Category Archives: Bellarmine and the Church

The Galileo Myth

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 4 pages Level: all audiences This article, published in the Jesuit magazine America in October 2020, provides a discussion of the scientific reasons behind opposition to Galileo, a discussion called for because the opposition to Galileo had recently been described in terms of “science denial”.  The authors are Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, and Christopher Graney, a historian of science and Adjunct Scholar with the Vatican Observatory.  From the article: [T]he stories we tell ourselves are never really about the past or the future; they are about the times in which they are written…. We study what happened in history to imagine a better future. That is the immediate relevance of the Galileo story to us today. But we must be careful that the stories we tell ourselves do not fit too neatly into contemporary stereotypes like “science denialism.” If we do not diagnose problems correctly, we cannot come up with good solutions. Click here to access … Continue reading →

The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 23 pages Level: university This 2019 article by Daniel Stolzenberg, published in the history of science journal Isis, discusses the treatment of the Copernican theory by Roman officials in the decades after Galileo’s death, as seen in the case of the 1660 book Harmonia Macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius and its review by Fr. Athanasius Kircher, S. J.  Stolzenberg argues for a reading of the of role of the Holy Office that is different from the usual one (where it is thought of as only serving to hinder the creation and communication of knowledge).  The abstract of “The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters: Roman Censorship, Dutch Atlases, and the European Information Order, circa 1660” is as follows: This essay reconstructs the story of hidden collaborations between the Amsterdam bookseller Johannes Janssonius and the Roman Inquisition in 1660. It provides evidence that the papacy tacitly permitted the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book at a surprisingly early date and … Continue reading →

Galileo’s Newly-Discovered Letter

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (blog post) 2800 words Level: high school and above In 2018 the journal Nature announced that a previously-unknown copy of one of Galileo’s letters had been discovered in the archives of the Royal Society—and Nature stated that the new copy showed Galileo to have lied.  Christopher Graney discusses this letter (which was arguably the event that set the “Galileo Affair” into motion) in a posting on the Vatican Observatory’s blog, The Catholic Astronomer, and also discusses the Nature announcement, the science of Galileo’s time, and the people involved with the letter. Click here to read the entire blog posting from The Catholic Astronomer.    

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Mathematical Disquisitions – The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book 176 pages Level: high school and above This 2017 book by Christopher M. Graney is the first complete English translation of an astronomical text written by scientists who stood opposite Galileo in the debate on the question of Earth’s motion. Galileo painted a very unfavorable portrait of Mathematical Disquisitions and its Jesuit authors, but the book itself turns out to be a competent scientific work and not much like Galileo’s portrayal of it. From the publisher, the University of Notre Dame Press: Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo offers a new English translation of the 1614 Disquisitiones Mathematicae, which Johann Georg Locher wrote under the guidance of the German Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner. The booklet, an anti-Copernican astronomical work, is of interest in large part because Galileo Galilei, who came into conflict with Scheiner over the discovery of sunspots, devoted numerous pages within his famous 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic and Copernican to ridiculing Disquisitiones. The brief text (the … Continue reading →

The Parallel Worlds of Christoph Scheiner and Galileo Galilei

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 14 pages Level: high school and above This 2016 article—written by Oddbjørn Engvold of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Jack B. Zirker, of the National Solar Observatory, USA, and published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy—provides an overview that compares and contrasts the solar observations made by Galileo Galilei on one hand, and by Christoph Scheiner of the Society of Jesus on the other. While Galileo is better known, Scheiner would go on to study the sun far more extensively that Galileo, and to become the world’s first true solar astronomer. Engvold and Zirker write: Scheiner was a keen observer, who shares with Galileo the credit of discovering and describing many of the sunspot phenomena we know today. He recorded the behaviour of sunspots, sometime several times per day, allegedly over 16 years. From this mass of data, he deduced several important properties of the Sun, such as the latitude variation of rotation, as well as … Continue reading →

The Work of the Best and Greatest Artist: A Forgotten Story of Religion, Science, and Stars in the Copernican Revolution

