cosmology; and a Baconian-like commitment to useful knowledge. Galileo’s condemnation did not hinder his investigation; on the contrary, it provided a new reason fueling his desire to develop an overarching and well- founded philosophy, on which he worked out in the solitude of the exile. While never completed, his opus still reached an advanced stage by the time of his death. Regrettably, today most of his papers are lost; they have survived only in part thanks to selected seventeenth-century editions and as manuscripts. Favino made some of his significant texts available in the appendix to her book. In the first chapter, she engages with a reconstruction of Ciampoli’s position in the Roman Curia and of the events leading to his conflict with Urban VIII in 1632. In June of that year, after the freshly printed Dialogue of Galileo reached the Roman book market, some Jesuits denounced its Copernican commitment. The pope, who felt directly involved due to the presentation of his skeptical epistemological views in the dialogue by the dull Aristotelian Simplicio, prohibited its circulation and sought out who was responsible for the imprimatur of a work that was perceived as an open challenge to the censorship laws of 1616 and his own authority. Eventually, Ciampoli was accused of permitting its publication by taking advantage of his close relationship with the pope. As a consequence, he was removed from his post and sent away to Montalto in Marche. It was during this time of exile that he assiduously wrote his philosophical works. Although many parts remain missing, one can get a glimpse into its contents thanks to the inventory that was included in his testament (appendix one in Favino’s book). Ciampoli bequeathed all of his writings to the King of Poland, Władysław IV Vasa but they were lost in the turbulence of the Polish-Swedish wars. Chapter two deals with the censura tendenziosa (tendentious censure) that marked the early reception of Ciampoli. As Favino demonstrates, many of his writings were barred from publication, especially the most “compro- mising” natural philosophical ones. Moreover, Ciampoli’s friend Sforza Pallavicino tried to rehabilitate his memory by constructing a politically cor- rect portrait of him. Pallavicino, an offspring of a highly reputed Roman aristocratic family and one of the most brilliant students of the Collegium Romanum, had been part of Ciampoli’s circle in Rome. After a period of exile connected to the troubles of 1632, he returned to Rome and entered the

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Jesuit order in 1637. He even became a professor at the Roman College where he successively taught logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics and finally, theology. To restore the post mortem reputation of his anti-Aristotelian and Copernican friend, he decided to publish his poems (1648) and proses (1649) in Rome, expurgating them of all contents that could be considered controversial. Those who knew Ciampoli denounced the unauthorized changes that had been introduced, the occultation of philosophical and natural texts and the expunction of passages. A counter-edition of his works soon appeared, printed by the erudite nobleman Agostino Sante Pinchiari in Bologna in two volumes: a new edition of the poems (1653) and one of the proses (1654). The latter was entitled Fragmenti dell’opere postume (Fragments of the Posthumous Works). It comprised the Libro primo di filosofianaturale(First Book of Natural Philosophy), which is a defense of empiricism against philosophical and theological dogmatism. It moreover comprised the anti-Scholastic tract Del bene (On Good) and Logica,orDe intellectione (Logic, or On Intellection). Favino describes the latter as “an openly empiricist, skeptical and libertine writing” (Favino 2015, p. 31). The first and the third of these tracts have been reprinted by Favino as appendices four and two, respectively. Pallavicino’s countermove was a new edition of selected poems by Ciampoli (1667) and a further collection of prose (1667). In the introduction, he justified his own intrusion by pointing out the fragmentary nature of the works, and highlighted the necessity to insert them into a her- meneutic framework. Moreover, Pallavicino’s editorial project established a stereotype image of Ciampoli as a fanciful thinker who was more capable in producing poetic imagery rather than solid philosophical theory—an image that has been often repeated in secondary literature. Chapter three enters into Ciampoli’s philosophy, beginning with his epistemology, as is exposed in the Logica. In this work, Ciampoli sought for a middle ground between dogmatism and the skepticism embraced by the most radical estimators of the recently re-edited Sextus Empiricus. Although the Lincei academicians made use of skeptical arguments to undo Aristotle’s authority, they only supported moderate skepticism relating to the cognitive limitations of human beings. Ciampoli developed a rigorous method based on the primacy of sensation and the acquisition of knowledge by means of induction. While this form of empiricism owed much to the reading of Gassendi (perhaps also to the criticism of Cartesian methodic doubt), his stress on useful knowledge—which is another tenet of his philosophy of science—echoed Bacon’s perspectives and prescriptions, known to the Lincei from the mid-1620s. Favino discusses Ciampoli’s atomist theory (especially in chapters four, six and seven) at length. She first remarks that this philosophy of matter is not explicit in the Logica. The most likely reason for this silence is the fact

