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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 GALILEO 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 GALILEO 9 WATCHER OF THE SKIES 10 ∂ 1 2 3 4 DAVID WOOTTON 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 41 NEW HAVEN AND LONDON 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 Copyright © 2010 David Wootton 1 Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of 2 Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College 3 All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond 4 that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by 5 reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. 6 7 For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.com 8 Europe Office: [email protected] www.yaleup.co.uk 9 30 Set in Arno Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 1 2 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 3 Wootton, David, 1952– 4 Galileo: Watcher of the Skies/David Wootton. 5 p. cm. 6 ISBN 097–8300125368 (cl:alk. paper) 7 1. Galilei, Galileo, 1564–1642 2. Astronomers—Italy—Biography. I. Title. 8 QB36.G2W66 2010 9 520.92—dc22 40 [B] 2010027620 41 42R 10987654321
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1 2 3 4 5 For Alison 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 6 . . . For, all the night, 7 I heard the thin gnat-voices cry, 8 Star to faint star, across the sky. 9 10 Rupert Brooke, ‘The Jolly Company’ (1908) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 Contents 6 7 8 9 10 List of illustrations ix 1 Acknowledgements xi 2 3 Introduction: Conjectural history 1 4 5 Part one: The mind’s eye 6 7 1. His father’s son 9 8 2. Florence 14 9 3. Galileo’s lamp 18 20 4. Eureka! 22 1 5. Seeing is believing 25 2 6. A friend in need 30 3 7. Juvenilia 33 4 8. The Leaning Tower 36 5 9. Inertia 43 6 10. Nudism 46 7 8 Part two: The watcher of the skies 9 30 11. Copernicanism 51 1 12. Money 67 2 13. Fields of fire 70 3 14. The experimental method 76 4 15. The telescope 87 5 16. Mother 93 6 17. The Starry Messenger 96 7 18. Florence and buoyancy 106 8 19. Jesuits and the new astronomy 114 9 20. Sunspots 125 40 21. The Catholic scientist 132 41 42R
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CONTENTS
1 Part three: The eagle and the arrow 2 3 22. Copernicus condemned 137 4 23. Comets 157 5 24. The death of Gianfrancesco Sagredo 171 6 25. Urban VIII 176 7 26. Family Ties 182 8 27. Permission to publish 191 9 28. Alessandra Buonamici 201 10 29. A river floods 203 1 30. Publication 206 2 31. The Dialogue 208 3 4 Part four: Prisoner to the Inquisition 5 6 32. Maria Celeste and Arcetri 215 7 33. Trial 218 8 34. The Two New Sciences 229 9 35. Vincenzo, son of Galileo 235 20 36. Galileo’s (un)belief 240 1 37. The cosmography of the self 251 2 3 Coda: Galileo, history and the historians 259 4 5 Notes 268 6 Bibliography 308 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 Illustrations 6 7 8 9 10 Frontispiece Portrait of Galileo by Domenico Crespi da Passignano 1 (1559–1638), 1624. Private Collection. 2 1 Frontispiece of Niccolò Tartaglia’s New Science, 1537. The Thomas Fisher 3 Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 4 2 Ptolemaic universe, in Mattei Mauro’s commentary on the Sphere, 1550. 5 The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 6 3 Copernican system, in Thomas Digges’s Prognostication Everlasting, 1596. 7 Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. 8 4 Geometric and military compass. Institute and Museum of the History of 9 Science, Florence. 20 5 Sketch from Thomas Seget’s Liber Amicorum. By permission of the 1 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. All rights reserved. Vat. lat. 9385 p. 79. 2 © 2010 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 3 6 Peter Paul Rubens, Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends from Mantua, c.1604. 4 Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln. 5 7 Galileo’s notebook. By kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le 6 Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana/Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, 7 Florence. All rights reserved. Gal 72 fol. 166v. 8 8 & 9 Galileo’s telescope. Institute and Museum of the History of Science, 9 Florence. 30 10 Moon illustration from Galileo’s Starry Messenger, Venice, 1610, f.10v. 1 Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. 2 11 Moon illustration from pirated version of Starry Messenger. The Thomas 3 Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 4 12 Lodovico Cigoli, The Immaculate Virgin, 1612, Rome, Santa Maria 5 Maggiore. Photography by Alessandro Vasari, Rome. 6 13 Francesco Villamena, engraving of Galileo, frontispiece to Galileo’s Assayer, 7 1623. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 8 14 Francesco Villamena, engraving of Cardinal Bellarmine, 1604. © Trustees 9 of the British Museum. 40 15 Pietro Facchetti, Prince Federico Cesi. Photograph courtesy of the 41 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. 42R
