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Anna-Luna Post, "Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025)
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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. Ready to refresh your wardrobe? Nordstrom has all the latest styles for spring, from elevated dresses and denim to standout tops and accessories. Discover the trends and essentials you'll reach for again and again. We've got brands you love like Waif, Princess Polly, Mango, Adidas, and Favorite Daughter. Plus free shipping, free returns, and quick order pickup. Make updating your closet effortless. Shop in stores@nordstrom.com or download our app. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hello, I'm Freddie Dominguez with the New Books Network. I'm excited to be talking with Dr. Anna Luna post, who is a historian based at Leiden University. She's also the author of an excellent book, Galileo's Fame, Science, Credibility and memory in the 17th century. And this is coming out of the University of Pittsburgh Press 2025. So let's start, and I want to start broadly, or at the beginning, as it were, with the title of the book. And if you could tell us a little bit about fame, what it means, what it meant, and how it frames your book.
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A
Absolutely. And let me start by thanking you for having me here. It's a wonderful opportunity to chat about the book. So Galileo's fame is about fame in the early modern world. And I think we have a tendency to think about fame as a very modern concept. And fame in a Renaissance was a concept that was very much in use. The Italian term fama, in fact, was a term that popped up again and again, especially in Renaissance Italy, and which had many different connotations in the world of culture, in the world of learning, but also in legal proceedings within religious contexts. So the word fame or fama was an umbrella term that referred both to concepts like reputation, but also to talk. So the chatter and the gossip that make up reputations, but then also to something that comes very close to how we would use the word fame, like public renown, being known by people that you don't know. And then there is the adjacent term of glory or vainglory. Those terms are often also denoted by the wider concept of fama. And I think it's an incredibly rich concept that I wanted to use in the book to study how it impacted Galileo's life and career, but also to see how the world of learning is connected to to adjacent worlds of the courtroom, of the marketplace, and of religious institutions. And Galileo's life is really the perfect vehicle to study how those worlds interconnect, not just because Galileo moved in all of them, but also because he possessed all these different kinds of farmer and they, they interconnect in his life and his career. And we made him also because his life is so richly documented. We can trace his early reputation, we can trace his rise to fame, and then we can also actually study his infamy and the way that his fame lasts through the centuries in different ways. So that's what the book is really about at heart.
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B
So let's talk about Galileo and if you could take us to those first moments when he starts to achieve a certain reputation and renown. Can you tell us how that came about?
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A
Absolutely. So I think today most of us will know Galileo because of the trial of 1633 in which he was convicted for the vehement suspicion of heresy. But Galileo had his real breakthrough moment in 1610 when he used the newly invented instrument, the telescope, to look at the heavens and observed four satellites, or moons surrounding Jupiter. And he observed also that the surface of the moon is quite rugged and isn't smooth or perfect as Aristotelian philosophy would have it. He published his findings very rapidly. They came out already in March. So two months have passed since he first aimed his or since he first saw the satellites. And when the book came out, there's this wonderful letter from the English diplomat in Venice, Henry Wootton, who writes to England to. To say that the discoverer of these new astronomical findings runs the risk of becoming exceedingly ridiculous or exceedingly famous. And that is really the moment that we find Galileo in March 1610 on the brink of something. But whether that is long lasting fame or ridicule, that's not known at that point. And that's a fascinating sort of pivotal moment. And then we can go even further back because as you said, he is making a name for himself already earlier when he makes these discoveries in 1610, he is 45 years old, something like that. And before that he has been working at the University of Padua for a while and he's lectured there on a comet of 1604 and so on the supernova of 1604. Sorry. So he already has a reputation, but that's not a great reputation also because there is a plagiarism conflict that emerges with a student in 1607. So Galileo has this breakthrough moment in 1610 and that really establishes his name in Europe as a finder of neo heavenly worlds. But then through that particular fame that he achieves, we can still also observe some shadows of his previous reputation, which is really fascinating.
- [06:43]
B
So it's not. I mean, one of the things that I found compelling about your story is that it's not a story of Galileo's brilliance that somehow self propelled into sort of stardom, into the coalescing of the memory we have of Galileo. It's really a lot of people, institutions that surround him, that help cement and even create that reputation. And I was wondering if you could tell us broadly a little bit about that, this sense that, you know, it's the people around him and the basis for discussion around him that create the opportunity and the possibility for developing a positive reputation. And then we'll get to the negative a little bit later on.