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that the persona dialogans, Virginio Cesarini was expected to respect the views of the “real” Cesarini, a member of the Lincean Academy whose skeptical views Favino discusses in some detail. In order to respect the memory of this scholar, Ciampoli must have decided to avoid ascribing views to him that would make Cesarini appear as a materialist or, even worse, an atheist libertine. Hence, Ciampoli expounded his atomistic views in other writings. In Del sole e del fuoco he dealt with his own metafisica della luce (metaphysics of light), according to which light particles are the first indivisible elements out of which material reality is constructed. Although Galileo might have been his original source of inspiration for these ideas, as a matter of fact, Ciampoli mostly built off of Gassendi’s all-encompassing natural philosophy. However, he reworked his views in a slightly Platonic framework, as can be seen, for instance, by the pyramidal solid figure he ascribed to light atoms, instead of the spherical shape Gassendi had used. In the concluding chapter, Favino tackles Galileo’s “invisible” philosophy, which he disclosed to his pupils but never published. Many of those who knew him in person regarded him as an atomist and a follower of Democritus, as can be read in the correspondence. Hence, Ciampoli regarded Gassendi’s philosophy as the theory where the germinal ideas of Galileo’s scientific works unfolded. Empiricism, atomism and Copernicanism were three key elements of such a post-Galilean system of natural philosophy alternative to the Aristotelian. As appendices, Favino published a transcription of the main sources considered in her assessment of Ciampoli’s philosophy: 1) The testament with the inventory of his manuscript work, most of which is lost today; 2) The epistemological work, Logica or De intellectione; and the natural- philosophical works 3) Del sole e del fuoco and 4) Libro primo della filosofia naturale. Their publication is based on manuscript documents that are preserved in Italian and Vatican libraries. As for the testament, it has been published only once, in Ciampoli (1900). In contrast, the Libro primo della filosofia naturale is preserved in three manuscript copies and was printed three times in the seventeenth century (1654, 1655, and 1676). Favino carefully compares the early-modern editions, pointing out their many errors, and the extant manuscripts. She has chosen a manuscript of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome as her main source of reference because it shows Ciampoli’s handwritten corrections and annotations alongside some by Pallavicino. All of these annotations have been transcribed in the edited text. The other two philosophical works edited by Favino are so far unpublished. Her elegant transcription makes all of them available to historians of science and philosophy. They are endowed with an extensive and very useful critical apparatus, which helps the reader understand

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implicit and explicit textual references and contextualize them both in their historical environment and in relation to the secondary literature. Ciampoli’s works are quite interesting in themselves. The variety of themes he dealt with in the inventory of his writings is astonishing. They range from theological and ethical issues, to history (especially the history of Poland), philology (e.g., discussions on Pliny and Plato’s works), natural philosophy, and Galilean science. As one discovers from the list of his works, he wrote on basic concepts and problems of physics such as place (de loco), motion (de motu), light (della luce)andmagnetism(de magnete), as well as on geometry, mechanics, and spherical astronomy. His philosophical dialogues Logica and Del sole e del fuoco show a witty spirit. As far as style is concerned, they are brilliantly written and sprinkled with many erudite quo- tations and references. The reader can discover many interesting motives. For instance, the work on logic begins with a reference to the brain as the place of thought, underscored by verses from a poem in honor of Girolamo Fabrici d’Aquapendente and his anatomical dissection of a head made in the anatomical theatre of Padua. Much more can be appreciated and discovered by an attentive reading of these newly available sources. Hence, it is to be expected that Favino’s book and the sources she has made accessible will encourage new studies on the scientiﬁc culture and Ciampoli’s role in post- Galilean Italy.