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ILLUSTRATIONS
1 16 Attributed to Leandro Bassano, painting of Gianfrancesco Sagredo, 2 ‘Procurator of San Marco’. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. 3 17 Francesco Furini, Astronomy Shows Cosimo I the Satellites of Jupiter, 4 Florence, Casino Mediceo. © 2010. Photo Scala, Florence. 5 18 Justus Sustermans, portrait of Cosimo II with his wife and son. Florence, 6 Galleria degli Uffizi. © 2010. Photo Scala, Florence, courtesy of the 7 Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali della Repubblica Italiana. 8 19 Jacopo Zucchi, fresco of the Villa Medici. Author’s photograph. 9 20 Title page of Assayer, 1623. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 10 University of Toronto. 1 21 Maffeo Barberini, engraving in his Poemata. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book 2 Library, University of Toronto. 3 22 Andrea Sacchi, Divine Wisdom, 1629–33. Photograph courtesy of John 4 Beldon Scott. 5 23 Frontispiece to Galileo’s Dialogue, 1632. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book 6 Library, University of Toronto. 7 24 Title page of Melchior Inchofer’s Summary Treatise, 1633. The Thomas 8 Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 9 25 Illustration depicting bone thickness, from Galileo’s Two New Sciences, 20 1638. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 1 26 Illustration concerning structural failure, from Two New Sciences. The 2 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 3 27 Illustration investigating equilibrium, from Two New Sciences. The Thomas 4 Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 5 28 Nineteenth-century construction of Galileo’s pendulum clock, based on 6 drawings by Vincenzo Viviani. Science Museum/SSPL. 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 Acknowledgements 6 7 8 9 10 Numerous Galileo scholars, historians of science and historians of the late 1 Renaissance have responded to my enquiries, amongst them Ugo Baldini, Silvio 2 Bedini, Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mario Biagioli, Christopher Black, Horst 3 Bredekamp, Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota, Linda Carroll, Miles 4 Chappell, David Colclough, Pietro Corsi, Nicholas Davidson, Peter Dear, 5 Simon Ditchfield, Germana Ernst, Dinko Fabris, Federica Favino, Maurice 6 Finocchiaro, Steve Fuller, John Henry, Michael Hunter, Mary Laven, Peter 7 Machamer, Ian McLean, Edward Muir, Ronald Naylor, Paolo Palmieri, Isabelle 8 Pantin, Pietro Redondi, Eileen Reeves, Jürgen Renn, John Beldon Scott, 9 Richard Seargentson, Michael Shank, Michael Sharratt, William Shea, A. Mark 20 Smith, Roberto Vergara Caffarelli and Nicholas Wilding. I thank them for their 1 patience. I also thank Rick Watson of W. P. Watson for generously lending me 2 his copy of Giovanni Battista Stelluti’s Scandaglio. 3 I am also grateful for a number of opportunities to try out my ideas before an 4 audience: to the British Association for the History of Philosophy meeting in 5 York; to David Cram and Robert Evans of the History Faculty of the University 6 of Oxford; to Jim Bennett and Stephen Johnston of the Oxford Museum of the 7 History of Science; to David Lines of the Centre for Renaissance Studies at the 8 University of Warwick; to Knud Haakonssen of the Centre for the History of 9 Ideas at the University of Sussex; and to the Renaissance Society of America 30 meeting in Venice in 2010. 1 Paula Findlen, Peter Machamer, Alison Mark, Paolo Palmieri, Pietro 2 Redondi, Mordechai Feingold, Michael Shank, Michael Sharratt and Nicholas 3 Wilding were kind enough to read various drafts. My text has been greatly 4 improved as a result of their suggestions. My copy-editor Laura Davey did a 5 remarkable job catching at least some of the remaining errors. 6 Alison Mark, the University of York and the Leverhulme Foundation have 7 generously supported this research – I thank all three for the pleasures of a year 8 of research leave. Thanks to Matthew Patrick who has discussed the problems 9 of biography with me interminably. 40 41 42R
