# An Index of Prohibited Books (1840)/Part 4 - Index of Pope Gregory

INDEX
OF
POPE GREGORY XVI.
The policy of the Church of Rome is predominant in all her actions. And that policy is nearly omnipotent. It is restrained by no such checks as are felt and obeyed by all other agents, in their degree, whether persons or communities. To the policy of the latter both real religion and true morality oppose many obstructions and restrictions which are insurmountable. But Rome is free and uncontrolled: she has no such fetters: she here enjoys, exercises, and riots in, the "liberties of her Church" to her extreme content. And this freedom naturally arises from her constitution and principles. Her supreme and ostentatiously professed object is, in her phraseology, the glory, or, to adopt the almost appropriated motto of her choicest sons, the greater glory ​of God; and this, in equivalent terms—for it must be translated—is, her own interest; not, as she would bear the world in hand, a spiritual interest, but a secular, sublunary interest throughout, and from first to last. This is the circumstance which releases her policy from all the usual restraints, and leaves her at liberty to pursue her onward march, not only independently of all impediments, but in perfect defiance of them. I speak of voluntary impediments; for there are others, which, happily for the most valuable interests, in all instances, but eminently in that of Rome, restrain, counterwork, and defeat, the most determined and well-contrived devices of man. But distinctly from these, the Church of Rome laughs to scorn every chain, which either divine or human law has forged to limit human iniquity: and, in the way to her aggrandisement in wealth or any other kind of power, tramples upon every claim of truth, fidelity, honour, reverence towards God, or humanity towards man, with the same freedom and indifference as a secular and unprincipled individual would hasten to the acquisition of a large estate, without suffering himself to be diverted from his course, or putting his good ​fortune to any jeopardy, by the payment of a visit of ceremony to a simple acquaintance.
In whatever province Roman policy may be employed, this is its character, and such is its course.
I am at present concerned with it only as it has respect to Literature — Literature in particular, as embracing Theology and Science. It will appear why I instance the last. And in this province it will be seen, that the Church, impudently claiming inerrancy and supremacy, and the more regardless of religious and moral restraint, in consequence of that very claim, vindicates to her policy the entire of her selfchartered liberty. The province to which my view is now confined is still more limited. Papal policy takes its unimpeded range over the whole territory of letters, and plays its game in effects and proofs, which are scattered over its whole surface. But it is in the public and authorised condemnations of books, either as altogether proscribed, or as sentenced to various emendation or alteration, issuing: from the highest authority which the Italian Church possesses, that I am now to shew, in the last signal, and very modern, instance, (as I have hitherto done in a detail from the beginning, ​the most complete in existence,) how little the literary policy of that corrupt ecclesiastical cooperation can be accused of having slumbered; and how amply the continued and unabated heresy, bigotry, falsehood, knavery, and hypocrisy, which shine forth in the production to be examined, bear testimony, that the foreign Church over which the author of the last Prohibitory Index presides, is, in this respect, as in others where she can, be semper eadem.
These Papal documents have, from the time of their appearance, or rather discovery, excited intense interest in the true friends, and competent appretiators, of learning, in all its branches, especially the more valuable portions of it. In a paper on this subject, which the editor of the British Magazine did me the favour to insert in the volume for 1839, or Vol. XV. pp. 162, and following, I adduced names to this purpose which would honour any cause; and much honour does not redound to those who do not resemble them. Need I mention the first librarian of one of the noblest libraries in the world, Dr. James; William Crashaw, father of an apostate son, of more popular fame, but far inferior worth; Sir Humphrey Lynde; Alexander Cooke; Sir ​Edwin Sandys; Birckbeck; the last Bishop Barlow; Bishop Taylor; and the eminently learned author of the Historia Literaria?
But let us proceed to the main object. My intention is, to make the British public acquainted with a Prohibitory Index of Rome of the most recent date, and of which I am happy to have become a possessor. Its title is — Index". Romæ, mdcccxxxv. Ex Typographia Reverendæ Cameræ Apostolicæ, Cum Summi Pontificis Privilegio. After the old Preface of Benedict XIV., follows what alone of prefatory matter is peculiar to this edition — Catholico Lectori Fr. Thomas Antoninus Degola Ordinis Prædicatorum Sac. Congregationis Indicis Secretarius. After one paragraph of not the most elegant Latin, the secretary satisfies himself with repeating what a former secretary, Ricchinius, had prefixed to an edition of the Index in 1758; and he closes with announcing a Mandate of Leo XII. in 1828, and a Monitum of the S. Congregation in 1825. The Index, however, is not withont an interest beyond what it would possess, were it merely a new edition of the usual biblical ​censures which the Vatican assumes to itself the authority of fulminating. There are some entries, which, besides being new, are rather remarkable. The reader will observe, under the early letter B-Blunt, Vestiges of Antient Manners and Customs discoverable in Modern Italy and Sicily. The sensitive and cautious author took some pains not to give offence; but his efforts, it seems, have proved unavailing Rome knows no favour where she is either hurt or alarmed; and the wounds, which such disclosures as those made by our meritorious countryman, open afresh, are peculiarly tender. As the reader, that is, the English, proceeds, he encounters, at no great distance, another countryman, under the title, Burgess, lectures on the Insufficiency of Unrevealed Religion, and on the succeeding Influence of Christianity, delivered in Rome, if I am not mistaken. It will not be amiss to notice the Spanish Dissertacion Historica, Legal, y Polytica sobre el Celibato Clerical, par D. . . . .L.; and, to transgress alphabetic order, on account of unity of subject, Matrimonio (il) degli Antichi Preti, e il Celibato dei Moderni, &c. (the two next articles are on the same subject) the subject is the Celibacy, enforced, of the ​Latin clergy. Then appears, Hallam Arigo, Middle Ages in Italian, and Constitutional History of England from, &c. Then, Morgan, Lady, L'ltalie. Not to busy ourselves with culling such flowers too diligently, we meet with de Potter, who, for his Vie de Scipion de Ricci Evêque de Pistoie, et Prato, richly deserved a niche among the condemned. Rome in the Nineteenth Century, a book to which the natural fears of Rome cannot fail to give importance, particularly as it would be read and studied by all the English visitors of the holy city, (more so. perhaps, than the books there provided so kindly and disinterestedly for them,) could not be expected to escape equal honour. Then there is Storia di Andrea Dunn, and Storia di Enrichetto, e del suo Latore, well-known English tales, the latter by Mrs. Sherwood. These, being naturalised, were formidable to Italian superstition. So much for the added articles.
It is of some importance to inquire into those which have been omitted. Omissions are sometimes very significant, and, in their effect, very positive, things. In the Index immediately preceding that now under examination, Pius VIIth's Index of 1819, and in its ​Appendix of 1821, we observe standing in its proper alphabetic place, Taxes des parties casuelles de la Boutique du Papa. In the present Index it is thrown into the less obvious place of Acheul Julian. No one who was not acquainted with the subject, and felt some curiosity respecting it, would look for the thing under such a name. The subject, indeed, is, and ought to be, a sore one to all interested in the exculpation and support of the Romish religion and Church; for that Church is terribly implicated, not only in the proper baseness of the matter, but in the adventitious disgrace of the means made use of to shelter it from view and reprobation. Added to which, the concern to which it refers is far less lucrative than it was in days of yore, when the gainer, whatever the people might do, would applaud and bless himself. The market for sacerdotal absolution, dispensation, indulgences, with totquots, in articulo mortis, and with purgatorial efficacy, is fairly dead and buried, except in Italy, Spain, and Ireland. Formerly, the wicked editions of the Taxæ, particularly those of the Penitentiary, by the heretics, were pretty freely adverted to; but even then Rome herself could not muster ​impudence to acknowledge her own genuine indisputable productions of this infamous class. The reader who wishes to know what is fact on this subject need only cast his eye on what I have endeavoured to exempt from oblivion, in a work entitled Spiritual Venality of Rome. And he may go farther to the kindred subject of Venal Indulgences in another work of mine, if he love, and would improve, truth. The present Index forbears to offend the delicate eye of the reader with any recognition of the Roman Taxæ under the letter T, where, of course, Taxæ should be sought; and he must ferret out the information, which it is most desirable to the culprits that he should not obtain, under the entries Banck and Praxis. And these are heretical editions. Of the abundance of her own editions at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, beaming forth in full lustre, and in imposing array, in every Bibliotheca embracing the time, and extant at full length in the Pontifically accredited Oceanus Juris, in more than one edition, the organ of Apostolic censorship is as still as death.
​There is, however, another omission, or rather collection of omissions, which is more complete, and far more important, in all respects; and upon this it is my purpose to trespass at much greater length upon my reader's patience than I should otherwise feel justified in doing. It is — the omission, for the first time after about two centuries, of the proscribed names of Galileo Galilei, of Copernicus, and of Foscarini. The pontifical sponge has been applied to the triple blot which remained for so long a period on the pages of Rome's damnatory Index; and her sons are now, for the first time, free to think and write what all the world has long ​known to be true philosophy, without disobeying the solemn and published law of the Church, or without having to resort to a fiction to evade such disobedience.
It is well known that the Roman Church has, of late, for no inconsiderable time, smarted under both the inconvenience and disgrace of putting the most exalted of human sciences in chains, when in every other territory it had long been at liberty. Presumed and exclusive orthodoxy in divine science might compensate for much deficiency and backwardness in such as is simply natural. But even so spiritual a community could not easily brook the ridicule, if not contempt or rebuke, of being anticipated by nations of heretics in what she well enough knew to be demonstrable truth; but was withheld, by the shame of reversing past sentences and decrees, promulgated in the most solemn manner, from joining in its adoption. But the time was come for relaxing the rigour of this imaginary dignity; and in the thirty-fifth year of the nineteenth century, the dishonour became too heavy a burthen to be borne any longer!
The Sacred Congregation of the Index is a body of great importance in the constitution ​of Papal Rome. It has its Prefect, with his associated Cardinals, its Secretary, and Consultors, to a considerable number. The celebrated Dr. Nicholas Wiseman is one of the last. The state of heretical countries, and particularly the British, more especially when his holiness honoured the meeting with his presence, would come under very deliberate, anxious, and minute examination. All the circumstances of this kingdom are as familiarly and accurately known to the political rulers of the Church of Rone as if those rulers were resident in London. Agents, whether official or voluntary, are watchfully and actively employed in obtaining and transmitting all such intelligence as may be essential or useful for furthering the advancement and aggrandisement of the faith and power of Rome; or for crippling, as she cannot yet hope to destroy, the faith and power of a heretical community. It must have been peculiarly annoying to Rome and her friends, to know how much her scientific reputation suffered, particularly in England; and no wonder that some expedient should be thought of, as indeed had incipiently ​been done, to remove the occasion of scandal. I do not affirm that the new Index solely or principally originated in such a view; but certainly no measure could be better adapted to attain a plain object of desire, than the publication of a fresh Index with the omission which has been stated.
True it is, that the public heard very little about the occasional and frequent lists of condemned books issuing from the highest authority in the Latin Church, and declaring most formally and solemnly her judgments respecting the various points brought under criticism. The public, even the reading and apparently informed public, were almost completely ignorant, as they are now, upon that subject; and there was not much disposition in the parties most concerned to rouse or enlighten them; they were, with very good will, left to sleep. However, Rome knew well enough how things stood; and although, in consequence of popular ignorance and indifference, the charge of hostility to science against the Roman Church was made to rest almost exclusively upon the actual persecution of Galileo, for his anti-orthodox doctrine respecting the solar system; and this charge was almost exclusively ​rebutted by certain ingenious devices in logic relative to the personal treatment of the philosopher, the better judges abroad saw at once, that this charge and defence were of a comparatively transitory description; but that the condemnation, not of the man only, but of his doctrine-yes, absolutely of his doctrine — was in a record under the hand and seal of the Head of the Roman Church, published repeatedly for two hundred years, and had therefore a permanency of character, which rendered it abundantly more important and more fatal than the other. By the authority of this juster view, we are encouraged to proceed with the evidence afforded by the Prohibitory Indexes of Rome. We shall not, however, neglect an investigation of the evidence in the other field. For there is something important to be said there. In order of time the prosecution of Galileo, by the Roman Inquisition, his sentence, his abjuration, and confinement, precede the Indicial condemnation, which was its natural sequel: but, as it is important to establish the fact in view by the most decisive and irrefragable evidence in the first place, particularly because such an order will preclude a good deal of argument rendered ​unnecessary by anticipation, we will examine the evidence afforded by the Roman Index.
We now, then, come to the Index. On the 5th day of March, 1616, was passed a decree of the Sacred Congregation, condemning all such books as taught the Copernican doctrine respecting the solar system, or that, in that system, the sun is the centre, and immovable. I have, of course, in a general way, stated the main facts of this very observable case, in the proper place, in my Literary Policy of the Church of Rome; but the circumstances which have of late transpired on the subject render it expedient to be more diffuse and precise. The terms of the condemnation are very decisive and detailed; and the whole being exceedingly unknown, it will be desirable to exhibit them at length. The decree itself, for we are not speaking of the entry made, in consequence, in the body of the subsequent Indexes, is found in three places — in the two separate Collections of Decrees of the date of 1624, appended to two different editions of Capiferreus's Elenchus, and in the Collection which closes Alexander VIIth's Index of 1664. No. XIV. pp. 307, 8. ​16 Et quia etiam ad notitiam præfatæ Sacræ Congregationis pervenit, falsam illam doctrinam Pythagoricam, divinæque Scripture omnino adversantem de mobilitate Terræ, et immobilitate Solis, quam Nicolaus Copernicus de revolutionibus orbium cælestium, et Didacus Astunica in Job etiam docent, jam divulgari, et à multis recipi; sicuti videre est ex quadam epistola impressa cujusdam Patris Carmelitæ cui titulus Lettera del Reu. Padre Maestro Paolo Antonio Foscarini Carmelitano sopra l' opinione de' Pittagorici, e del Copernico, della mobilità della Terra, e stabilità del Sole, e il nuovo Pittagorico sistema del Mondo, in Napoli per Lazzaro Scoriggio 1615, in qua dictus Pater ostendere conatur, præfatam doctrinam de immobilitate solis in centro Mundi, et mobilitate Terre, consonam esse veritati, et non adversari Sacræ Scripturæ: Ideo ne ulterius hujusmodi opinio in perniciem Catholicæ veritatis serpat, censuit dictos, Nicolaum Copernicum de revolutionibus orbium, et Didacum Astunica in Job suspendendos esse donec corrigantur. Librum vero Patris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitæ omninò prohibendum, atque damnandum, aliosque omnes Libros pariter idem docentes, prohibendos, prout præsenti Decreto omnes respective prohibet, damnat, atque suspendit. In quorum ​fidem præsens Decretum manu, et sigillo Illustris. simi, et Reverendissimi D. Cardinalis Sanctæ Cæciliæ Episcopi Albanen. signatum et munitum fuit, die 5 Martii, 1616.
* P. Epis. Albanen. Card. Sanctæ Cæciliæ,
* Locus † sigilli.
* Regist. fol. 90.
* F. Franciscus Magdalenus Capiferreus Ord.
* Prædicat. Secretarius.
It will be observed here, that the Copernican doctrine is condemned, in the first place, as false, and then as contrary to Scripture; and likewise, that, although other teachers of the doctrine are named and condemned, neither Galileo nor any book of his is specified; they are, however, both virtually condemned in the clause, which includes "all books teaching the same doctrine." It seems as if the terms were selected for the very purpose of precluding, or putting to shame, the attempt which would be made in a future age to save the credit of Rome's philosophic orthodoxy at the expense of what was then sincerely deemed her theological, and certainly at the expense of truth. The Dialogo of the Florentine appeared in 1632; and, in 1634, he and his book were both expressly condemned, together with ​other books, by the Sacred Congregation, in a decree of August 13, in the following words: — Dialogo di Galileo Galilei dove ne i congressi di quattro giornate si discorre sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Tolemaico, e Copernicano. In the Roman Index of 1704, we read the general condemnation: — Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem Terræ et immobilitatem Solis. Not a vestige of any of these decisive proscriptions is now to be found in any Roman Index. The name of the persecuted and condemned reviver of a doctrine now universally received, with that of his Dialogo, kept their place the last, and were only silently and furtively withdrawn in the year 1835. In all the preceding Indexes the condemnation, not of the man only, but of the Doctrine, stands an imperishable monument of the ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance of the Roman Church.
But the reader was to expect associates in this disgraceful procedure of the mother and mistress of all churches. They were named; and we will notice Copernicus, the founder of the obnoxious doctrine first. His book, De Mundi Revolutionibus, was formally and singly condemned by a Decree of the Sacred ​Congregation in 1620; neither the month nor day is given; but it is No. XXI in Alexander VIIth's Collection. There the Congregation declares, that although it was its intention to have altogether prohibited the work, on account of some principles occurring in it repugnant to Scripture, and to the Catholic interpretation thereof, which the author, non per hypothesim tractare, sed ut verissima adstruere non dubitat — a remarkable hint, which we shall find afterwards improved — it yet satisfied itself with indicating passages to be amended or expunged, which are specified for about a quarto page of small print; rather an indulgence to the author, and a risk to itself, as this specification, amounting to something like definite expurgation, might, as it had before done, in the instance of Brasichellen's Expurgatory, expose it to difficulties. However, Copernicus found his place in the coming Index in this wise — Nicolaus Copernicus de revolutionibus orbium, nisi corrigatur, juxta Decr. 1620. He kept his place to, and in, the penultimate Index of 1819, where the entry is a little enlarged; and, under the name Copernicus, giving the date of the day of the Decree by which he was confixed, Maii 15, 1620. In ​the last Index he may be sought under either Christian or Sirname, but will not be found.
