The Roman Inquisition. Thomas F. Mayer
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cardinal nephew’s recommendation;198
(4) Seghizzi;199
(5) Girolamo da Casalmaggiore (whose surname was apparently Cappello), Conventual Franciscan, appointed consultor of the Holy Office just about a year earlier;200
(6) Tomás de Lemos, O.P., one of the most distinguished Spanish theologians of the early seventeenth century and a major figure in the dispute about grace between the Dominicans and the Jesuits;201
(7) the Portuguese Augustinian Gregorio Nuñez Coronel, another member of the papal commission about grace and a consultor by this time for almost twenty years;
(8) Benedetto Giustiniani, S.J., a protégé but perhaps not a relative of Cardinal Giustiniani and once Caetani’s theologian, as well as Bandini’s teacher at the Collegio Romano, deeply involved with Bellarmino in responding to Venetian attacks on the Interdict in 1606;202
(9) Raphael Rastellius, Theatine, doctor of theology, about whom little is known before this moment and who would later lose his job as consultor and have other troubles with the Inquisition over his books;203
(10) Michele da Napoli, a member of Castelli’s order of Cassinese Benedictines and the most obscure of the lot;204 and
(11) Jacopo Tinto, Seghizzi’s socius and his relative, who went on to have a distinguished career as a provincial inquisitor, including in their hometown of Lodi.205
It is hard to miss the Inquisition’s dominance of this panel, seven of whose members also served it as consultors, experts who attended nearly all its meetings. Five were Dominicans, all but one of the total a member of a religious order. The panel was probably carefully chosen to represent a broad range of opinion to make its decision that much more solid. The Inquisition had its grounds for silencing Galileo. The fact that two witnesses agreed about Galileo’s Copernican allegiance, that both propositions documenting it were condemned, and yet the Inquisition still decided noli prosequi confirms that Copernicanism was not the real issue and was instead a smokescreen, intended to deflect the more serious charge of interpreting scripture.206
CHAPTER 3
The Precept of 26 February 1616
Once the consultors finished their work, the stage was set for the Inquisition to move against Galileo. On 26 February 1616, he had a meeting with Inquisitor Roberto Bellarmino. What happened has generated controversy almost from that moment forward.1 The discussion in this chapter and the next about precepts, and that in particular issued to Galileo in 1616, is long and complicated. This is necessary because so much past controversy over Galileo’s treatment and his trial has been conditioned by misunderstandings of the legal role of precepts, and the English language used in translations. In this chapter I shall deal with the textual evidence allowing a reconstruction of the event, and in the next with its legal meaning. I shall argue that Galileo received a precept that in all likelihood ordered him utterly to abandon Copernican ideas. Given improving knowledge of how the Inquisition worked, including how it produced and preserved its records, it becomes possible to create a consistent account of what happened in 1616.2 A point of terminology: I have chosen to use the term “precept” instead of “injunction” because it comes closer to praeceptum (Latin) or precetto (Italian) and also avoids confusion with an injunction in common law, which it only partly resembles. The key difference is that a competent court must issue an injunction, while in canon law any superior with the proper authority (including private) may give a precept.3
Six documents bear directly on the episode in Bellarmino’s palazzo at San Macuto (the present via del Seminario No. 120). All are in the Inquisition’s files, four of them in Galileo’s dossier. The first three as minutes have the greatest authority:
No. 1. Paul V’s order on 25 February to Bellarmino and Commissary Michelangelo Seghizzi transmitted via the Inquisition’s secretary Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Millini (hereafter “Paul’s order”);4 No. 2. A precept dated the next day; there is also an abbreviated (and irrelevant) eighteenth-century copy of both 1 and 2 (“the precept minute”);5 No. 3. The report of a meeting of the Congregation of the Inquisition on 3 March 1616 found in the decree register of that year (“the decretum”).6
The other three texts probably descend from No. 2 and therefore say less about the events of 1616:
No. 4. Part of the particular congregation’s report of September 1632;7 No. 5. The “Summary” (Summarium) prepared by the Inquisition’s assessor near the end of Galileo’s trial in 1633, and the basis on which the Inquisitors passed sentence;8 No. 6. Galileo’s sentence.9
Most scholars have thought that the minute of 26 February recording the administration of the precept (No. 2) makes the most trouble. This is not the case. That honor instead belongs to the same kind of note of the Inquisition’s meeting a week later (the decretum of 3 March, No. 3). Nearly all commentators treat a seventh text, an affidavit (fede) from Bellarmino requested by Galileo and dated 26 May 1616 (“Bellarmino’s affidavit”), as if it is most important. In fact, it says nothing directly about what happened on 26 February and is largely insignificant.10
I shall save one final piece of evidence for separate treatment, Galileo’s deposition of 12 April 1633, mainly because it is the only one of these texts that offers a slanted view of what happened. Despite many interpreters’ deep suspicions, it is much more likely that Galileo fudged the truth in his testimony than that any of the other documents were falsified or otherwise manipulated. When carefully read, Galileo’s testimony agrees well with the interpretation argued here.
It is as well to admit immediately that any reconstruction will never meet the standards of legal proof. Not only did the Inquisition both generate and manage its records in ways guaranteed to produce problems, it was an institution run by men only some of whom were fully qualified. Some of the least well credentialed, the notaries, had the greatest impact on the quality of its records.11 Nevertheless, it was their intervention alone that made an act authentic, as medieval legal commentators had long argued.12 Many of the rest of the Inquisition’s personnel were lawyers who one might hope would do their job with precision. They too often did not. As one basic albeit largely insignificant indication, they failed to settle on a stable text of the strongest form of the precept even when allegedly quoting it directly.13
The Decretum of 3 March
The only serious discrepancy about what happened on 26 February 1616 arises from document No. 3 (the decretum). It has Bellarmino on 3 March report to the Congregation simply that Galileo had “agreed” to “abandon” heliocentrism after being “warned” to do so.14 This statement has often been taken to mean both that Galileo received only a warning and, more important, that Commissary Michelangelo Seghizzi never issued the precept. The other texts disagree. Paul’s order (No. 1), the one found in Galileo’s dossier but not the decreta, read that Seghizzi should proceed to the precept if Galileo “refused” to agree to the “warning.” It gave the text of the precept as ordering Galileo “to abandon completely teaching, defending or treating this doctrine [of the earth’s movement and the sun’s fixity],” which is almost identical to the wording of No. 2. No. 4 read that Galileo could “in no manner whatever hold, teach or defend [Copernicus’s ideas], in word or in writing” or he would be proceeded against, and that he promised to obey. No. 5 combines all these texts, perhaps sloppily, perhaps maliciously, and makes Bellarmino alone give Galileo the precept in its strongest form. To bring confusion full circle, No. 6, Galileo’s sentence, contains the most detailed account, having Bellarmino warn Galileo “benignly” before Seghizzi gave him the strongest form of the precept.15
Thus, except for the decretum of 3 March, all the texts agree that Galileo got the precept in full form, leaving a little unclear only from whom, a point that may be irrelevant. We are left with one crucial fact: No. 3 stands alone both in its content and, more important, in its status and location. The second point is vital