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 Finally, I would like to acknowledge a debt to Stillman Drake. Many years 2 ago (in 1981, I think), when I was a young scholar starting out in academic 3 life, Stillman Drake spent an afternoon showing me his wonderful collection 4 of Galileo books. I am delighted to have an opportunity to record this 5 kindness now. 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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1 2 3 4 5 Introduction: Conjectural history 6 7 8 9 10 Now the past, by virtue of being past, remains forever inaccessible to us, it is 1 no more, we cannot reach it and it is only from its traces and remains, from its 2 debris which are still present – works of art, monuments, documents which 3 have escaped the ravages of time and of mankind – that we attempt to recon- 4 struct it. But objective history, the history men make and suffer, is not 5 concerned – or hardly – with the history of historians: it allows the survival of 6 things of no value to the historian and mercilessly destroys the most important 7 of documents, the most beautiful of works, and the most impressive of monu- 8 ments. What it leaves, or has left behind, are mere fragments of what we should 9 need. Accordingly, historical reconstructions are inevitably fragmentary, 20 uncertain, even doubly uncertain – poor little conjectural science, so has Paul 1 Valéry described history. 2 Alexandre Koyré (1961)1 3 4 Our knowledge of Galileo’s life we owe largely to three people. One of these is 5 Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703), his last student, who was sixteen when he met 6 Galileo and not yet twenty when his master died.2 Viviani wrote Galileo’s first 7 biography (which was not published until 1717), preserved his papers, and 8 planned an edition of his complete works. When Viviani died, his property 9 passed first to his nephew and then, in 1737, to the nephews of his nephew. 30 These last did not share their great-uncle’s preoccupation with Galileo – despite 1 the fact that 1737 was the year in which Galileo finally became respectable 2 enough to be given an honourable tomb in a Florentine church. They emptied 3 the cupboards in which Viviani had stored Galileo’s manuscripts, and turned 4 them to what seemed to them a far better use: storing the household linen. 5 One day in the spring of 1750, Giovanni Battista Nelli (1725–93), a 6 Florentine man of letters, made a detour to buy some cold meat from a butcher 7 he did not normally frequent. The excellent mortadella was to be his contribu- 8 tion to a picnic. When, out in the countryside with his friends, he unwrapped the 9 meat, he noticed that the waste paper it was wrapped in appeared to be some- 40 thing written by Galileo. Returning with all possible haste to the butcher 41 (but taking the precaution of concealing his discovery from his friends), he 42R
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1 eventually traced the butcher’s waste paper to its source: a large bin overflowing 2 with documents in Viviani’s old house. His grand-nephews were selling off the 3 paper in small parcels as wrapping paper, but were happy to sell the whole bin 4 to Nelli. 5 Nelli used his treasure trove to write a life of Galileo, and the papers he had 6 acquired eventually ended up in the Florentine archives.3 There they were to be 7 used by the greatest of all Galileo scholars, Antonio Favaro, who produced what 8 is known as the National Edition of Galileo’s works (1890–1909), in twenty 9 volumes printed in twenty-one large tomes (volume iii spans two separate 10 tomes). Favaro was meticulous and indefatigable, and almost everything about 1 Galileo that we know now, Favaro already knew.4 But Favaro was not an impar- 2 tial scholar – nobody is. He laboured to defend Galileo’s reputation as a scien- 3 tist, as a man, and as a pious Catholic; inconvenient details were buried, brushed 4 aside, or put in the best possible light. But they were never suppressed. 5 When Galileo died in 1642 he had been living in Florence for more than 6 thirty years, accumulating letters and papers. But when he moved from Padua to 7 Florence in 1610, at the age of forty-six, he must have packed his clothes, books, 8 papers, telescopes and lens-grinding machinery to be loaded onto the backs of 9 donkeys or mules – and he presumably threw a great deal away. In Favaro’s 20 edition of the Opere the letters to, from and about Galileo occupy nine volumes. 