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (PDF) 29 pages Level: high school and above This 2012 article from Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture presents the following argument: In 1576 the English astronomer Thomas Digges (1546–95) published his English translation of Nicholaus Copernicus’s (1473–1543) De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium together with a sketch of the Copernican universe under the heading “A Perfit description of the Cœlestial Orbes”. Because Digges’s sketch shows the planets circling the Sun, surrounded by an infinite expanse of stars, it is often hailed as a forerunner of the modern, scientific understanding of an infinite universe in which the Earth is but a speck. However, Digges was illustrating not the insignificance of Earth but the greatness of a universe of stars that testified to the omnipotence and magnificence of God. Ideas such as Digges’s played a prominent role in Copernican thought, so much so that Copernicans cited Divine Omnipotence to answer one of the most powerful scientific objections to the heliocentric theory. … Continue reading →

A True Demonstration: Bellarmine and the Stars as Evidence Against Earth’s Motion in the Early Seventeenth Century

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (PDF) 17 pages Level: high school and above This 2011 article from Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture presents the following argument: In 1615 Robert Cardinal Bellarmine demanded a “true demonstration” of Earth’s motion before he would cease to doubt the Copernican world system. No such demonstration was available because the geocentric Tychonic world system was a viable alternative to the heliocentric Copernican system. On the contrary, recent work concerning early observations of stars suggests that, thanks to astronomers’ misunderstanding of the images of stars seen through the telescope, the only “true demonstration” the telescope provided in Bellarmine’s day showed the earth not to circle the Sun. This had been discussed by the German astronomer Simon Marius, in his Mundus Iovialis, just prior to Bellarmine’s request for a “true demonstration.” Click here to download “A True Demonstration: Bellarmine and the Stars as Evidence Against Earth’s Motion in the Early Seventeenth Century” directly from Logos. Click here to download … Continue reading →

Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 1000 words Level: all audiences This article by Christopher Graney was originally published by Aeon, and later republished by The Atlantic and others. It discusses astronomical work published in 1614 by Johann Georg Locher, a student of the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner. There is a great contrast between how Galileo portrayed Locher’s work, and the work itself. Graney writes, “Locher matters. Science’s history matters. Anti-Copernicans such as Locher and Brahe show that science has always functioned as a contest of ideas, and that science was present in both sides of the vigorous debate over Earth’s motion.” Click here for this article from Aeon. Click here for this article from The Atlantic.  

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How Frs. Riccioli and Dechales Argued that Science Shows the Earth to be at Rest – The Coriolis Effect

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (blog post) 600 words Level: all audiences In this post on The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney discusses how the effect of Earth’s rotation on objects travelling through the air (now known as the “Coriolis effect”) was foreseen by Jesuit scientists, who argued that the absence of this effect indicated that Copernicus was wrong about the Earth being in motion. This scientific argument against the Earth’s motion turned out to be wrong because the effect did in fact exist, but was very hard to detect. Click here to read the full article on The Catholic Astronomer – the blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.  

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Decree of Approval for the work “Elements of Astronomy” by Giuseppe Settele, in support of the heliocentric system (1820)

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 300 words Level: all audiences The 1820 decree under Pope Pius VII removing all remaining prohibitions against the Copernican system. This arose from the request of Fr. Giuseppe Settele for an imprimatur on his book Elementi di ottica e di astronomia (Elements of Optics and Astronomy), which referenced Earth’s motion. The request was denied; Settele appealed to the Pope. This translation is from the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. The translation is from the original Latin provided in W. Brandmüller and E.J. Greipl, eds., Copernico, Galilei e la chiesa : fine della controversia (1820) : gli atti del Sant’Uffizio {i.e. Copernicus, Galileo, and the Church: The End of the Controversy (1820), Acts of the Holy Office} (Florence: Leo Olschki, 1992), pp. 300-301. [Rome], 1820 VIII 16 Vol. I, fol. 174v (Bruni, scribe) The Assessor of the Holy Office has referred the … Continue reading →