The same is the fact with the third person named as in the same predicament — Foscarini. His name is found up to the Index of Pius VII. There he stands — Foscarini Paolo Antonio. Lettera sopra l'opinione de' Pittagorici, e del Copernico della mobilità della Terra, e stabilità del Sole. Decr. 5 Martii, 1616. This item has likewise taken its unceremonious flight.
Thus, have the three prisoners in the pope's literary gaol, the carcer ecclesiæ, very analogous to the purgatory which his Church created, most unexpectedly and quietly, obtained from the consideration or policy of the reigning pontiff, Gregory XVI., a happy release from their protracted incarceration. His holiness at last found that he detained them only to plague himself; and, like Pharaoh, he thrust them out in haste; and certainly, with as little noise and parade as possible.
These three illustrious prisoners, had they returned to life in 1835, the year of their ​liberation, with no great violence of application, might have adopted the language of the chief Apostle and his companion, when, after having been unjustly imprisoned as well as punished, the attempt was dishonourably made by the magistrates secretly to dismiss them, — "They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily; nay verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out." The effect was, that the magistrates became suppliants. His holiness has made an equally intelligible confession of guilt.
This, and the other attempts of the friends of Rome, to wipe away the Vandalic blot, which her own ignorance and tyranny fixed upon herself, are little likely to succeed, when the self-interest of the procedure, and therefore its motive, may so plainly be discovered. If from a simple sense of justice and truth, and not from the pain of continued disgrace, she had thought fit to dismiss from her black book the names of men of science, the severity of censure in the intelligent observer would be disarmed. But when no other consideration seems to have stimulated the act, than that of ​recovering lost or declining reputation, in order that an impenitent and incorrigible deceiver may continue her spiritual impositions with less impediment, we hardly know whether it is to the feeling of grief or to that of indignation that we should give way.
If any hope of repelling the charge of enmity to science, by any of the means made use of, were for a moment entertained, it would at once be laid prostrate by the necessity under which certain Romish editors of Newton felt themselves, to use the mask suggested in the censure of Copernicus, and hold out the appearance of disbelieving a doctrine which it was their business and their manifest design to teach and recommend: — and that, let the reader well observe, not because the fate of Galileo, as respects the proceedings of the Inquisition, deterred them, (although that would be a reasonable apprehension, and the consequent caution natural,) but because they had before their eyes the terror of the sentence still in force in the Index, with its rules and penalties against all who taught, at least publicly, the condemned doctrine of Copernicus respecting the solar system. They were expressly the Decrees of the high pontiffs in the ​Index which they dreaded violating, and therefore betook themselves to an intelligible fiction or evasion. I quote the words of the extraordinary apology of these editors, from the justly celebrated Speech of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bart. on the Roman Catholic Question, May 10th, 1825, — a speech eminently harmonising with the subject of the present humble pages, and which, had it succeeded, as its merit and cogency entitled it to do, perjury would not have obtained legislative power, and the purified Christian Church established in these realms would not have suffered the actual damage which she has sustained, nor have to dread the future increasing assaults for which she must now prepare. We do, indeed, looking above the things in our little orb, wrap up all in submission to His will, who cannot be otherwise than just, and to those who humble themselves under His hand will be merciful. The quotation which is to be laid before the reader is the following: — P. P. Le Seur et Jacquier Declaratio. Newtonus in hoc tertio Libro telluris motæ hypothesim assumit. Autoris propositiones aliter explicari non poterant, nisi eâdem quoque factâ hypothesi. Hinc alienam coacti ​sumus gerere personam. Cæterum latis a summis Pontificibus contra telluris motum Decretis nos obsequi profitemur. — Tom. iii. Genev. 1742. — Speech, pp. 18, 19, note. No one can be so hoodwinked as not to perceive that, in the view of these learned men, science was under a restraint which could not be resisted, and a restraint so disgraceful as to render hypocrisy necessary; and none but such can avoid seeing, that the restraint is, and was created, by the existing force and operation of the Decree of the Index. But the fact speaks for itself. How is it possible to conceive, that the pope and his cardinal council, should put such importance upon the erasure of three names from his Prohibitory Index, which had stood there, firm as rocks, for three centuries, as to run the high hazard of exposure of the clandestine proceeding, and the disgrace of publicly repealing his own decree without any new or honest reason, unless he were inwardly and sufficiently conscious that the main strength of the existing evidence against him lay in that Index? This is plainly one of the ​reasons, if not the principal, why so strong an effort is now made by Papal advocates to shift the trial to a new ground, where an inferior tribunal is concerned; where the facts are distant and may be supposed to be comparatively obsolete; and where the case is confined to the person of one man, instead of embracing, not only two other persons equally and by name implicated, but the vast, unlimited mass of those who are included in the general and sweeping condemnation of all who teach the obnoxious philosophy. As the Index of Rome stood, up to the present time, or 1835, every baptized individual who dared to believe and teach that the earth and other planets revolve round the sun, and that the sun does not make all sorts of eccentric revolutions round them, was subject to the literary ban of the Roman Church, and, what was an infinitely more important concern to him, to all the specified penalties which she could inflict. This would be no enviable predicament, where that church had power, and inducement to use it.
It will be useful, though not necessary, to visit the new ground chosen by the adversary, and to remain some time upon it, if for no other reason, to expose and put for good to ​shame the sophistication which has been practised upon it.
