Galileo Between Jesuits: The Fault Is in the Stars

In the middle of the seventeenth century, André Tacquet, S.J. briefly discussed a scientific argument regarding the structure of a Copernican universe, and commented on Galileo Galilei’s discussion of that same argument—Galileo’s discussion in turn being a commentary on a version of the argument by Christoph Scheiner, S.J. The argument was based on observations of the sizes of stars. This exchange involving Galileo and two Jesuits illustrates how through much of the seventeenth century, science—meaning observations, measurements, and calculations—supported a view of the Copernican universe in which stars were not other suns, but were dim bodies, far larger than the sun. Johannes Kepler emphasized this, especially in arguing against Giordano Bruno. Jesuit astronomers like Tacquet and Scheiner understood this. Those who might have listened to Jesuit astronomers would likewise have understood this—Robert Bellarmine, for example, whose role in the debate over Copernicanism is well known. To many, such a universe was, in the words of Galileo’s Dialogue character Sagredo, “beyond belief,” and no modern view of a universe of many distant suns would be scientifically supportable until after Tacquet’s death in 1660. The Copernican universe of the seventeenth century looked radically different from the universe as modern astronomers understand it, and recognizing this fact allows for interesting questions to be asked regarding the actions of those, such as Bellarmine, who were responding to the work of Copernicus.