No More Learning

GALILEO He frightens me. The blockhead will draw me into another
interminable conversation.
(Mr. Gaffone, the rector of the university, descends the stairs. He is visibly startled when he sees Galileo and walks stiffly past the two, with rigidly averted head and barely nodding. )
GALILEO What's got into him? My eyes are bad again. Did he greet us at all? VIRGINIA Just barely. --What have you said in your book? Can they think it's
heretical?
GALILEO You hang around church too much. Getting up before dawn and
running to mass is ruining your complexion. You pray for me, don't
you?
VIRGINIA There's Mr. Vanni, the iron founder. The one you designed the
smelting furnace for. Don't forget to thank him for the quails.
(A man has come down the stairs)
VANNI How did you like the quails I sent you, Mr. Galileo?
GALILEO Maestro Vanni, the quails were excellent. Again many thanks. VANNI They're talking about you upstairs. They claim you're responsible for
those pamphlets against the Bible that are being sold all over.
GALILEO I know nothing about pamphlets. My favorite books are the Bible and H
omer.
VANNI Even if that were not the case: Let me take this opportunity of assuring
you that we manufacturers are on your side. I don't know much about the movement of stars, but the way I look at it, you're the man who is fighting for the freedom to teach new knowledge. Just take that mechanical cultivator from Germany that you described to me. Last year alone five works on agriculture were published in London. Here we'd be grateful for one book about the Dutch canals. It's the same people who are making trouble for you and preventing the physicians in Bologna from dissecting corpses for research.
There's that man again who's been following us, (She points at a shady individual who passes by without paying attention to them)
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? GALILEO Your vote counts, Vanni.
VANNI I hope so. Do you know that in Amsterdam and London they have money
markets? And trade schools too. And newspapers that appear regularly. Here we're not even free to make money. They're against iron foundries because they claim too many workers in one place promote immorality. I swim or sink with men like you, Mr. Galilei! If ever they try to harm you, please remember that you have friends in every branch of industry. The cities of northern Italy are behind you, sir.
GALILEO As far as I know no one has any intention of harming me.
VANNI Really?
GALILEO Really.
VANNI I believe you'd be better off in Venice. Not so many cassocks. You'd be
free to carry on the fight. I have a coach and horses, Mr. Galilei. GALILEO I can't see myself as a refugee. I love comfort.
VANNI
I understand. But to judge by what I heard up there, there's no time to be lost. I got the impression that right now they'd prefer not to have you in Florence.
GALILEO Nonsense. The grand duke is a pupil of mine, not to mention the fact that if anyone tries to trip me up the pope himself will tell him where to get off.
VANNI You don't seem able to distinguish your friends from your enemies, Mr. Galilei.
GALILEO I'm able to distinguish power from lack of power. (He brusquely steps away]
VANNI Well, I wish you luck. (Goes out)
GALILEO (back at Virginia's side) Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a grievance
picks me as his spokesman, especially in places where it doesn't exactly help me. I've written a book on the mechanism of the universe, that's all, What people make or don't make of it is no concern of mine.
VIRGINIA (in a loud voice) If people only knew how you condemned the goings- on at last year's carnival.
GALILEO Yes. Give a bear honey if it's hungry and you'll lose your arm. VIRGINIA (in an undertone) Did the grand duke send for you today?
GALILEO No, but I've sent in my name. He wants the book, he's paid for it. Ask
somebody, complain about the long wait.
VIRGINIA (goes to talk to an attendant, followed by the individual) Mr. Mincio, has
His Highness been informed that my father wishes to speak to him? VIRGINIA (has come back) He says the grand duke is still busy.
GALILEO I heard you say something about "polite. " What was it?
VIRGINIA I thanked him for his polite answer, that's all. Can't you just leave the
book for him? You're wasting your time.
GALILEO I'm beginning to wonder what my time is worth. Maybe I should
accept Sagredo's invitation to go to Padua for a few weeks. My health
hasn't been up to snuff.
VIRGINIA You couldn't live without your books.
GALILEO We could take some of the Sicilian wine, one, two cases.
VIRGINIA You always say it doesn't travel. And the court owes you three months'
salary. They won't forward it. GALILEO That's true.
VIRGINIA (whispers) The cardinal inquisitor!
(The cardinal inquisitor descends the stairs. Passing them, he bows low to
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? Galileo)
VIRGINIA What's the cardinal inquisitor doing in Florence, father?
GALILEO I don't know. His attitude was respectful, I think. I knew what I was doing when I came to Florence and held my peace all these years. Their
praises have raised me so high that they have to take me as I am. LORD CHAMBERLAIN (announces) His Highness, the grand duke!
(Cosmo de Medici, who hasn't aged, comes down the stairs. Galileo approaches
him. Cosmo, slightly embarrassed, stops)
GALILEO May I present Your Highness with my Dialogues on the Two Chief Syst . . . COSMO I see, I see. How are your eyes?
GALILEO Not too good, Your Highness. With Your Highness' permission, I
should like to present my . . .
COSMO The state of your eyes alarms me. Yes, it alarms me a good deal. Haven't
you been using your splendid tube a little too much? (He walks off without
accepting the book)
GALILEO He didn't take the book, did he?
VIRGINIA Father, I'm afraid.