The defence set up for the Roman Church in her treatment of Galileo, is, that it was inflicted, not for his adopted system of Copernicus, but for his insisting that the system was reconcilable with Scripture. It was to be expected — no other expectation is admissible — that he would frame his defence so as most directly to meet the charge brought against him, which was, that his hypothesis was repugnant to Scripture. If able, he certainly would feel inclined to justify himself, by at least attempting to prove that this was not the fact. And it was natural, though of no importance as to the substantial charge, that he should repel the imputation with some warmth, particularly if he were a man of sanguine temperature, which appears to have been the case. The mode just mentioned of defending the apostolic character and proceeding in the present instance has been made popular of late by Bergier, in his Encyclopédie Méthodique, article, Sciences Humaines.
To understand its value it is necessary to examine the life of Galileo, in the portion concerned, with some minuteness. Perhaps, the ​best biography which we possess of this eminent man in our own language is that which forms a part of the Library of Useful Knowledge, supposed, and I believe generally admitted, to have been written by the late Mr. Drinkwater Bethune. His account, where it concerns the subject of the present inquiry, has been criticised with the asperity, petulance, and flippancy, which might be expected from a writer in the Dublin Review. The critic alluded to is reported to be the Rev. Peter Cooper, curate to the Papal usurper of the title of Archbishop of Dublin, and the volume in which the criticism appears is that for 1838, No. IX.
Galileo, whatever might be the circumstances, was condemned by the Inquisition for his Copernicism; and his condemnation, and consequent abjuration, are given at length, and, I believe, with perfect accuracy, by Mr. D. B., in the thirteenth chapter of his biography, pp. 55-64. The original documents, as I have been informed by a very competent friend, not having the work in my own possession, are to be seen in Venturi's Memorie e Lettere di Galileo Galilei, Modena, tom. ii. pp. 170-176. ​A Life and Letters of Galileo were published in Italian, in a series, at Venice in 1826. The Life occupies the first place, and is supplied by a friend of his, Vincenzio Viviani, in the form of a letter to the Duke of Tuscany. The letter, of course, is a long one, and about the middle of it the writer introduces the obnoxious tenet of his friend, which he himself affects to condemn. The narrative then proceeds to Galileo's summons to Rome in 1632, and the gentle treatment which he received from the pontiff, Urban VIII. He, however, was obliged to retract his error; and his Dialogue, which contained it, was prohibited. He was likewise put in easy confinement in different places, the last of which was Arcetri — on many accounts acceptable to him. His biographer proceeds to write, that the Dialogue had been translated into various European languages, and that therefore it was impossible to suppress the error, — a circumstance very mortifying to Galileo. So much for the Life.
The Letters are more promising. The first, which immediately concerns the objection to the offensive doctrine, is to P. B. Castelli, dated Firenze, 21 Dicemb. 1613. Galileo there mentions the inquiry of the Grand Duchess of ​Tuscany on the subject, and the answers of his Paternity to them; suggesting, with respect to the Scriptures, that he might have represented them as not always to be interpreted literally; as, for instance, when human members and human affections are ascribed to the Deity. He adds, that the Bible was intended to instruct mankind in the way of salvation, and not philosophy, otherwise it would have been more copious on that subject. He afterwards adverts to the miracle of Joshua, and contends, that it is as consistent with his hypothesis as the opposite.
Some other topics of defence are added.
The biographer of Galileo (ch. xi. pp. 46, 47) gives an extract from a letter of his to the Grand Duchess, where he recommends his opponents to examine themselves the arguments on the subject of his philosophy, and leave the condemning them as erroneous and heretical to whom it belongs; but he trusts that the caution of the holy fathers, and the absolute wisdom of Him who cannot err, will preserve them from such temerity. In such positions, which are not articles of faith, no man, he says, "doubts but his Holiness hath always an absolute power of admitting or condemning them, but it is not ​in the power of any creature to make them to be true or false, otherwise than of their own nature, and in fact they are." The author, Mr. D. B., immediately subjoins: — "We have been more particular in extracting these passages, because it has been advanced by a writer of high reputation, that the treatment which Galileo subsequently experienced was solely in consequence of his persisting in the endeavour to prove that the Scriptures were reconcilable with the Copernican theory, whereas we see here distinctly that, for the reasons we have briefly stated, he regarded this as a matter altogether indifferent, and beside the question." Bergier is referred to, and the passage quoted in a note. It will be seen in the sequel why I have introduced this extract. I wish Mr. D. B. had shewn himself better acquainted with the Roman Indexes than the note, p. 59, discovers him to have been. It would, as the reader will have seen, have strengthened his argument abundantly and even conclusively.
The next letter, February 16, 1614, observes, with respect to the preceding, that it was written currente calamo; and the writer adds, that he had shewn more zeal for the Church and for the dignity of the Scriptures than his ​adversaries had done, since they desired the prohibition of a book [meaning Copernicus's], permitted so many years by the Church without having seen it, much less read and understood it. And concerning Copernicus, he continues, that he was a Catholic and canon of the Church, called to the last Lateran Council under Leo X., to assist in a reform of the Calendar, and that he settled every thing upon the new system, and dedicating the book in which it appeared to Paul III., without exciting any scruples; and now the good monks reward his labours by getting him declared a heretic. But the jest of the charge was, that he (Galileo) had the credit of a doctrine which belonged, not to a living Florentine, but to a dead German, who published it seventy years ago, dedicating the work to the chief pontiff. The writer, before he closes, expresses his supreme submission to his superiors.
Galileo had the odium philosophicum, as well as the odium theologicum, to contend with, of both of which he complains with some warmth in letters written in 1616. ​In one of the 12th of March in the same year, from Rome, writing to the secretary of the Grand Duke, he says, that the Congregation of the Index had determined, that the opinion of Copernicus was not in unison with the Scriptures, and that the work should be suspended donec corrigatur; but that, the correction made, nothing more would be objected to, except the intimation in the preface, that his opinion was not at variance with Scripture, and the end of the tenth chapter of the first book, where he says of his system, such is the Divine fabric of the Most High, Galileo waited upon his holiness, who received him most graciously, and declared that he and his Congregation would admit no charge of his enemies against him lightly.