1 One of these, volume x, contains all the letters for the first forty-six years of his 2 life; another, volume xv, contains the letters for the single year 1633 – the year 3 of Galileo’s trial. This imbalance is particularly frustrating in that Galileo made 4 no major scientific discoveries after the age of fifty – and yet the vast bulk of the 5 evidence that survives comes from the last decades of his life. In addition, when 6 Galileo went blind in 1637 he lost control over his own papers: things he would 7 once have thrown away were now faithfully kept.5 8 Thanks to Viviani, Nelli and Favaro we know a great deal about Galileo, and 9 it is easy to be overwhelmed by the bulk of this knowledge. It is also easy to 30 forget that our most important source consists of a bin full of papers. We have 1 no way of knowing how many documents had already been extracted from the 2 bin and used to wrap meat. Unfortunately that is not our only problem. All the 3 documents in the bin had first been through the hands of Viviani. From Galileo’s 4 death in 1642 until his own death in 1703 Viviani was engaged in a campaign to 5 restore his master’s reputation, blighted by the Inquisition’s condemnation of 6 him in 1633. He wanted to see Galileo (who the Church had insisted should be 7 buried without a funerary monument) given a proper burial under a tomb 8 worthy of his status as a great scientist; he wanted to see his works, including his 9 scientific correspondence, published. Because he could achieve neither of these 40 objectives he turned the facade of his own house into a monument to Galileo, 41 recording at length and in stone all his scientific achievements, but making no 42R mention either of Copernicanism or of the Inquisition trial and condemnation.
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An essential element in Viviani’s campaign to recuperate Galileo’s reputation 1 was his insistence that Galileo was a good Catholic who had acknowledged his 2 error in advocating Copernicanism and obediently submitted to the Church’s 3 decree. Galileo was portrayed by Viviani as being dismayed by the publication 4 of his works abroad after 1633, in defiance of the Inquisition: the evidence to the 5 contrary, which was and is incontrovertible, was quietly suppressed.6 It has been 6 suggested that Viviani genuinely believed that Galileo’s Copernicanism repre- 7 sented a tragic intellectual error, yet the evidence rather suggests that, as 8 Galileo’s faithful disciple, he skilfully combined outward conformity to the 9 requirements of the Church with private dissent.7 10 How far did Viviani’s single-minded preoccupation with Galileo’s reputation 1 amongst Italian Catholics lead him to falsify the historical record? That he falsified 2 it to some degree we can be sure. He planned to publish an exchange of letters 3 between Galileo and Élie Diodati (a Genevan who was nominally a Protestant but 4 had close relations with a number of unbelievers) on the subject of measuring 5 longitudes, telling Diodati that he would alter or omit some sentences that might 6 provoke hostility to Galileo and make it difficult to obtain a licence to publish.8 7 What did he plan to leave out? We do not know. Viviani separated out thirteen 8 letters on longitude, so that they survived to be published in 1718, at which point 9 they were destroyed. We cannot tell how extensively they would have been revised 20 if Viviani had been able to publish them – although there is another case in which 1 we can catch Viviani in the act of rewriting a letter to protect Galileo’s reputation.9 2 Viviani had in his possession, as far as we can tell, around a hundred letters 3 between Galileo and Diodati. None of these survive; forty are completely lost, and 4 the rest are preserved only in partial copies made by Viviani, or in the edition of 5 1718, or, in two cases, in copies made by Pierre Dupuy – we do not know how far 6 those copies censor and falsify the originals (even the edition of 1718 appears to 7 be marred by some deliberate omissions).10 It is theoretically possible that every 8 one of the letters that did not survive until 1718 went to wrap mortadella, but it is 9 more likely that they were destroyed by Viviani himself because they contained 30 proof that Galileo had advocated Copernicanism after 1633.11 1 The charge is a serious one: if Viviani was prepared