- [07:31]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So fame is made up through the chatter of people about someone that receives renown or fame. And I think in history we have, for a long time we've been really fascinated by the way that people fashion their own fame, right? Or their own reputations or their Persona. We've been looking at how people, which, which mechanisms they have, which what they have at their disposal. But what that overlooks is that achieving fame also always encompasses a loss of control. Because to achieve fame you need to convince it's other people that bestow fame. You can only be famous if other people embrace you as famous, if they uplift you. And I think it's really fascinating to look at the way that people gain fame also, because that is such an integral aspect of Fama in all its different facets. So that is very much ingrained in the way that fama, for instance, operates in the courtroom. So fama is a legal term in medieval Italy, and in Renaissance Italy, it's the chatter that forms reputation or fame, but it's also that reputation itself. And fama in particular, fama legalis or publica Fama is something that is said widely, that is shared widely by a large group of people, something that within a community is widely known and accepted to be true. And that public affirma that can serve as evidence within courtrooms, but it can also be used as a basis to start an investigation what is said about someone. And that awareness of how people talk about someone that permeates early modern societies, that the awareness that fame is made by people through chatter. And I think that in the book I really wanted to highlight that mechanism, that dynamic between Galileo, but also the people around him, because we can observe that in his very early career, but also later on. So the text, the Letter by Henry Wotton, is a very good example. He says that the book is chatted about everywhere in Venice, but that people don't know whether it's true yet. And especially in a time when books are still scarce and instruments are still scarce. That chatter is how people will try to think about whether something is true or not. And then they are also immediately aware of their own role in that process. So they will also reflect on their own position in that. And we can really see that in Kalileos case, in that after he publishes, there are scholars all over Europe that start writing to each other, asking what they have heard about Galileo, what they have said about Galileo to others, whether they think his discoveries are true, but also whether people can say something about his character. And in the years after his first breakthrough moment, let's say we can really see how people gather around him also to bask in his glory, basically, to have some of his fame reflect on them, because they will profit from it.
- [11:16]
B
So how do they assess Galileo? What are the elements that people are thinking about? And I asked this because you mentioned this question of character. What role does character play in assessing Galileo, and then how that affects the development of his reputation?
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A
Yeah. So character is really crucial. Early modernists are really used to thinking about the elements that make up convincing rhetoric and ethos. The character of a speaker is one of them. So people will look at Kalileo and see whether he is a convincing speaker, how he frames himself as a convincing speaker, but also how others frame him as a speaker. And one thing that really stood out as a marker of his ethos was his own provenance as a Florentine. And that was very interesting because it popped up again and again. And people would embrace this in two very different ways, either to say, okay, Florentines are smart and cultured, and it's a cradle of learning Florence. So we might infer from that that Galileo might be trusted as well, and that his work is reliable. But on the other hand, a very dominant string in this discourse was that Florentines are cunning and deceitful. And I think that that way of looking at the Florentines is grounded in new ways of thinking about theatrical display in which people on a stage played a role. And the Florentines would be recognizable as cunning and deceitful. And there might be a connection to Machiavelli there, but I think someone should definitely look into that further. But it popped up again and again this idea that the Florentines are notoriously industrious and that Galileo heads taken the work of someone else, invented the telescope, and then Galileo had improved it and then pointed it towards the heavens. But he wasn't even the first one to do so. And in Venice especially, people initially really embraced his findings and his claims. But then, as Galileo then published his Sigreius Nuncius in 1610 and moved to Florence, dedicating the book to the Florentine Grand Duke Cosimo ii, the Venetians became quite jealous of his success and they felt that Galileo had betrayed them. So then we find in commentaries from Venetian authors and scholars the idea that Galileo was not the first one to observe the satellites around Jupiter. And in fact, a Venetian nobleman had, and that Galileo was, as the Florentines are wont to do, quite deceitful in trying to take that glory for himself and for the Florentines. And what I found interesting is that in that vision about how Florentines act, that vision is then paired with what people already know in Venice about Galileo. And that's that plagiarism case from 1607 in which Galileo was accused by a student of having plagiarized a mathematical instrument. And Galileo had enlisted the help of institutions at the Padovan University, and with their help, he had absolutely managed to shake these accusations from the student Baldassarre Karbe Capra, and he had published the proceedings of the sort of trial that he orchestrated in this plagiarism conflict with Capra. But still the accusations, they linger. So Galileo was put in the right. The fact that Galileo did not commit plagiarism was announced in the square in front of the university, so people would be aware of it. But still, once an accusation like that is made, it often has a very long afterlife. And in the way that the Venetians responded to Galileo's move to Florence in the spring of 1610, we see how those judgments about Florentine character and about ethos converge with gossip and reputation of Galileo himself in Venice. So we can see that interplay between local and regional factors.