In the following letter to the Grand Duke, dated Firenze, May 23, 1618, keeping to the same subject, he professes (with obvious irony) the profound submission of his weakness to the superior intelligence of his censors, and talks of his theory as a poem or a dream: but, adds he, as poets value their own fancies, so he ​has some esteem for his trifle or chimera. He thought that, as Copernicus had been left untouched for about eighty years, he might hope to escape: but a celestial voice dissipated the whole vision.
A subsequent letter, dated Bellosguardo, March 7, 1631, to the Secretary of the Grand Duke, states that the writer had submitted his work, containing the Copernican doctrine, to the Master of the Sacred Palace, previously to publication at Rome, and that the latter had given his license with his own hand. He was, however, prevented from printing there by the death of his friend, Cesi, head of the Academy de' Lincei, and determined to print it where he was. Upon that the Master of the Sacred Palace wished to have another sight of the work, which was rather inconvenient; and a consultor of the Inquisition was appointed to revise it on the spot, which he did with extreme scrupulosity, and earnestly advised the publication. There were, however, delays from Rome, where fresh authority was wanted, and this discomposed the writer.
The work, nevertheless, was published [at Florence in 1632, 4to.]; for in a letter in December of 1633, Galileo writes to V. Renieri ​some account of what followed, particularly his audience before the officials of the Inquisition. He was lodged in a delicious palace near the Tuscan Ambassador's, and thence by the Commissary of the Inquisition was conveyed to the palace of the Holy Office, with many efforts on the way to convince him of the scandal given by his opinion. Here others beset him, and particularly with Scripture, which he answered in the usual way; but puzzled his examiners with an unexpected passage from Job, at which they shrugged up their shoulders (solito refugi o di chi è persuaso per prejudizio e per anticipata opinione). "Finally," he says, "I was obliged, as a true Catholic, to retract my opinion, and for a punishment my Dialogue was prohibited," &c. After five months he left Rome, and came to Florence; thence he proceeded to Bellosguardo, and lastly to Arcetri, whence the letter is dated.
Omitting some following letters of just complaint, I will conclude with one from Arcetri, where he still was, of the year 1637, to the ​King of Poland. It concerns a philosophical commission, which, the writer says, he had executed as well as he could, considering he was still in the prison where he had continued for three years, by order of the Holy Office, for having printed the Dialogue concerning the two systems, although with the license of the same Office, that is, of the Master of the Sacred Palace in Rome. This, and other similar books, he knew were seen by his Majesty and his savans, who could therefore judge, whether there were in them doctrine more scandalous, more detestable, and more pernicious to Christianity, than is contained in the books of Calvin and Luther, and all the other heresiarchs put together. This opinion, however, was so impressed upon the mind of the pope, that the book remained prohibited, and himself was afflicted with ignominy, and condemned to prison at the will of his holiness; "which," he adds "will be for ever. But whither is passion transporting me? I return to the lenses," &c. ​It may, perhaps, appear to the reader of these few extracts, that the punishment inflicted upon the philosopher was, in his estimation, not quite so gentle as is sometimes represented. It will appear, likewise, that they recognise two different, but harmonious, proceedings, by two principal organs of authority in his own Church — the Congregation of the Index, and the Congregation, or Tribunal, of the Inquisition, at the head of both of which is his holiness himself, of the latter as sole prefect. It is with the latter we are now concerned, and the extracts which have been given plainly enough prove, that the real charge against Galileo was, his assertion and publication of the Copernican system, and that ​all other charges connected with it, were of a merely circumstantial and secondary character. It was a natural, almost necessary consequence, that he should attempt to defend himself; and this could be done in no manner more imaginable, and indeed unexceptionable, than by endeavouring to prove the consistency of his philosophy with the Scriptures; and all the circumstances of the case were such as to make a man, even not very choleric, shew temper. But all this has no more to do with the sentence than, in our country and times, it would constitute the crime of a Socialist or Chartist who might have committed some obvious breach of the peace, that he attempted to justify his offence by the principles of his society, or by Magna Charta itself, if he could. Galileo might add to the original and substantial offence by unsuitable self-justification, and by provoking those who had the law in their hands. Both the vexatious enforcement of law, and complete evasion of it, are frequently, in imperfect governments, civil or ecclesiastical, or mixed, more the consequence of personal and very unworthy motives than of the nature or gravity of the offence legally visited — more the result of private resentment than of zeal ​for truth and justice: and by opportune submission Galileo might have passed smoothly through all. But this is a very distinct thing from the real and declared ground of the condemnation, as we shall soon see more fully. I am not disposed to deny neither, that the new doctrine would be likely to be ill received, when it was, or those, who knew better, affected to believe it to be, new, and strange, and anti-scriptural. The Church of Rome was committed to an external, exoteric defence of her own most reverenced writers, who were all Ptolemaics. We may even sympathise with her hard necessity, when we recollect the ingenious hesitation with which a man, who had no great fear or love of Rome, and no extravagant respect for any other opinion than his own, expresses himself in a poem which is rewarded with a just immortality. Read the beginning of the eighth book of Milton's Paradise Lost. But temptation to an act ​does not at all alter the nature of the act. To that we are to keep. The terms and evident meaning of the document or sentence in question are the simple and single point to be regarded.
Now, then, we come to the pages of the English biographer of Galileo, and to the chapter, already pointed out, where he gives the condemuaton by the Inquisition in English at length, though not for the first time, as he erroneously supposed. This document begins with stating, that the offence for which Galileo was denounced to the Holy Office was the "holding as true a false doctrine, taught by many; namely, that the sun is immovable in the centre of the world, and that the earth moves, and also, with a diurnal motion;" also, for instructing pupils, &c.; also, for correspondence with some Germans; also, for publishing certain letters, &c.; "also, for answering the objections which were continually produced from the Holy Scriptures, by glozing the said Scriptures according to his own ​meaning; and whereas, &c. The Inquisitors proceed to say, that by desire of his holiness and the Cardinals of the Inquisition, "the two propositions of the stability of the sun and motion of the earth were qualified by the Theological Qualificators, as follows: —
"1st. The proposition that the sun is in the centre of the world, and immovable from its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.
