Galileo and the Jesuits

Abstract

More than once, after his trial, Galileo asserted that the Jesuits were the source of all his troubles. He was not alone in that judgment; it was the accepted view of the age. Galileo’s relations with the Jesuits are then a matter of some importance. Without denying the fundamental issue of authority in questions of natural philosophy that separated them, this essay explores how much the system of patronage, which supported Galileo in his life in science, can help to illuminate their relations.

The essay insists on the centrality of the period 1615–16, the Inquisition’s first inquiry into Galileo and also the watershed in his dealings with the Jesuits. Until that time the Jesuits at the Collegio Romano had been Galileo’s steadfast supporters, crucial figures in his rise to prominence. In 1616, as a result of charges brought against Galileo, the Church condemned Copernicanism and placed several books on the Index, but neither the Holy Office nor the Index touched Galileo in public. The essay argues that the system of patronage had made him immune. It argues as well that the Jesuits, reflecting on his apparent immunity and on his increasingly abrasive manner, encouraged by the system of patronage, decided then that it would be necessary to defend their position of authority in the Catholic world and to cut Galileo down to size.

Without pretending that there was not an important divergence of outlook between Galileo and the Jesuits, this analysis moves the origin of their conflict from the realm of intellectual differences to another context. It asks how Galileo, the successful client, impinged on others, and it asks how those with established authority in intellectual life viewed the arrival of a new man whose genius was the more compelling because it enjoyed the support of the patron class.