Note 397 — Chapter IX · THE SENTENCE AND RECANTATION.

Compare the excellent essay: “La Condemnation de Galilée. Lapsus des écrivains qui l’opposent a la doctrine de l’infallibilité du Pape,” von Abbé Bouix. Also Pieralisi, pp. 121-131; and Gilbert’s “La Procés de Galilée,” pp. 19-30. We may remark here, that according to these principles the doctrine of Copernicus was not made heretical by the sentence of the Inquisition, because the decree never received the Pope’s official ratification. To confirm this statement we subjoin some remarks by theological authorities. Gassendi remarks in his great work, “De motu impresso a motore translato” (Epist. ii. t. iii. p. 519), published nine years after the condemnation of Galileo, on the absence of the papal ratification in the sentence of the Holy Tribunal, and that therefore the negation of the Copernican theory was not an article of faith. As a good priest he recognises the high authority of a decision of the Congregation, and subjects his personal opinions to it. Father Riccioli, in his comprehensive work, “Almagestum novum,” published nine years after Gassendi’s, reproduces Gassendi’s statement word for word (t. i., pars. 2, p. 489), and entirely concurs in it, even in the book which was meant to refute the Copernican theory at all points (pp. 495, 496, and 500). Father Fabri, a French Jesuit, afterwards Grand Penitentiary at Rome, says in a dissertation published there in 1661 against the “Systema Saturnium,” of Huyghens (p. 49), that as no valid evidence can be adduced for the truth of the new system, the authorities of the Church are quite right in interpreting the passages of Holy Scripture relating to the system of the universe literally; “but,” he adds, “if ever any conclusive reasons are discovered (which I do not expect), I do not doubt that the Church will say that they are to be taken figuratively,” a remark which no priest would have made about a doctrine pronounced heretical by infallible authority. Caramuel, a Spanish Benedictine, who also discussed the future of the Copernican theory, defines the position still more clearly than Fabri. In his “Theologia fundamentalis,” published at Lyons in 1676 (t. i., pp. 104-110), after defending the decree and sentence of the Congregation, he discusses the attitude which the Church will take in case the system should prove indisputably true. In the first place he believes this will never happen, and if it does, it could never be said that the Church of Rome had been in error, as the doctrine of the double motion of the earth had never been condemned by an Œcumenical Council, nor by the Pope speaking ex cathedra, but only by the tribunal of cardinals.

It is interesting to find that Descartes, Galileo’s contemporary, put the same construction on the matter. He wrote on 10th January, 1634, to Father Mersenne: “As I do not see that this censure has been confirmed either by a Council or the Pope, but proceeds solely from the congregation of the cardinals, I do not give up hope that it will not happen to the Copernican theory as it did to that about the antipodes, which was formerly condemned in the same way.” (Panthéon littéraire, Œuvres philosophiques de Descartes, p. 545.)