- [16:25]
B
Did Galileo present himself as being, you know, reflecting the institution of the University of Padua or the court in Florence? Was this part of his self identity as he represented himself?
- [16:45]
A
Absolutely, it was part of his self. Fashioning Manuel Biagioni's study, Galileo Courtier has very famously shown how he portrayed himself as the ideal Medici courtier. And he really did it. So on the. On the frontispiece of the Sidereus Nuncius. So there he portrays himself as professor of mathematics at the University of Padova, where he had been teaching since 1592. So he very much leans on that professional affinity with the Padovan studio. But then he also identifies himself as a Florentine nobleman. And in the dedication he really stresses his links to Florence. And so he really uses both those institutional heavyweights, they're both institutional heavyweights, to uplift his own reliability as an author. And that helps his audience, to place him within specific local contexts and to give his audience an idea of who he is. And that's what Galileo means to do with this. But then, of course, with the move to Florence, there is a risk, and the Phoenicians very much respond to it in a way that Galileo would probably have seen coming. But still, that's not ideal for his position at the time. So he also loses a bit of control in that move.
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B
Yeah. So in the realm of control, are there moments when Galileo is subsumed by the institution? I'm thinking about the poetry that was written, and at times, this sort of pushes Galileo aside in favor of his patrons.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. So Galileo dedicates the four magician stars, we call them Medician stars, to the house of Medici. So those are the satellites of Jupiter. And he really sets up this comparison between the eternal heavenly bodies and the eternity of House Medici, which is an ideal way of honoring your patron, especially because having these heavenly bodies named after you, that's something really special that no patron in Europe can actually have, right? Not yet. So this is a much more everlasting monument than something like a painting or poetry. At the same time, the poets are really instrumental. Court poets in Florence, but also elsewhere, are instrumental in propelling Galileo's fame further. So especially in that spring summer of 1610 in Europe, there is still a lot of discussion about the validity of Galileo's claims. So he makes his discoveries with a telescope, which is a very new instrument, which is quite difficult to manage. Not many people know how to do it well. But also it's quite difficult to get an instrument of sufficient quality. And then there is another issue, which is that the satellites of Jupiter that Galileo observes in the winter cannot always be observed throughout the year. So he will give demonstrations to people, and then some of them won't be visible. And that is, of course, a real obstacle to his convincing people that his claims are true. And these are so spectacular in nature that people have their legitimate doubts. So Galileo is trying to rally support in all corners that he can find. And he is especially at first, trying to convince a group of Medici court poets who he already knows, because he was part of a Florentine network of, let's say, the lower nobility during his youth especially. So he has friends close to the court. He is part of the Florentine academic culture, which comprises both the university, but also these poetic and artistic academies. And he's really leveraging those connections at this moment in the spring of 1610, to try to also convey the value of his discoveries to House Medici, who still haven't offered him a position at court. And that is what Galileo is aiming for. So he's trying to convince the poets, and they are enthusiastic, they will commit to writing something for him that praises his discoveries, the satellites. But many of them are hesitant to put their names to it. So they will write something, but they will do it anonymously, or they promise that they will write something and then they don't deliver. And Galileo is really trying to urge them along because he's hoping to publish an Italian version of the Cduncius again to curry favor with House Medici. And then there are a few poets that are a lot more forthcoming and that are super happy to accommodate Galileo and to praise discoveries because they have more to win. And one of them is Girolamo Magagnati, who is at the moment based in Venice, but like Galileo, wants to move to Florence and wants to present a business venture to the House Medici. And so he really goes all out praising Galileo's discoveries, but he really praises the Medici aspects of it, so he really uses them to praise House Medici, as Galileo is doing. But in that process, Galileo's name goes somewhat to the background. And that is even more true for another poet who is not connected to the Florentine court at all, but is actually working in Rome. His name is Vincenzo Villucci and he is writing under a pseudonym because he is a member of the Jesuit order. And so for him, it's even more complex to attach his name to Galileo's findings than it is for the Florentine court poets, because the Florentine court poets, they're hesitant because they don't know yet fully whether Galileo has the support of their patron. There are still rumors that Galileo's findings are actually not true, and so they don't want to have their name and the name of their patron attached to these astronomical findings if they turn out to be false. But they are happy to provide Galileo at least with manuscript poems. This Vincenzo Villiucci is interesting because he writes a little later than the court poet. So by this time, Galileo's discoveries have been confirmed also by the Jesuits in the Collegio Romano. But Galileo is then embroiled in a priority dispute with a Jesuit author called Shiner. And Filucci is really trying to praise Galileo and Shiner at the same time, while he is also using those discoveries of Galileo of the Jupiter satellites, the Medician satellites, as Galileo calls them, to curry favor with a Roman noble family. And so in Filiucci's account, then the satellites aren't named the Medicean stars anymore, and he is splitting the credit for the discovery of the sunspots equally between Galileo and between Shiner. And Galileo's friends in Rome are really not amused by it, and they really feel that he is very rude for taking away credit from Galileo and for not celebrating him and for not for giving this these discoveries, for praising them, but then appropriating them actually for his own ends. And that is really the way that Galileo also loses control about that narrative that he is so very carefully crafted about the Medician stars and about his own unique position to honor Aus Medici, because other people will start using his findings to their own ends. And in some cases that still benefits Galileo very much. But in others, he and especially his supporters feel that people overstep and take away from Galileo's own purpose.
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B
So he's always very aware of the narrative and losing the narrative, right? So he's always trying to compensate for it in some way or another, using others around him to do some of that work for him. Is that correct?
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A
I think so. I also think that after 1610, especially after 1613, when Galileo has joined up with the members of the Academia DEI Lince in Rome, he is quite happy to lean back a bit and to let them take over. So the Accademia dell' in Che is a really fascinating institution. It's called the first scientific academy in Europe, and they live according to these almost monastic principles. They also have this very collective idea of what it means to practice science. One thing that the Lynche do is take a very active role in each other's publications. So the prince of the Academy, Federico Cesi, will often pay for publications by members of the Lynche, but the other Lince will also help publishing works by supplying paratextual materials like poems or paintings, sorry, images or a preface. And they will also help disseminate the work throughout through their networks in various European cities. And Galileo first works with them for the publication of his Sunspot Letters. And they do a really great job in constantly discussing with him every step of the way, how the publication can best be handled. They really also give him great advice, because Galileo, for instance, they shouldn't. Well, they really give him good advice about how to handle the opposition that Galileo is experiencing, especially from Germany. So Galileo is helped a lot by their involvement. And then it seems that with the publication of his next major work, the Il Saggiatore, the Assayer, they really seem to be even more involved, but they also take away some of Galileo's own, how shall we say, agency, almost. Galileo is still consulted on some issues, but sometimes he's just presented with the solution. So by the time that the work comes out, it's a very fortuitous moment for the academia because it converges with the election of a new pope, Urban viii. Maffeo Barberini, and the Accademia Deglince asks his nephew, Cardinal Barberini, to join their ranks. And they think Galileo's work is the very best thing they can offer him as a sort of welcome gift. So they dedicate the work to him. And they don't confer with this with Galileo on this, they just decide to do it, and they write to him to let him know. And that work is also framed much more as a Lindseyn book. Galileo is still the author, of course, but he is presented in more starkly Lynchian terms. And there is much less attention to his also being a Medici courtier. So during that relationship, you also see a changing dynamic in which Galileo's own sense of how the publication system works disappears a bit into the background because he's happy to let them take over. Yeah.
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B
Now, there are occasions that. And you suggested this with Lynche, where Galileo is investing a certain prestige to institutions that he is affiliated with. I'm thinking, for example, in Padua, when he's hired, part of the idea was that you had kind of a celebrity professor who will attract students or something like that. Could you say a little bit about that dynamic?