"2ndly. The proposition, that the earth is not the centre of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is also absurd, philosophically false, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."
The prohibition by the Congregation of the Index is referred to. The certificate which the accused produced in his own behalf is represented as aggravating his offence, because it is there declared, that his "opinion is contrary to the Holy Scripture, and yet he had dared to treat of it." Something is said of a rigorous examination (rigoroso esame) which it was necessary to use with him; and in the close his judges pronounce him to "have ​rendered himself vehemently suspected by the Holy Office of heresy: that is to say, that he believes and holds the false doctrine, and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures, namely, that the sun is the centre of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the centre of the world." They conclude by enjoining abjuration, and by decreeing that the Dialogue be prohibited by a public edict, and Galileo be imprisoned in the Holy Office at the pleasure of the Inquisitors, and for penance to recite the seven penitential psalms. Seven cardinals subscribe. Of the tremendously disgraceful Abjuration we say nothing. The date of the vile transaction was June 20, 1633.
Now, nothing from this document can be plainer than, that the pope, at the head of the Holy Office, condemned the Copernican doctrine of the solar system per se; that they condemned it as formally heretical, or, at least, erroneous in faith — at the least, such — because contrary to Scripture; and that the publisher of the doctrine was therefore vehemently suspected of heresy, and, of course, liable to the legal penalties, from which the guilty could ​not be absolved but by abjuration of the said errors and heresies.
Several ways have been resorted to to save the Church of Rome from the barbaric disgrace, not only of ignorance in the matter of science, but of formal sentence against it. An Italian, Tiraboschi, has drawn a subtle distinction between bulls of the pope and Inquisitorial decrees sanctioned by him; and Englishmen have bethought themselves of solving the difficulty by the intervention of technicality — every offence cognisable by the Holy Office being, as they affirm, in technical language, called heresy. True, the Office derived its origin and designation from the character of being conservators of the faith against heretical pravity. But is nothing heresy in this jurisdiction? and was there nothing in that jurisdiction but heresy? To be sure, the reading and keeping of prohibited books savoured of heresy; the polygamist might in a sense be suspected of heresy; usurpers of the sacerdotal function might be esteemed heretical; so likewise blasphemers, soothsayers, astrologers, sorcerers, and Jews. But what are we to say of confessors soliciting their female penitents to incontinence, against ​which, with such inefficient success, so many Papal provisions were found necessary to be issued, and found so important a part of the business of the Inquisition, that many, if not most, Directories on the subject, either distinctly refer to, or place at full length, the constitutions, or the last constitution, of one or more popes, as it may happen, against so foul, so probable, and so frequent an offence; and the reader of the Rev. Mr. Townsend's Travels in Spain will remember the defence set up by some Spanish prelates for the Office, namely, that it was the only effectual means of restraining such profligacy? It will be difficult to qualify this as heresy. But in the case of Galileo all is plain and above board. His new system, that the earth and planets revolved round the sun in our system, was deemed repugnant to Scripture, and was therefore formal heresy, and therefore condemned. The Inquisitors were sufficiently learned in the laws of the Holy Office, as well as of the Holy Church in general; and properly, and literally, without artificial phraseology, or legal fiction of any kind, they qualified the doctrine of their victim as heresy. If satisfaction on this point be wanted, it may be had to the full in the ​Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicolas Eymeric. Nothing more is necessary for the matter of science, and Rome's condemnation of it in the present case; and any demur or quibbling on the point is only not childish, because it wants the simplicity of childhood, confining ourselves even to the doings of the Inquisition which is the least part. Quite enough seems to have been said on this part of the subject. If, then, to the sentence of the Inquisition, during the lifetime of Galileo, we add the explicit condemnations of the Index, as they have been stated, from that time to the year 1835, it is not too much to say, that if the Church of Rome has the power, by any acts of her own, to make herself responsible, then assuredly, by what she has done through these two great organs of her authority, she has made herself responsible for a solemn, explicit, and self-binding condemnation of the doctrine, now, and for a long time universally received, that ​in the solar system the sun is the immovable centre, and the earth, and all the other planets in it, revolve round it. This doctrine was originally by her qualified as heresy, and it has been condemned in her most formal judicial document on such subjects to the year 1835, at which time the condemnation was surreptitiously, and to her own evident interest, withdrawn by herself. ​The necessity, at this time in particular, of exposing the disingenuous artifices and astute policy of the Church of Rome, must be the apology of this protracted investigation. I will,
​however, yet farther trespass upon the reader's patience to observe, that cunning men without a conscience are never secure. Into what a dilemma has the attempt to exculpate the Church of Rome in this affair driven her apologists! That Church does not condemn the philosophic doctrine, but on the contrary believes it to be true; by asserting, however, or barely admitting, that, although true, it is repugnant to Scripture, is it not a fair — a necessary inference, that in the view of the Church of Rome Scripture is false? This, I fear, is not an inference very alarming to some Romanists — they have still tradition, and then, without a rival. I may be allowed to remark yet farther, into what a forest of embarrassment the present ominous erasure has cast the unfortunate Church. For, if the doctrine, which by one of her principal courts of judicature in matters of faith she has condemned as heresy, so that the person vehemently suspected of that doctrine is therefore vehemently suspected of heresy, will it not follow, either that what was heresy in the seventeenth century is not heresy in the nineteenth; or, that the Church has been at one time or the other in error on a matter of faith; or, that an inerrable and unchangeable ​church can tolerate at any given time the heresy which it reprobated two centuries before?
