Great Astronomers by Robert Stawell Ball (best ereader for students .txt) 📖

admissible for Galileo to

plead that his book had been sanctioned by the Master of the

Sacred College, to whose inspection it had been again and again

submitted. It was held, that if the Master of the Sacred College

had been unaware of the solemn warning the philosopher had already

received sixteen years previously, it was the duty of Galileo to

have drawn his attention to that fact.

 

On the 22nd June, 1633, Galileo was led to the great hall of the

Inquisition, and compelled to kneel before the cardinals there

assembled and hear his sentence. In along document, most

elaborately drawn up, it is definitely charged against Galileo

that, in publishing the Dialogue, he committed the essentially

grave error of treating the doctrine of the earth’s motion as

open to discussion. Galileo knew, so the document affirmed,

that the Church had emphatically pronounced this notion to be

contrary to Holy Writ, and that for him to consider a doctrine so

stigmatized as having any shadow of probability in its favour was

an act of disrespect to the authority of the Church which could

not be overlooked. It was also charged against Galileo that in

his Dialogue he has put the strongest arguments into the mouth,

not of those who supported the orthodox doctrine, but of those

who held the theory as to the earth’s motion which the Church

had so deliberately condemned.

 

After due consideration of the defence made by the prisoner, it

was thereupon decreed that he had rendered himself vehemently

suspected of heresy by the Holy Office, and in consequence had

incurred all the censures and penalties of the sacred canons,

and other decrees promulgated against such persons. The graver

portion of these punishments would be remitted, if Galileo would

solemnly repudiate the heresies referred to by an abjuration to

be pronounced by him in the terms laid down.

 

At the same time it was necessary to mark, in some emphatic

manner, the serious offence which had been committed, so that it

might serve both as a punishment to Galileo and as a warning to

others. It was accordingly decreed that he should be condemned to

imprisonment in the Holy Office during the pleasure of the Papal

authorities, and that he should recite once a week for three years

the seven Penitential Psalms.

 

Then followed that ever-memorable scene in the great hall of the

Inquisition, in which the aged and infirm Galileo, the inventor of

the telescope and the famous astronomer, knelt down to abjure

before the most eminent and reverend Lords Cardinal, Inquisitors

General throughout the Christian Republic against heretical

depravity. With his hands on the Gospels, Galileo was made to

curse and detest the false opinion that the sun was the centre of

the universe and immovable, and that the earth was not the centre

of the same, and that it moved. He swore that for the future he

will never say nor write such things as may bring him under

suspicion, and that if he does so he submits to all the pains and

penalties of the sacred canons. This abjuration was subsequently

read in Florence before Galileo’s disciples, who had been

specially summoned to attend.

 

It has been noted that neither on the first occasion, in 1616, nor

on the second in 1633, did the reigning Pope sign the decrees

concerning Galileo. The contention has accordingly been made that

Paul V. and Urban VIII. are both alike vindicated from any

technical responsibility for the attitude of the Romish Church

towards the Copernican doctrines. The significance of this

circumstance has been commented on in connection with the doctrine

of the infallibility of the Pope.

 

We can judge of the anxiety felt by Sister Maria Celeste about her

beloved father during these terrible trials. The wife of the

ambassador Niccolini, Galileo’s steadfast friend, most kindly

wrote to give the nun whatever quieting assurances the case would

permit. There is a renewed flow of these touching epistles from

the daughter to her father. Thus she sends word—

 

“The news of your fresh trouble has pierced my soul with grief all

the more that it came quite unexpectedly.”

 

And again, on hearing that he had been permitted to leave Rome,

she writes—

 

“I wish I could describe the rejoicing of all the mothers and

sisters on hearing of your happy arrival at Siena. It was indeed

most extraordinary. On hearing the news the Mother Abbess and

many of the nuns ran to me, embracing me and weeping for joy and

tenderness.”

 

The sentence of imprisonment was at first interpreted leniently by

the Pope. Galileo was allowed to reside in qualified durance in

the archbishop’s house at Siena. Evidently the greatest pain that

he endured arose from the forced separation from that daughter,

whom he had at last learned to love with an affection almost

comparable with that she bore to him. She had often told him that

she never had any pleasure equal to that with which she rendered

any service to her father. To her joy, she discovers that she can

relieve him from the task of reciting the seven Penitential Psalms

which had been imposed as a Penance:—

 

“I began to do this a while ago,” she writes, “and it gives me

much pleasure. First, because I am persuaded that prayer in

obedience to Holy Church must be efficacious; secondly, in order

to save you the trouble of remembering it. If I had been able to

do more, most willingly would I have entered a straiter prison

than the one I live in now, if by so doing I could have set you

at liberty.”

 

[PLATE: CREST OF GALILEO’S FAMILY.]