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A
Yeah, absolutely. So when Galileo is hired in 1592 in Padua, he comes from the University of Pisa, and he has already tried to get hired in Bologna a few years earlier when he was still very young mathematician. And that's very interesting because the correspondence surrounding his application for the University of Bologna or the Studio of Bologna, that application process is very illuminating of the dynamics of fame and reputation in this period, and also tells us how Galileo's fame was valued before the Cidereus Nuncius. And so Galileo, in that moment, 1587 or 88, was rejected actually, for his lack of fame. So he has two people writing for him to recommend him, and one of them receives a response saying that the university was indeed looking for a candidate of Dinom e Fama, so of name and fame, and they were looking for an extraordinary professor because they had enough ordinary ones, which implies that they are looking for someone to attract students from abroad, especially and they end up hiring Giovanni Antonio Magini, who is Galileo's senior and who has published a few works in Latin already. So he is more widely known in Europe than Galileo is. And Galileo by that time doesn't have any publications to his name. And by the time that he gets hired in Venice, that's still the case in Padua. So in 1592 he does get hired, but it's through his connections with Venetian nobleman, and he starts teaching in Padua. And then he does make a name for himself. And when he lecturing on the supernova in 1604, he is asked by the university to lecture more often on the phenomenon because it attracts students. And Galileo is doing so gladly. But then it's only later on that we really find that Galileo has achieved that status. So in 1629, the University of Pisa, which is his official employer, so he is, he is hired by the courts, the Florentine court, by the Medici family. But then he is also obligated by contract to lecture on special occasions at the university in pisa. And in 1629, someone at the university asks whether they should still continue paying his salary as he lectures so rarely. And a secretary for the university then responds, saying, well, Galileo attracts so many students to the studio that we should have him. And that's the main reason that we have him on the faculty roster, let's say. And I briefly looked into it and I couldn't actually find an uptick in student numbers at the time. But there is this widely shared belief in Europe at the time that having famous professors will attract people to the university, because these universities in Italy especially, they're competing with each other for student numbers, enrollment, especially foreign students who bring in money to the town, and so they try to get the more famous professors to lecture for them. And again, that is what also has this effect on the Venetians as Galileo leaves. That's why they are upset about him leaving, because it also detracts from their standing and prestige at the time. And I think that's a dynamic that we still see to some extent in modern academia.
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B
Now we've been dealing with the positive, and you've implied throughout that there's this negative side of the story. And I wondered if you can tell us a little bit about this negative side and if you could give us some details regarding the Dominican preachers in particular, which I find absolutely fascinating in this story.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So fame in the early modern period, much more than it is now, is an ambiguous concept. So it thrives on that ambiguity because that's why People keep talking about it, but that's also why it was quite a contested resource to have in early modern academia, in the world of scholarship. So fame is associated with volatility, because fame, the Goddess of Fama, was very flighty. She could arrive at a moment's notice, but she could also depart at a moment's notice. So you would never know if someone had achieved fame, whether that would be lasting fame. And that fame in this period was also very much associated with pride seeking behavior and with vainglory. And it was suspect because of its origins, because it originated from the talk that's shared by large groups of people, mostly anonymous groups of people. And those criticisms really converge in the way that these three Dominican friars and preachers in Florence respond to Galileo, let's say between 1610 and 1615 especially. So there's two groups of opponents active at this moment. We have the Pigeon league, which is a set of academic opponents. The leader is called Dudovico della Colombe, which translates to pigeon, and that's why the group is called the Pigeon League. And then intriguingly, his brother, Rafaele Della Colomba is sort of leading the Dominican attack. And he is really speaking against Galileo from the pulpit in Florence. He even preaches in the Santa Maria Maggiore, so the Duomo, which of course holds an enormous number of people. And in his sermons, Della Colomba accuses Galileo of different things. He accuses Copernicans more broadly of doubting truths that have been so clearly established by ancient philosophers, but also by the Bible, that the only reason they could have for doubting those truths is that they are blinded by their own search for vain glory, which makes them drunk and makes them hallucinate. And that criticism is also levied against Galileo, especially when he is writing about the sunspots. So Galileo observes spots around the sun which cast doubt on the Aristotelian. But also the biblical tenets that the sun is a heavenly body and is as such perfect and can be distinguished from the earth, which is imperfect. And Della Colomba really, at various points in his sermons, refers again to Galileo as an inventive mathematician, implying that he makes up things out of a desire for glory. And he accuses him of making up these things. And illustrates the insanity of this by invoking this ancient proverb that the ancients would have. And they would say that finding a spot in the sun is someone who is trying to find fault with everything, but also trying to make things up when they aren't true, which is a criticism that is levied against scholars in different contexts, also in scholarly debates between scholastics and natural philosophers. And so it's levied against Galileo from university opponents, let's say philosophers, but also from the pulpits. So we have this Raffaele della Colomba, who is really taking a public stance against Galileo, speaking, preaching against him in Florence. And then we also have two Dominican friars that are taking a different route and who are writing to the Inquisition in Rome to alert them about Galileo's writings and especially about his influence on young students and people in the streets of Florence who they claim are calling themselves Galileisti and sowing these untruths everywhere, these untruths that Galileo has taught them and that for these Dominican friars, that's the real problem. So if Galileo is saying things that are untrue, they might be able to deal with him. But the fact that he is then telling this to students who are following his example and then going around the city, that really worries the Dominican friars because it's, it means a threat to political and religious order within the city. And they are so alert to these potential troublemakers that have the power to unite groups that go against traditional authority. And so they write to the Inquisition in 1615, and there is an investigation into Galileo's actions in Florence.