3. Giavanni Battista Riccioli and the Copernican Question in Galileo’s Italy Rather than a historical reconstruction, Graney’sbookonRiccioliisa lengthy attempt to demonstrate the thesis of its title. This is actually a prov- ocation that counters the common understanding of early-modern science: Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (2015). The main thesis lies in the subtitle and is repeated many times throughout the book: in the seventeenth century science was “against the Copernican system” (cf. e.g., Graney 2015, p. 75). To be sure, historians of science are used to discussions and clarifications of the changing meanings of science in history. Such changes depended on many factors, whether social and philosophical, or practical and theoretical; they concerned the status of natural knowledge, the transformation of its methods (e.g., the application of mathematics to physics or the rise of experimental practices), and the reorganization of disciplinary hierarchies and their interrelations. The early modern period is famously an age of intense epistemological debates. Regrettably, if the reader expects Graney to engage with a clarification of the epistemology, or at least the epistemological controversies underlying science in the singular in the age of Galileo, they will be quite disappointed. In fact, Graney does not really offer a clarification of the meaning of his “science against Copernicus” apart

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from some fuzzy methodological discussion, in chapter two, “The Universe that Riccioli Saw.” In this chapter, Graney engages with the demonstration of the intuitiveness of the Aristotelian universe. Such intuitive evidence in- cludes terrestrial centrality and immobility, the idea of the spherical heavens, the theory of the four elements and the theory of natural motion. What becomes particularly evident is Graney’s unfamiliarity with Aristotle’s work and the Aristotelian tradition. Had he had a greater familiarity, he would not have downplayed Aristotelianism to a sort of naive empiricism, which this philosophy has never been, neither in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages nor in the early modern period. On the contrary, it was a refined, complex and systematic theoretical construct. The Jesuit variant makes no exception. Graney also cautions his readers not to judge Riccioli in the light of later scientific developments, especially Newtonian physics (Graney 2015, p. 23). This is well noted, however, historians of science are aware that Isaac Newton’s physical synthesis did not derive from nothing. Rather, as Newton acknowl- edged, his theories built upon the work of earlier scholars, among them, Copernicus, Gilbert, Galileo, Kepler and perhaps even Riccioli. Moreover, the title hints at the socio-cultural context: Setting Aside All Authority. Since the book deals with the most reputed Jesuit astronomer of a century marked by censorship and propaganda, the reader awaits a discussion of Riccioli’s relationship to the religious and cultural authorities, his engagement with the cultural guidelines of his Order, and the scientific strategies he developed in order to “set aside all authority” in the age “of Galileo,”—that is, of Inquisition, control and censure. The thesis of the book would require reconsidering these issues in light of the fact that Riccioli’smainworkAlmagestum novum (New Almagest) appeared in 1651 when the memory of Galileo’s condemnation was fresh. As Ciampoli’s case clearly shows, his persecution forced supporters of Galileo and Copernicus to disguise their views or to hide their adherence to astronomical and natural theories that were at odds with Aristotle and established scriptural exegesis. Historians have debated, for instance, the real position of Riccioli concerning the Copernican system, besides his official criticism, and whether or not he was privately more open to the heliocentric hypothesis.4 Graney simply ignores such discussions. Graney promises to demonstrate that “pure reason” and “independence from all authority” characterized Riccioli’s adherence to Tychonic geo- heliocentrism, while the supporters of the Copernican system were moti- vated by religious fervor (Graney 2015, p. 8). But his quotes are limited to

4. For a discussion of different perspectives on Riccioli’s position in relation to the Copernican system and a detailed assessment, see Dinis 2002.

