page_title: Galileo affair
section_title: Bellarmine's view
hierarchical_section_title: Galileo affair / Bellarmine's view
caption_attribution_description: Saint Robert Bellarmine, Jesuit and Doctor of the Church Born 4 October, 1542, Montepulciano, Italy Died 17 September, 1621, Rome, Italy Venerated in Catholicism Beatified 13 May 1923 by Pope Pius XI Canonized 29 June 1930 by Pope Pius XI
context_page_description: The Galileo affair began around 1610 and culminated with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633. Galileo was prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the Solar System.
  In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, among them, the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Galileo's discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be "formally heretical." Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.
  Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth.
context_section_description: Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, one of the most respected Catholic theologians of the time, was called on to adjudicate the dispute between Galileo and his opponents. The question of heliocentrism had first been raised with Cardinal Bellarmine, in the case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite father; Foscarini had published a book, Lettera ... sopra l'opinione ... del Copernico, which attempted to reconcile Copernicus with the biblical passages that seemed to be in contradiction. Bellarmine at first expressed the opinion that Copernicus's book would not be banned, but would at most require some editing so as to present the theory purely as a calculating device for "saving the appearances" (i.e. preserving the observable evidence).
  Foscarini sent a copy of his book to Bellarmine, who replied in a letter of April 12, 1615. Galileo is mentioned by name in the letter, and a copy was soon sent to him. After some preliminary salutations and acknowledgements, Bellarmine begins by telling Foscarini that it is prudent for him and Galileo to limit themselves to treating heliocentrism as a merely hypothetical phenomenon and not a physically real one. Further on he says that interpreting heliocentrism as physically real would be "a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture as false." Moreover, while the topic was not inherently a matter of faith, the statements about it in Scripture were so by virtue of who said them – namely, the Holy Spirit. He conceded that if there were conclusive proof, "then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary; and say rather that we do not understand them, than that what is demonstrated is false." However, demonstrating that heliocentrism merely "saved the appearances" could not be regarded as sufficient to establish that it was physically real. Although he believed that the former may well have been possible, he had "very great doubts" that the latter would be, and in case of doubt it was not permissible to depart from the traditional interpretation of Scriptures. His final argument was a rebuttal of an analogy that Foscarini had made between a moving Earth and a ship on which the passengers perceive themselves as apparently stationary and the receding shore as apparently moving. Bellarmine replied that in the case of the ship the passengers know that their perceptions are erroneous and can mentally correct them, whereas the scientist on the Earth clearly experiences that it is stationary and therefore the perception that the Sun, Moon and stars are moving is not in error and does not need to be corrected.
  Bellarmine found no problem with heliocentrism so long as it was treated as a purely hypothetical calculating device and not as a physically real phenomenon, but he did not regard it as permissible to advocate the latter unless it could be conclusively proved through current scientific standards. This put Galileo in a difficult position, because he believed that the available evidence strongly favoured heliocentrism, and he wished to be able to publish his arguments.
caption: Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), who deliberated upon Galileo's writings in 1615–6, and ordered him to refrain from holding, teaching or discussing Copernicanism
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