- [41:18]
B
So to go back to the pulpit in particular, which I find really fascinating, is it that Galileo's teachings, as kind of the other Dominicans suggest, have become so popular that they needed to be publicly dealt with. Because it seems to me the danger would be right, that you are promoting in some ways, or bringing to a broader public Galileo's ideas. So they must have known that possibility and decided that the risk was, was worth it.
- [41:53]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So, so this is fascinating. We, we know, of course, that the audience in those sermons would have been composed of people that have a learned background that have, that followed the news in Europe. But sermons are also often a place in which news is conveyed to wider audiences. And in this case, I think it's absolutely, you're right that there is a real risk that some people will already know Galileo. And I think we can see also in Della Colomba's sermons that he is trying initially not to call out Galileo too explicitly, but is just sort of referring to him, our inventive mathematician, which supposes that some people in the audience will know who he is referring to and then he is calling him out later on and he's more explicitly referring, or, sorry, reflecting also on Galileo's discovery. So in doing so, he makes those discoveries known to A wider audience. And I think that must be a response to what they see happening in Florence, where at the time Galileo, of course, operates, lives, teaches works, is discussed, and also is circulating letters that are copied. And that, according to these Dominican friars, are in the hands of everyone. So I think that we, again, have that sense of a loss of control that is very central to the issue of fame that now prods the Dominican friars to take back control by, you know, taking their position on the pulpit and using their might to speak out against Galileo. Yeah, but it's. It's a real risk. You're right.
- [43:59]
B
So what happens when Galileo, at a certain point, to a certain extent, becomes toxic, when he has ultimately the fight with the Church? What happens then in terms of his fame and how people are trying to deal with how they engage or propel his Persona to a broader public.
- [44:24]
A
So there are two main things to say here. The first thing is that in this dynamic with Galileo and the Dominicans in Florence, one thing that's really tricky for Galileo is that he knows what the Dominicans are saying in public about him, but he doesn't know what they're saying in the Inquisition rooms, and he doesn't know what they're finding there. So he is alerted to the fact that there is an inquiry and his response to it is to go to Rome. And there he does actually the worst thing he could do in this situation, which is. And he writes to the Florentine secretary in Florence to keep him updated. He writes that he has become the promoter of this wider cause, and the wider cause is Copernicanism. And he writes that this university of people, this group of people, the community of people, has tried for a long time to convince people in power that Copernicus was right. And now he wants to be the person that finally finalizes that, basically. And so he goes to Rome, he again circulates a letter. So he seems to be doing exactly what the Dominican friars have let the Inquisition know that he's doing. He's trying to rally support in an uncontrolled manner. And so this leads to an injunction for Galileo which holds that he cannot teach or discuss heliocentrism as a doctrine. And it's very tricky because there's different documents surrounding this injunction, and it's a very complex paper history. We also know that people in Venice and Florence later heard that Galileo was forced to abjure his Copernican views already in 1616, which we know not to be true. And Galileo then also asks Cardinal Bellarmine to write him a letter to confirm this so he can show it to people to let them know that he hasn't had to abjure that he doesn't have that shame attached to him. But then, of course, the second part to this story is that in 1632, Galileo publishes the Dialogo. And as I already said, in 1623, 24, there's this very fortuitous moment for Galileo and for the lynch, because Urban VIII is selected pope. And there's this moment of rejoicement because he's a Florentine, he's known as a man of learning. So they think in 1624 that there is this real moment for Galileo to make that final push for heliocentrism. Galileo has several conversations in Rome about this. And from these conversations he sort of infers that it's okay for him to write about this. And so he does so in the Dialovo, which is a dialogue between three characters. And it's made clear to him by the Pope that he can only treat this hypothetically and he cannot really take a stance. But in the book, it's quite clear where Galileo's true loyalty lies and his true conviction lies. So in quite quickly after publication of the book, the Inquisition again starts an investigation and Galileo is called to Rome. And the injunction that Galileo was given earlier then is rediscovered in the Inquisition archives. And that's a real problem for Galileo. Even though he says that he remembered the injunction differently, there is this issue that he is now thwarted, an explicit order from Inquisition. And so the Church really, the Inquisition doesn't really have another option then to start this trial and to punish him. And they also frame this in terms of their reputation. They cannot do nothing, because if they do so, they appear too lenient, too soft. But they are also very aware of the fact that Galileo is a really old man by this time, and that if they punish him too severely, that will also hurt their reputation. So they are trying to come up with a way to punish him and to really make sure that they redirect the way that Galileo is remembered, especially for posterity. So they come up with different punishments. They have Galileo banished to his villa in Arcetri. They have him, of course, publicly abjure his views, though he has to do so in a setting with only limited public, so he doesn't have to wear also an item of shameful clothing, a habitello. There's ways in which the severity of this punishment is mitigated and at the same time it is broadcast through all of Europe. So they do write to all the nuncios in different places in Europe to communicate the sentence. And especially the fact that Galileo had to retract his words because that really casts him as a good penitent, as someone, as a testament basically to the Church's authority and as a bad scholar. So that really reaffirms the authority of the Church in a way. Except that again, in the same way that Galileo is dependent on other people to make his reputation and to believe his reputation and to confirm it, the Church is also dependent here on people to follow their instructions, basically. So there are many scholars that still feel that Galileo is thwarted or is treated unjustly. And so different colleagues of Galileo try out different strategies to again redirect his memory from the way that the Catholic Church has intended it. And some of them are very explicit. So we have a few letters from the verescience who is in France, who writes very directly to Cardinal Barberini to ask whether they cannot change Galileo's sentence because he feels that it's really unjust that he is exiled and that actually the Church will be remembered unfondly by later generations for what they did to Galileo. And then there's also people that choose a much more, a very different strategy that really goes under the radar, much more. So they will write a poem that uses wordplay to actually imply that Galileo was treated unjustly, or they will write a poem that is super, super celebratory of Galileo and then have this little disclaimer saying that of course they comply with the Church's view, so they find all these different ways to redirect Galileo's memory. And I think that really captures again that difficult nature of fame that's so difficult to contain or to steer one specific way because different groups will have different views.
- [52:37]
B
Well, we could go on and on because your book is so rich and textured. But I would like to finish us with one question that is a slightly broader. And that is, as I was reading your book, I was thinking a lot about literature on the development of public spheres in this period, scientific and otherwise. And I wonder if you could comment a little bit about the way that you think Galileo's story kind of fits into that literature or helps answer some of the questions about modern public spheres and the development of those in the early modern period.
- [53:14]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what's really important is to remember that Galileo is not the first scholar to become famous in Europe. That's I think undoubtedly Erasmus. But Galileo is the first person to achieve fame who we would call a Scientist, probably. And it really makes visible the way that Galileo achieves fame, but also the object of his study, namely heavenly appearances, that really reveals this tension between different groups acting in Europe and with different views on how nature should be studied, but also how scholarship should be practiced. Because on the one hand, you have groups of people that really embrace this new way of looking at nature, and on the other hand, you have people that, you know will stand on the pulpit and speak about philosophers that are trying to find things that aren't there because they feel that Kalileo's exercise is pointless and is not the proper way of looking at the world. Because the proper way of looking at the world is confirming the knowledge that's already there, because it also confirms the Bible's and God's authority. And I think that's a point that I wanted to make in this book, is that Galileo was embraced and rejected by different groups in Europe. And that really reveals the very fractured and fragmented nature of the public sphere in this period. There are absolutely ways and moments in which these different groups meet and directly debate one another, but there's also moments in which they just don't communicate at all, but are very much enveloped in their own bubbles, let's say. And they really feel some of them try to convince the other party. And those are the most interesting sources that we have, of course, because then some of the arguments become most explicit and we can see what has been sort of been under the surface all along. But I think really, the book underlines that fame really reveals the fragmented nature of the public and the public sphere in this period.
- [55:42]
B
Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much for talking with us and teaching us about your work. I really appreciate it.
- [55:52]
A
Thank you so much, Freddy. It was really lovely beer.