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a few pale passages, in which Riccioli claimed for the independence of his judgment. He seems to believe that the issue of authority can be simply elu- cidated by discussing a few arguments brought forward against Copernicus. He selects the strongest and assesses their coherence and tenability. Out of the 126 arguments presented in New Almagest II 9, they only amount to a few objections. These arguments can be reduced to two sets: ﬁrst, arguments capitalizing on the lack of observational evidence of the expected consequences of terrestrial motion in experiments on falling bodies and ballistics and, second, what Graney calls “powerful star size objection,” or the “excessive” dimension that must be ascribed to stars in the Copernican framework. Chapter one, sets the scene for Graney’s discussion of Riccioli’s anti-Copernican astronomy and anticipates the general conclusions of his study: “What is remarkable about Riccioli’s analysis is that he was right. His analysis made sense, granted the knowledge available in his time.” Chapter three, “The Anti-Copernican Astronomer,” deals with Riccioli’s “forerunner,” Tycho Brahe, the reputed Renaissance astronomer who developed thoughtful arguments against the daily and the annual motion of the Earth. Among these arguments, Graney emphasizes those that deal with stellar magnitude/bigness and the lack of visible effects of terrestrial motion on the falling bodies and the motion of projectiles. Graney goes so far as to assert Brahe’s superiority (and implicitly Riccioli’s) over Copernicus: “Tycho’s quest for better observational accuracy places him far more se- curely in the mainstream of modern astronomy than Copernicus himself” (Graney 2015, p. 29). Such abstract establishment of hierarchies of merit appears bizarre. In particular, to deem Brahe an “anti-Copernican astronomer” is an exaggeration, not only with consideration to the high esteem he paid to Copernicus, but also with regards to the well-known derivation of Brahe’s geometrical modeling of planetary motions from a scholarly line directly descending from De revolutionibus (see, for example, Gingerich and Westman 1988). Moreover, the comparison between Brahe and Riccioli is not as simple as Graney assumes. Brahe advanced his arguments in a cultural environment that differed greatly from post-Galilean Italy and in the time before the debate had escalated as a consequence of the clamorous condemnation of 1616. Additionally, Brahe’s direct followers did not feel the necessity to slavishly embrace his cosmology; for instance, his pupil Christian Longomontanus, professor of astronomy at Copenhagen, main- tained in his Astronomia Danica (Danish Astronomy) (1640) a geoheliocentric model in opposition to Johannes Kepler’s planetary theory, but accepted the daily rotation of the Earth as a substitute for the stars’ rotation about the poles of the world. Actually, if Graney had read Riccioli’s Almagestum novum more attentively, he might notice that Riccioli himself favored a variation of Brahe’s geoheliocentric hypotheses. In any case, the philosophy

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backing Brahe’s astronomy was explicitly not Aristotelian but rather an eclectic mixture of influences derived from Stoicism, Paracelsianism, and other schools of thought. The most interesting parts of the book are those dealing with experimental practices and the clarification of certain sets of technical problems. Graney highlights the strength of Brahe’s objection against the ship meta- phor employed by many supporters of geokinetic astronomy to illustrate the common motion of “bodies in air” and the Earth. In actuality, the velocity of the diurnal motion varies depending on the latitude. As an effect, one would expect projectiles’ trajectories to bend when thrown in different directions. As can be apprehended from chapters six and eight, Riccioli set up accurate experimentations on falling bodies and ballistics to verify terrestrial motion. Since he did not measure any deflections, he stated the lack of evidence of terrestrial motion. However, although experimental evidence of such deflections would have supported terrestrial motion, its absence could be explained in terms of observational limits. Thus, Graney and supposedly Riccioli regard the stellar size objection to be stronger. In chapter four, Graney reconstructs its premises, namely the measurability of the size of stars from their appear- ance to the naked eye or to telescopes. Since the absence of observable stellar parallaxes forced the Copernicans to perceive the distance of the fixed stars from the Earth as much larger, the dimensions of these heavenly bodies also grew momentously. Riccioli thought this inconvenient and reinforced this argument by calculating stars’ dimension on the basis of his own telescopic measurements of stellar discs. Confronted with this problem, during the seventeenth century several scholars—among them Christiaan Huygens, and even a supporter of geocentricism such as Francesco Ingoli—came to the conclusion that the apparent sizes are spurious as a result of diffraction. Hence, the stars’ size objection was not decisive. Riccioli perhaps acknowl- edged this, as Graney remarks (Graney 2015, p. 151), since he downplayed the importance of the objection in his later work. The book has two appendices: a translation of Ingoli’s 1616 essay to Galileo, De situ et quiete Terrae (On the Place and Rest of the Earth)copied from Antonio Favaro’s Edizione nazionale and an excerpt from the New Almagest of Riccioli’s reports concerning his experiments on falling bodies (both texts are followed by technical notes). Ingoli’s essay is considered to be particularly prominent due to the assumption that it “provided the chief direct basis for the recommendation by its [the Inquisition’s] committee of consultants that Copernicanism was philosophically untenable and theologically heretical” (Finocchiaro 2010, p. 68). As Graney is quick to add in his “Technical Discussion,” this essay “consists largely of ‘scientific’ arguments against the system of Copernicus, as opposed to ‘religious’ or ‘scriptural’ arguments” (Graney 2015, p. 187). The force of Ingoli’s first