to falsify the record then 2 we must assume that he destroyed any evidence which cast doubt on Galileo’s 3 Catholic piety. On 24 July 1673 he wrote to the scientist and diplomat Count 4 Lorenzo Magalotti in Flanders saying that he had heard that an edition of Paolo 5 Sarpi’s letters was shortly to be published in Amsterdam, and that some letters 6 between Galileo and Sarpi might appear in it. Sarpi – who had been a close friend 7 of Galileo’s – was notorious throughout Europe as the author of the History of the 8 Council of Trent (1619), widely regarded as the most effective piece of anti- 9 Catholic propaganda to have been published since the days of Luther and Calvin. 40 The publication of such a correspondence, even if it was concerned only with 41 scientific matters, would, Viviani felt, be fatal to Galileo’s reputation. 42R
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1 In the 1656 edition of Galileo’s works, published in Bologna (which omitted 2 the Dialogue condemned in 1633 and much else), the censors had required that 3 a passing reference to Sarpi be excised on the grounds that Sarpi had died 4 excommunicate. There was thus no doubt that Viviani would be prevented from 5 publishing any letters between Sarpi and Galileo. But this does not prepare us 6 for his instructions to Magalotti: he must try to get hold of the originals of these 7 letters, if they exist, and of any copies; if printing has begun he must buy up the 8 printed sheets – Viviani will provide the funds. No evidence of such a correspon- 9 dence must be left in untrustworthy hands. Viviani says absolutely explicitly that 10 publication must be prevented at all costs; he does not say that the letters should 1 be destroyed – rather that he is sure Magalotti will be enraged and will know 2 what to do. ‘I do not know what I am saying’, he continues, ‘Have pity on me as 3 a faithful disciple.’12 It is clear that Viviani was prepared to go to any lengths to 4 protect Galileo’s reputation. Not surprisingly, only two early and innocuous 5 letters from Sarpi to Galileo survive, and only two (which never fell into 6 Viviani’s hands) from Galileo to Sarpi, although it was said in 1616 that they 7 were known to be corresponding.13 8 History has to be written from the documents that survive – we cannot 9 recover those sold as wrapping paper or those destroyed by Galileo’s ‘faithful 20 disciple’. But we will do a better job if we bear in mind that the gaps in our 1 knowledge may be the result not just of happenstance but of deliberate destruc- 2 tion. Even if we had every document that was available to Viviani, we would have 3 no straightforward way of knowing if there were things that Galileo thought but 4 never said, and things that he said but never put in writing. For we can be sure 5 that whenever Galileo put pen to paper he was aware – as every Italian intellec- 6 tual of his day was aware – that an inquisitor, searching for evidence of heresy, 7 might one day read what he had written. What hope, then, have we of getting 8 past the layers of censorship that came between Galileo’s private thoughts and 9 the texts that survived to appear in the Favaro edition? The answer is simple: we 30 must pay particular attention to those sources that bring us closest to Galileo’s 1 conversation with his disciples, and to those texts (the margins of books, for 2 example) that Galileo least feared would be read by anyone else. We may not be 3 able to speak with the dead, but we can sometimes listen in on their conversa- 4 tions, and even catch them thinking aloud.14 In this book I deliberately give such 5 snatches of overheard conversation much greater weight than they have had in 6 previous studies of Galileo. 7 The first proper book Galileo published was The Starry Messenger (1610), in 8 which he announced the discovery of the moons of Jupiter, a discovery which 9 provided new evidence in favour of Copernicus’s bold hypothesis that the earth 40 moves and is not fixed at the centre of the universe. A few months after it 41 appeared the poet John Donne published The First Anniversary, in which these 42R lines are to be found:
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And new philosophy calls all in doubt, 1 The element of fire is quite put out; 2 The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit 3 Can well direct him where to look for it. 4 And freely men confess that this world’s spent, 5 When in the planets and the firmament 6 They seek so many new; they see that this 7 Is crumbled out again t’his atomies. 8 ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, 9 All just supply, and all relation; 10 Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, 1 For every man alone thinks he hath got 2 To be a phoenix, and that there can be 3 None of that kind, of which he is, but he. 4 This is the world’s condition now . . . 5 6 We know Donne had read The Starry Messenger – he referred to Galileo in 7 Ignatius His Conclave, written around the same time, where he made clear his own 8 support for Copernicanism. Donne writes in The First Anniversary as someone 9 who understands at once the logic of Galileo’s position. What are the alternatives 20 to the old philosophy of Aristotle and Ptolemy? The denial of any difference 1 between the superlunary and sublunary worlds (this is what Donne means when 2 he writes, ‘The element of fire is quite put out’ – the sphere or element of 3 fire marked the boundary between the superlunary and sublunary worlds); 4 Copernicanism (‘The sun is lost, and th’earth’); atomism; egalitarianism; indi- 5 vidualism (Galileo did indeed think of himself as a phoenix); the unending quest 6 for the new.15 In 1610 Galileo had only cautiously committed himself to the first 7 two of these, but Donne apparently saw at once the scale of his ambition and the 8 direction in which he was heading. Nobody else grasped, as Donne did, the true 9 extent of the revolution implied by Galileo’s first publication. 30 How did Donne come by this extraordinary insight? There is good evidence 1 that he had been in Venice in 1605 and perhaps 1606, staying with the English 2 ambassador Henry Wotton. It seems that he met Paolo Sarpi, who had – or was 3 certainly soon to have – close links to Wotton.16 Galileo and Sarpi were close 4 friends, and there were a number of English-speaking students in Padua who 5 knew Galileo.17 One particular student was giving Wotton especial cause for 6 concern through much of 1605: Thomas Seget, a Scot, had been thrown into a 7 Venetian dungeon for having sex with a nun, and had then faced further charges 8 trumped up by her relatives. Seget’s timing was exceptionally unfortunate: 9 during the year in which he was held, the Venetian authorities introduced new 40 legislation making it a capital offence to be in a nunnery without good reason.18 41 They were in no mood to accept Wotton’s account of Seget’s behaviour as a 42R
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1 youthful indiscretion. Wotton nevertheless campaigned tirelessly for Seget to be 2 released into his custody, and in October his efforts were at last successful. If 3 Donne was in Venice at the time one can hardly doubt that he would have taken 4 an interest in Seget’s case, and he may well have been present in the embassy 5 when Seget (as we may conjecture) said goodbye to his good friends – one of 6 whom was Galileo – before Wotton arranged, as he had promised, for Seget to 7 depart from Venice and its territories for ever. It is perhaps to these meetings 8 that we should attribute Wotton’s own interest in Galileo: in 1610 he managed 9 to acquire a copy of The Starry Messenger and sent it to James I, even though the 10 book sold out within a few days of publication. 1 So Donne probably met Galileo; and if not he may have learned from Sarpi or 2 from Wotton or from Seget about the new philosophy, atomist and irreligious, 3 that Sarpi and Galileo had in common. Such conversations would have been 4 confidential – Protestants such as Wotton and Donne had no desire to get their 5 Catholic allies into trouble. When Donne read The Starry Messenger he already 6 knew what Galileo thought – hence the confidence with which he went beyond 7 anything that was to be found in the text. Indeed it is likely that Donne knew 8 Galileo better than we ever will because he had heard him talk frankly about his 9 private beliefs. Our task – our impossible task – is not just to read what Galileo 20 wrote, but also to rediscover what he thought. To do so we need to catch the 1 echoes of long-lost conversations. Galileo’s conversation with Donne is echoed, 2 perhaps, in The First Anniversary; fortunately, there are other conversations that 3 we know more about. If we pay attention to the conversations between Galileo 4 and his friends, we soon find a very different Galileo from the pious Catholic 5 described by Viviani and Favaro. 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42R
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