Galileo: heretic (review)

Reviews 167 profitable to give some consideration to the evidence of Cassiodorus and Jordanes. Pizarro's book is lucid and weU structured, except that some quotations are unnecessarily long. Above all, it is extraordinarily well-informed over an unusually broad range of languages, cultures and periods. Yet his learning is only Ughtly displayed and one is spared the pervasive jargon customary in work on the topics covered by this study. Although directed at students of literature it also deserves serious consideration by students of early medieval and Byzantine historiography, at a time when the central issues to be resolved concern the relationship between historical argument and narrative form. Brian Croke Sydney Redondi, P., Galileo: heretic, trans. R. Rosenthal, London, Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1988; pp. x, 356; 18 illustrations; R. R. P. AUS$50.00. 'Sooner or later the truth always wins out' is the triumphant battle cry of the 'historian' Pietro Redondi (p. 255). It has taken 350 years for the 'truth' of GaUleo's condemnation by the Holy Office in 1633 to win out. GaUleo was not guUty of advocating the Copernican theory of heUocentrism, a view contained in his Dialogue of 1632. H e was condemned instead for a far worse heresy. His corpuscular theory of matter, or atomism, undermined the 'incommensurably more important' doctrine of the eucharist (p. 196). Redondi has proof of his 'truth', an anonymous document he discovered among the records of the Holy Office on the morning of June 11, 1982. The document was an official denunciation of the atomism in Galileo's / / Saggiatore (The Assayer), published in 1623. A triumphant Redondi proclaims that the handwriting of this document matches that of Galileo's archenemy, the Jesuit Orazio Grassi, Professor of Mathematics at the Jesuits' Collegio Romano. Redondi says: 'I knew Father Grassi's writing and style quite weU' (p. 190). It has not taken 350 years for the 'truth' regarding Redondi's allegations to win out In a review article that appeared in the Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, (5th series, 75 (1989), pp. 315-338), Roland Crahay described the scholarly verdict on Redondi's book in rather unflattering terms: 'un veritable desastre, une sorte de Tchemobyl de 1'erudition'. But to begin at the beginning, the appearance of the original edition, Galileo Eretico, in 1983 precipitated a storm of controversy in Italy. In the following year came the publication of a critical edition of the documents relating to GaUleo's trial, / documenti del processo di Galileo Galilei (Vatican City, 1984), edited by S. M . Pagano with the assistance of A. G. Luciani. The editors demonstrated (pp. 44-45) that the Jesuit Grassi did not write the document which Redondi found on that fateful morning. Other critical reviews and critical review 168 Reviews articles followed, including an article by Vincenzo Ferrone and Massimo Firpo in the Rivista storica italiano, 97 (1985), 177-238, a shortened version of the same article in the Journal of Modern History 58 (1986), 485-524, and a perceptive article by Richard S. WestfaU in History of Science, 26 (1988), 399415 . These and other reviewers attack Redondi firstly for his methodology, for confusing proofs with possibilities, for distorting texts, for refusing to take documents at their face value but using them instead as a source of 'hidden meanings, sidelong glances, and daring elucubrations' (Ferrone and Firpo, p. 513), and then justifying his approach by citing Carlo Ginzburg's 'circumstantial paradigm'. They attack him secondly for getting important details wrong. Not only is he wrong in attributing the document to Grassi, but also he is wrong in claiming that it was an official denunciation. They attack him thirdly for not having any evidence to support some of his crucial arguments; such as, his assertion that Galileo had two trials: a secret trial dealing with the eucharist and a mock trial dealing with Copernicanism. They attack him finaUy for presenting distorted pictures of Galileo, the Accademia dei Lincei, Pope Urban VIII, and the Jesuits. Regarding the latter, as the author of a book on The Jesuit mind I know Redondi's Jesuits weU. They are the Jesuits of the hackneyed stereotypes that...