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arguments is striking! The arguments can be summarized as follows: the closer a heavenly body is to the cosmological center, the bigger its parallax and if, as postulated by Copernicus, the Sun were at the center of the cos- mos, it should have a bigger parallax than the Moon rotating around the Earth. But this is not the case. Evidently, Ingoli is not able to distinguish between the parallax as observed from a central Earth from one observed from an eccentric Earth. Graney has some difficulty assessing this embar- rassing first argument: This argument is remarkably weak in comparison to the ones that follow it. We might speculate that Ingoli was either trying to throw Galileo an easy ‘first pitch’, or dispensing with a very poor argument that he felt obliged to include for reasons not stated. (Graney 2015, p. 188) Was he also throwing a “first pitch” to the Inquisition’s committee assessing Copernicus? The translation of the sources is very poor, inaccurate and sometimes misleading. Technical terms are not translated consistently. For instance “situs,” which refers to the place of the Earth, is translated in rapid sequence as “location,”“situation” and “position.” The English rendering presents many other oddities. The University of Padua (Gymnasium Patavinum)istranslated as the “Gymnasia to the Paduans,” the Grand Duke of Tuscany as the “Grand Duke of Etruria,” the “opinions” ( placita) of Brahe and Galileo as their “pleasures” (e.g., “according to Tycho’s pleasure” [Graney 2015, p. 167]) and “according to your [Galileo’s] pleasure” [p. 168]) and so on. Returning to the main thesis of the book, Graney’s discussion of the relationship between science and religion in the cosmological debates of the early modern period is very problematic. Judging from the secondary sources of the book and the nature of his arguments, he is uninformed about the newest developments in Copernican Studies, Galileo Studies, and studies on early modern Church and institutions. Most surprisingly, fundamental studies in Jesuit Studies are also missing.5 Graney isolates a particular figure, the Dutch astronomer Philips Lansbergen, and frames his stances as representative of the attitude toward religion of all supporters of the Copernican system. Lansbergen argued that the enormous dimensions of the stars bear witness to God’s omnipotence and Graney uses this to demonstrate the “anti-Copernican reliance on ‘scientific’ arguments to support their views, and Copernican reliance on ‘religious’ arguments to

