The priest captivated Katrina. “Oh?”
“Galileo Galilei.”
“When?” McCauley asked.
“In the early 1600s he came to Le Marche to do experiments on a new invention — the thermometer.” Father Eccleston exhaled deeply.
“The thermoscope,” Alpert remarked.
“Quite right, Dr. Alpert. You’ve studied Galileo?”
“Some. I knew he was credited with its development along with the telescope.”
Eccleston nodded. “All and more. But there’s probably something else you don’t know. The section of Le Marche where Galileo experimented with his early thermometer is known for something other than wine.”
The priest set down his wine glass. “A year before Galileo traveled to Le Marche, Giordano Bruno, a dissident thinker, was convicted of heresy by the Holy Office. He was burned at the stake. The Pope, or those who spoke for him, put reason and science on the opposing side of the religious scale that was completely weighted in the church’s favor. Authority gave them that ability. Ability equaled right. Right equaled power. It wasn’t merely so-called radicals like Bruno who came under scrutiny of the Holy See. It was anyone whose views challenged conventional wisdom, or as history has shown us, conventional myopia.
“Galileo confronted church doctrine, though for a time he had actually worked under Papal sponsorship. He was even honored by mathematicians at Collegio Romano.”
“Mathematics,” McCauley commented. “I forgot that was his principal field of study. We all think it was astronomy.”
“Related. Inter-related,” Eccleston said. “The basis for everything.”
Eccleston’s answer reminded him of the next piece of the puzzle he wanted to discuss with the priest. Soon, he thought.
“When Galileo published his Letters on Sunspots, which offered his theory that the sun rotated on its own axis, Dominican Friar Niccolo Lorini of Florence attacked him. Lorini was a professor of ecclesiastic history. And if you think you could have spoken freely in his classes, you would have done so at your own peril.
“Galileo countered, offering his views concerning the relationship between science and Scripture. Not a particularly church-friendly idea,” Father Eccleston noted. “Lorini filed a complaint with the Roman Inquisition. He took issue with Galileo’s disregard of Ptolemy’s theory of the solar system which held that the earth was the center of all celestial bodies. This was the geocentric model and it fit into the strict biblical teachings. Galileo’s disregard of prevailing beliefs undermined church authority.”
“And led to his Inquisition,” Katrina observed.
“Certainly contributed to it,” the priest confirmed. “Research shows that Galileo’s stubbornness and ego didn’t help either. But it was an age of transition. It took radicals and radical ideas to move the needle, as it were. And Catholic scientists were the ones doing it. In fact, Copernicus, himself a clergyman, had developed his own interpretation that was in conflict with Ptolemy. Some right, some wrong. He set the sun as the focal point, with the earth and other planets in circular orbits. Where Galileo got into further trouble was when he neither accepted nor rejected all of Copernican theory, and as a result, was again criticized for not embracing geocentrism.
“When he pushed, and I mean pushed heliocentrism on society and the church, he raised the most ire. This thinking placed our solar system within a larger universe, with the earth and the other planets traveling around the sun in elliptical orbits. It was as far from biblical interpretation as imaginable, thus controversial and ultimately heretical.”
“And the reason for his excommunication,” Katrina added.
“He was never excommunicated. As a religious man, he feared he might be. It was possibly one of the reasons he recanted before the Inquisition. But who knows. Anyway, we’re skipping some of the history. In 1616, the situation worsened for Galileo. A powerful cardinal named Bellarmine issued a decree that expressly prohibited teaching, discussing, writing or defending Copernican theory. Galileo thought he had tiptoed around the strictures of the edict in writing his Discourse on Comets and The Assayer. He had not. His publications further fanned the flames of the Inquisition fires.
“Seven years later, he was granted six audiences with newly elected Pope Urban VIII. The Holy See declared that Galileo could discuss Copernican theory as long as he presented it solely as theory.”
“Like evolution,” McCauley noted somewhat uncomfortably before the priest. “Everything old is new again. But what does all this have to do with Gap Theory?”
“I’m coming around to that,” Eccleston said. “Galileo continued to explore science as he saw it, but not as indiscreetly as the Vatican wanted. He wrote a new work as a conversation, a debate. He called it Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Not a good idea on his part. The Pope banned its distribution.
“According to Papal history, this is what ultimately led to Galileo being summoned to appear before the Roman Inquisition.”
Eccleston became more intent in his account. His eyes took on a glow. “However, it’s been rumored there was another essay written by Galileo Galilei thirty years earlier. This work was given to Pope Paul V who, after reading it, ordered it destroyed. Rumors mind you, but who’s to say?”
“About?”
“No one knows, but there are whispers to this day that it was so controversial, so explosive that it threatened the very fabric of the Church and its history.”
Alpert and McCauley instinctively moved closer.
“In late 1632, Galileo was summoned to appear before the Inquisition. A few months later a very sick Galileo traveled to Rome for his trial. A particularly malicious opponent, Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola, utterly broke him down in the formal tribunal and again, according to whispers, in private conversations. We only have the record of some encounters, not all.”
The ticking of the kitchen clock a room away was the only sound for the next few moments.
“Father Eccleston, you started a thought, but didn’t complete it before,” Katrina recalled. “Something else Le Marche is known for?”
“Oh, yes. Perhaps a vital detail, not to be overlooked.” The priest smiled. “Le Marche is famous for its caves.”
As the words settled in, McCauley’s enthusiasm grew more. “Can we…”
“Ah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Eccleston cautioned. “Tomorrow we’ll delve into the Vatican Secret Archives. I’ve done extensive research, but never in relation to Le Marche. Perhaps there’s something in Galileo’s own hand. We can also see about dear Fr. Emilianov.”
“And if there isn’t anything?” Katrina aptly followed up. “Then what?”
The reply came naturally to McCauley; an echo, like his own voice in the Montana cave. “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”
Seventy-one
They sat in judgment. The Reverend Father Vincenzo Maculano was at the center of the table. Flanked on either side were Fr. Cardinal de Ascoli, Fr. Cardinal Gessi, Fr. Cardinal Bentivoglio, Fr. Cardinal Verospi, Fr. Cardinal Ginetti, Fr. D. Cardinal de Cremona, Fr. Cardinal Barberini, Fr. Cardinal Borgia, Fr. Ant. s Cardinal de. S. Onofrio, Fr. Cardinal Laudivio Zacchia and Reverend Fr. Carlo Sinceri. Chief Inquisitor Sinceri spoke.
Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled "On the Sunspots," wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning: and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a document in the form of a letter, purporting to be written by you to one formerly your disciple, and in this divers propositions are set forth, following the position of Copernicus, which are contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture: