In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial: Including the First English Translation of Melchior Inchofer's Tractatus syllepticus
  • William R. Shea
Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial: Including the First English Translation of Melchior Inchofer's Tractatus syllepticus. By Richard J. Blackwell. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 246. $35.00.)

Galileo was condemned in 1633 for asserting that the earth moves around the sun in violation of a formal injunction that he had received on February 26, 1616, shortly before the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres on March 5 of that year. The trial was mainly concerned with determining whether Galileo had actually transgressed the injunction, and it was held in private before the Commissioner of the Inquisition, the Dominican Vincenzo Maculano, and the Prosecuting Attorney, Carlo Sinceri. No one else was present, but historians have long been interested in what was not said at the trial and, more specifically, in the role that some Jesuits may have played in getting Galileo into trouble. The two "culprits," as they sometimes have been called, are the astronomer Christoph Scheiner and the theologian Melchor Inchofer. Scheiner believed that he had seen the sunspots before Galileo and, in an age that valued priority, this had led to a bitter dispute. Recent scholars are less hard on Scheiner than used to be the case, but Inchofer has received little attention in the English-speaking world. He was one of the three experts that the Holy Office appointed to study Galileo's Dialogue on the Two World Systems to ascertain whether he had taught and defended the heliocentric theory. The other two were Agostino Oregio, the pope's theologian, and Zaccaria Pasqualigo, a member of the Theatine order. Both concluded that Galileo had contravened the injunction of the Holy Office, but they stated their views in [End Page 582] objective and measured terms. Melchor Inchofer had little grasp of the nature of the Copernican system, but he took a polemical stance and attacked Galileo on doctrinal terms. His views were later published in a book entitled Tractatus Syllepticus that is translated into English for the first time in this book. It is a little over one hundred pages, and it makes curious reading. For instance, Inchofer argues that locating the sun at the center of the world with the earth now above, now below, would make nonsense of the teaching of the Creed, where it is plainly stated that Christ descended into hell and ascended into heaven. Inchofer is also exercised over the location of hell. Thomas Aquinas had asserted that it is not a matter of faith where hell is located, but for Inchofer, this only means that we do not know where inside the earth. Inchofer had no doubt that the geographical situation of hell inside the earth is a central tenet of Christianity, and he concluded that a theory as pernicious as the motion of the earth should be condemned and that, given the subtlety of the error, the ban should extend to its discussion in public less the simple-minded be deceived.

What influence Inchofer's views exerted is difficult to determine, but he went on to write another book, a Historia sacra latinitatis, in which he holds as "probable" that Christ spoke Latin while on earth and that the blessed converse in that language in heaven. I see no need for a translation of this work.

Blackwell offers other peeps behind the scenes in this book, which is a welcome contribution to the growing interest in the people who were involved in the trial and in the kind of arguments they used to condemn what was perceived as a threat not only to dogma but also to common sense.

William R. Shea
University of Padua
...

pdf

Share