5. Almost all sources mentioned in this review are missing from the “Works Cited” by Graney.

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support theirs” (Graney 2015, p. 63). In support of this ludicrous claim, Graney quotes passages by Copernicans emphasizing the role of God as the Creator of the universe. He fails to notice that these commonplace state- ments are almost as ancient as astronomy and that in the early modern period they were used to support the arguments of heliocentric astronomers as well as of their opponents. As a matter of fact, supporters of Copernicus rebutted the stellar size objection by arguing that there would be no theological inconvenience in assuming stellar dimensions as big as astronomers’ measurements determined, since one should not set limits to God’s power. Graney sees this as an example of “religious” bias. In this respect, he refers to the Copernican astronomer Chritoph Rothmann’s response to Brahe’s objection to stellar sizes but he misunderstands his argument. Rothmann’s point was not, as Graney claims, to provide a theological foundation for his heliocentric planetary theory, but simply to undo his op- ponent’s argument by pointing to its extra-physical and theological premises. Rothmann stressed that to argue for the absurdity of stellar dimensions, whatever they are, implies a judgment that is not physical, but metaphysical and theological. In fact, this is a judgment about God’s Creation. It should be noted here that, in the famous correspondence between Rothmann and Brahe, Brahe did not hesitate to use the same argument to demonstrate God’s omnipotence in order to reject the most common criticisms against geostatic astronomy—the so-called Achilles argument—concerning the excessive speed required in order for the heavenly sphere to accomplish the daily rotation (Lerner 1980; cf. Omodeo 2014, p. 228). The problem of the relationship between God’s potentia absoluta and His potentia ordinata—between His Wisdom (witnessed by the creation of a proportional and harmonious world) and His Power (e.g., that to produce an infinite or indefinite universe)—was a Scholastic theme that was fervently debated in Renaissance cosmological controversies (cf. Granada 1994). Graney’s uninformed analysis lacks basic knowledge of the history of science. In general, his modest knowledge of the context of early modern science leads him to frame science and religion as a sort of hypostases, or universal categories transcending history, and neglects their concrete historical confor- mations. His suggestion to reassess the “scientific” basis of the condemnation of the Copernican system in 1616 (Graney 2015, p. 68) is outrageous; it neglects the history of Inquisition and censorship and softens the gravity of the persecution that many faced simply because of their ideas. The histori- cally relevant question is not just whether the supporters of geocentrism associated with the Catholic establishment had tenable, physical or mathematical arguments, but by what means the Copernican controversy (like other scientific controversies of the time in Italy) was dispelled. Unfortu- nately, by the time Riccioli decided to publish his 126 anti-Copernican

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arguments together with a copy of the condemnation of 1616, the sentence against Galileo and his abjure had made it so that no supporter of the Copernican system could publically address his arguments in Italy. “History has not been kind to the anti-Copernicans”—Graney asserts in his conclusion (Graney 2015, p. 141). This is easily said. I would like to remind Graney that no anti-Copernican was ever tried, persecuted, censored, prohibited or convicted to jail or to death because of his cosmological and philosophical views. Thus, his claim that “science was against Copernicus” appears as a misleading euphemism in which “science” is a substitute for “Inquisition.” This rewording does not help us understand the cultural tensions of the early modern scientiﬁc culture, nor does it do Riccioli’sscientiﬁc merits justice to use him in a revisionist attempt to downplay responsibility in some of the worst cases of intolerance in early modern intellectual history.

5. Concluding Remarks Despite the large number of studies on Copernican and Galilean science, recent publications show that there is still much work to be done in order to better understand testi and contesti and the details and the framework of early modern science. Ciampoli, the subject of Favino’s monograph, deserves more recognition in the studies of post-Galilean science and natural philosophy in Italy. His prosopography is not only revealing of his ingenuity but also of the cultural tensions characteristic of an age of intellectual censorship and control. Riccioli, the subject of Graney’s monograph, is today acknowl- edged as a key figure of the scientific culture of the seventeenth-century, belonging to a different epistemic culture than Ciampoli, since his research and teaching were embedded in the cultural agenda of post-Tridentine Rome.6 Historians have dismissed hagiographic historiography, which was popular in the past, as misled and tendentious; it isolated the alleged fathers of modern science (such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton), neglecting the discursive contexts in which their science was embedded. We have learned to appreciate the wide debates surrounding natural knowledge, the discursive developments of science, the interactions between scientists and intellectuals who belonged to varied environments, and the contributions of artisans and laymen. Graney’s excesses are as misled as past hagiographies as he simply reverses past narratives—those about the genealogy of science through a few geniuses—by replacing the earlier pro- tagonists with their opponents. Such an endeavor only produces superficial and mistaken interpretations. In summary, Favino’s and Graney’srecent

6. For the concept of epistemic culture, mutuated by Knorr-Cetina (1999), and applied to early modern cultural-confessional contexts of scientiﬁc discourse, see Mulsow (2007).

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publications point very differently to the necessity of further in-depth studies on the interactions between science, epistemology, philosophy, and religion in the age of Galileo in order to avoid simplistic treatments and hasty judg- ments. While Favino’s work constitutes a positive example of accurate historical inquiry, Graney’s book displays the most absurd consequences of poorly understood dissemination.

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