But to leave this part of the discussion, I must be indulged yet shortly and finally to say, that when the jealousy of Rome was so alive to her scientific reputation, as it appears to have been in 1835, pity it was that Monsignor Niccola Wiseman, or whoever might be of his ​holiness's Council at the time, did not suggest the adoption of the whole of Sir R. H. Inglis's advice, and erase from the damnatory columns of the Index, not only Galileo, with his work and his doctrine, but the name and principal work of the most celebrated father of British science and philosophy; and no longer suffer, as in the last Index is the fact, the disgraceful article to stand — Baconus (Franciscus) De Verulamio. De dignitate, & augmentis Scientiarum. Donec corrigatur. Decr. 3 Aprilis 1669. Perhaps, it was an oversight.
We now proceed with the Gregorian Index. A Mandate and a Monitum have been announced; and they are both rather remarkable. The Mandate is that of the pontiff, Leo XII., in 1825; and he there rouses the principal rulers of the Roman Church to use their authority in wresting from the hands of the faithful every thing in literature which that Church deems noxious and deadly; — evellere e manibus quod noxium ac mortiferum. In the Monitum, the Sacred Congregation reminds the same rulers, specifying them according to their respective rank as before, of the obligation of the Second Rule of the Tridentine Index, concerning heretical books, and the universal condemnation by ​50 the Apostolic See of all versions of the condemned books in all places, and under the same penalties as the originals. The place referred to is the Instructio of Clement VIII., prefixed to his edition of the Index, & vi., concerning prohibited books. Iidem [libri prohib.] quoque, in quamcunque vertantur linguam, censeantur ab eadem Sede, ubique gentium, sub eisdem penis interdicti, et damnati.
Together with the Index of Gregory, I have obtained possession of additional separate Decrees, or Condemnations — the word is Damnatio — at length, to the number of nine. They have all more or less interest. The second is remarkably interesting. It is headed Damnatio; and is a bull or breve of Gregory XVI., condemning the works of the then late George Hermes, professor of theology in the university of Bonn, in Prussia. The date is September 26, 1835. This was followed up by a suitable Decree, dated January 7, 1836. The attention of the British public has been particularly drawn to this case, by a splendid, seasonable, and, what is more, right-minded article, in the 125th number of the Quarterly Review, entitled, "Papal Conspiracy — Archbishop of Cologne, &c." It there is made evident, that ​the condemnation of the Professor was, and may still continue, a part of the regular conspiracy of the Church of Rome in these times, to recover the dominion which she formerly enjoyed under another Gregory, in modern Europe, and particularly in Prussia, by the agency of the newly elected, jesuitic, perjured, and traitorous Archbishop of Cologne, Clement Augustus, Baron Droste. The character and acts of this imitator of the ecclesiastical ambition and insolence of Saint Thomas Becket of our country, is luminously exposed in the fourteenth volume of the British Magazine. The condemnation of the Professor at Bonn was procured from Rome before his elevation to the archiepiscopate, ostensibly for works not sufficiently favourable to Italian views of religious liberty — that is, liberty to the Roman Church ​to invade and destroy the liberty of all others. This scheme has been eagerly pushed by the whole Papal power of late. Besides eulogistic lives of Gregory VII. and Innocent III., from the German and French press, (both, stars of the first magnitude in the celestial sphere of pontifical usurpation and arrogance,) we have witnessed a French translation of Professor Ranke's History of the Popes of Rome, distinguished for its infidelity, and the insidious attempt to make it subservient to present hopes and acts entertained by the subjects and soldiers of the Pope. Simultaneously appeared an article in the Dublin Review of the same tendency, evidently aiming, from the character of the former part of Ranke's History, which represents the reaction in favour of the Roman power immediately succeeding the Reformation, ​to revive the hopes and stimulate the efforts to obtain a similar recovery in the present age; for, unfortunately, the course of prosperity was not progressive, and therefore an attention to the latter part of the history would not suit the reviewer's purpose, and, of course, was neglected. At the beginning of the year 1839, hopes were so ardent on the subject, that the two Papal Annuals in this country had, both, given prepossessing likenesses of the Prussian Becket, the second hope of the Romish world; and one of them gave a biography very cheering; the other, either prudently or fortunately, kept back its biograplıy to another year: and in the beginning of the year 1840, the editors of the two annuals, supposing it more consonant to the appearance of Catholic unity, to coni pose their former apparent rivalry, joined hands, and the circumstance afforded an honourable pretence for neglected performance of a promise. Late events explain all. There is subjoined to the second Decretum condemnatory of Hermes, and the works of other authors, a Monitum which will engage particular notice. But we will first despatch an article or two, that we may have uninterrupted freedom to attend to it. In a Decree of ​September 1836, the Italian version of M'Crie's Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy takes its place with other criminals. Another of the 4th of July, 1837, proscribes the Biografia di Fra Paolo Sarpi di A. Bianchi-Giovini; and likewise his Scelte lettere inedite.
A Decree, dated May 2, 1838, claims particular notice, and the reader has already been prepared for it — Considerazioni imparziali sopra la legge del Celibato Ecclesiastico e sul voto solenne di castità proposte segretamente ai consiglieri, e Legislatori degli stati Cattolici dal professore. — C. A. P. This notice attests the compulsory celibacy of the Romish Clergy, and the remonstrances against it. Of the policy of the law there can be no secret or doubt. To have a body, with no local or family attachment, with no diversion of effort or property, devoted to the service of their spiritual sovereign, though at the tremendous expense of morally certain profligacy of the most detestable description, is just the same policy as is pursued by the Turk in the institution of the military order of Janizaries — men taken into the service at an age, when all attachments may be easily overcome, denied marriage except at the will of their officer, which is equivalent to absolute prohibition, ​or compulsory celibacy, and with all the fearful liabilities, if not certainties, incident to such unnatural restraint. Religion and morality join in demanding its instant and eternal abolition: but policy in the Roman Church insists upon its continuance. Never was the spiritual prostitute more consistent — Qualis ab incepto.
I will now give the Monitum which has already been noticed.