 

Sister Maria Celeste was gradually failing in health, but the

great privilege was accorded to her of being able once again to

embrace her beloved lord and master. Galileo had, in fact, been

permitted to return to his old home; but on the very day when he

heard of his daughter’s death came the final decree directing him

to remain in his own house in perpetual solitude.

 

Amid the advancing infirmities of age, the isolation from friends,

and the loss of his daughter, Galileo once again sought

consolation in hard work. He commenced his famous dialogue on

Motion. Gradually, however, his sight began to fail, and

blindness was at last added to his other troubles. On January

2nd, 1638, he writes to Diodati:—

 

“Alas, your dear friend and servant, Galileo, has been for the

last month perfectly blind, so that this heaven, this earth, this

universe which I by my marvellous discoveries and clear

demonstrations have enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the

belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward is for me

shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily

sensations.”

 

But the end was approaching—the great philosopher, was attacked

by low fever, from which he died on the 8th January, 1643.

 

KEPLER.

 

While the illustrious astronomer, Tycho Brahe, lay on his

deathbed, he had an interview which must ever rank as one of the

important incidents in the history of science. The life of Tycho

had been passed, as we have seen, in the accumulation of vast

stores of careful observations of the positions of the heavenly

bodies. It was not given to him to deduce from his splendid work

the results to which they were destined to lead. It was reserved

for another astronomer to distil, so to speak, from the volumes in

which Tycho’s figures were recorded, the great truths of the

universe which those figures contained. Tycho felt that his work

required an interpreter, and he recognised in the genius of a

young man with whom he was acquainted the agent by whom the world

was to be taught some of the great truths of nature. To the

bedside of the great Danish astronomer the youthful philosopher

was summoned, and with his last breath Tycho besought of him to

spare no labour in the performance of those calculations, by which

alone the secrets of the movements of the heavens could be

revealed. The solemn trust thus imposed was duly accepted, and

the man who accepted it bore the immortal name of Kepler.

 

Kepler was born on the 27th December, 1571, at Weil, in the Duchy

of Wurtemberg. It would seem that the circumstances of his

childhood must have been singularly unhappy. His father, sprung

from a well-connected family, was but a shiftless and idle

adventurer; nor was the great astronomer much more fortunate in

his other parent. His mother was an ignorant and ill-tempered

woman; indeed, the ill-assorted union came to an abrupt end

through the desertion of the wife by her husband when their eldest

son John, the hero of our present sketch, was eighteen years old.

The childhood of this lad, destined for such fame, was still

further embittered by the circumstance that when he was four years

old he had a severe attack of small-pox. Not only was his

eyesight permanently injured, but even his constitution appears to

have been much weakened by this terrible malady.

 

It seems, however, that the bodily infirmities of young John

Kepler were the immediate cause of his attention being directed to

the pursuit of knowledge. Had the boy been fitted like other boys

for ordinary manual work, there can be hardly any doubt that to

manual work his life must have been devoted. But, though his body

was feeble, he soon gave indications of the possession of

considerable mental power. It was accordingly thought that a

suitable sphere for his talents might be found in the Church

which, in those days, was almost the only profession that

afforded an opening for an intellectual career. We thus find

that by the time John Kepler was seventeen years old he had

attained a sufficient standard of knowledge to entitle him to

admission on the foundation of the University at Tubingen.

 

In the course of his studies at this institution he seems to have

divided his attention equally between astronomy and divinity. It

not unfrequently happens that when a man has attained considerable

proficiency in two branches of knowledge he is not able to see

very clearly in which of the two pursuits his true vocation lies.

His friends and onlookers are often able to judge more wisely than

he himself can do as to which Of the two lines it would be better

for him to pursue. This incapacity for perceiving the path in

which greatness awaited him, existed in the case of Kepler.

Personally, he inclined to enter the ministry, in which a

promising career seemed open to him. He yielded, however, to

friends, who evidently knew him better than he knew himself, and

accepted in 1594, the important Professorship of astronomy which

had been offered to him in the University of Gratz.

 

It is difficult for us in these modern days to realise the

somewhat extraordinary duties which were expected from an

astronomical professor in the sixteenth century. He was, of

course, required to employ his knowledge of the heavens in the

prediction of eclipses, and of the movements of the heavenly

bodies generally. This seems reasonable enough; but what we are

not prepared to accept is the obligation which lay on the

astronomers to predict the fates of nations and the destinies of

individuals.

 

It must be remembered that it was the almost universal belief in

those days, that all the celestial spheres revolved in some

mysterious fashion around the earth, which appeared by far the

most important body in the universe. It was imagined that the

sun, the moon, and the stars indicated, in the vicissitudes of

their movements, the careers of nations and of individuals.

Such being the generally accepted notion, it seemed to follow that

a professor who was charged with the duty of expounding the

movements