GALILEO (subdued, but firmly) Don't show your feelings. We are not going home,
but to Volpi, the glass cutter's. I've arranged with him to have a cart with empty wine casks ready in the tavern yard next door, to take me away at any time.
VIRGINIA Then you knew . . .
GALILEO Don't look back. (They start to leave)
HIGH OFFICIAL (descending the stairs) Mr. Galilei, I have orders to inform you that
the court of Florence is no longer in a position to oppose the request of the Holy Inquisition for your interrogation in Rome. Mr. Galilei, the coach of the Holy Inquisition is waiting for you.
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? 12
The pope.
A room in the Vatican. Pope Urban VIII (formerly Cardinal Bar-berini) has received the cardinal inquisitor. During the audience the pope is being dressed. From outside the shuffling of many feet is heard.
THE POPE (very loud) No! No! No!
THE INQUISITOR Then Your Holiness really means to tell the doctors of all the
faculties, the representatives of all the religious orders and of the entire clergy, who have come here guided by their childlike faith in the word of God as recorded in scripture to hear Your Holiness confirm them in their faith -- you mean to inform them that scripture can no longer be considered true?
THE POPE I won't permit the multiplication tables to be broken. No!
THE INQUISITOR Yes, these people say it is only a matter of the multiplication tables,
not of the spirit of rebellion and doubt. But it is not the multiplication tables. It is an alarming unrest that has come over the world. It is the unrest of their own minds, which they transfer to the immovable earth. They cry out: The figures force our hands! But where do these figures come from? Everyone knows they come from doubt. These people doubt everything. Is our human community to be built on doubt and no longer on faith? "You are my master, but I doubt whether that is a good arrangement. " "This is your house and your wife, but I doubt whether they should
not be mine. " On the other hand, as we can read on the house walls of Rome, disgraceful interpretations are being put on Your Holiness' great love for art, to which we owe such marvelous collections: "The Barberinis are stripping Rome of what the barbarians failed to take. " And abroad? It has pleased God to visit heavy tribulation upon the Holy See. Your Holiness' policy in Spain is misunderstood by persons lacking in insight, your rift with the emperor is deplored. For fifteen years Germany has been a shambles, people have been slaughtering one another with Bible quotations on their lips. And at a time when under the onslaught of plague, war and reformation, Christianity is being reduced to a few disorganized bands, a rumor is spreading through Europe that you are in secret league with Lutheran Sweden to weaken the Catholic emperor. This is the moment these mathematicians, these worms, choose to turn their tubes to the sky and inform the world that even here, the one place where your authority is not yet contested, Your Holiness is on shaky ground. Why, one is tempted to ask, this sudden interest in so recondite a science as astronomy? Does it make any difference how these bodies move? Yet, thanks to the bad example of that Florentine, all Italy, down to the last stableboy, is prattling about the phases of Venus and thinking at the same time of many irksome things which are held in our schools and elsewhere to be immutable. Where will it end, if all these people, weak in the flesh and inclined to excess, come to rely exclusively on their own reason, which this madman declares to be the ultimate authority? They begin by doubting whether the sun stood still at Gibeon and end up
54
directing their unclean doubts at the church collections. Since they began sailing the high seas--to which I have no objection--they have been putting their trust in a brass sphere that they call a compass, and no longer in God. Even as a young man this Galileo wrote about machines. With machines they expect to work miracles. What kind of miracles? Of course they have no more use for God, but what is to be the nature of these miracles? For one thing, they expect to do away with Above and Below. They don't need it any more. Aristotle, whom in other respects they regard as a dead dog, said-- and this they quote--: If the shuttle were to weave by itself and the plectron to pluck by itself, masters would no longer need apprentices nor lords servants. They believe that this time has come. This evil man knows what he is doing when he writes his astronomical works not in Latin but in the idiom of fishwives and wool merchants.
? THE POPE It's certainly in bad taste. I'll tell him.
THE INQUISITOR Some he incites, others he bribes. The north Italian ship owners
keep clamoring for Mr. Galilei's star charts. We shall have to yield to
them, since material interests are involved.
THE POPE But these star charts are based on his heretical statements, on the
movements of certain heavenly bodies which become impossible if his doctrine is rejected. You can't reject the doctrine and accept the star charts.
THE INQUISITOR Why not? It's the only solution.
THE POPE This shuffling makes me nervous. Forgive me if I seem distracted. THE INQUISITOR Perhaps it speaks to you more clearly than I can, Your
Holiness. Are all these people to go home with doubts in their hearts? THE POPE After all the man is the greatest physicist of our time, a beacon for
Italy, and not some good-for-nothing crank. He has friends. There's Versailles. There's the court in Vienna. They will call the church a cesspool of rotten prejudices. Hands off!
THE INQUISITOR Actually, we wouldn't have to go very far in his case. He is a man of the flesh. He would cave in very quickly.
THE POPE He gets pleasure out of more things than any man I ever met. Even his thinking is sensual. He can never say no to an old wine or a new idea. I will not stand for any condemning of physical facts, any battle cry of "church" against "reason. " I gave him leave to write his book provided it ended with a statement that the last word is not with science but with faith. He has complied.
THE INQUISITOR But how did he comply? His book is an argument between a simpleton who--naturally--propounds the opinions of Aristotle, and an intelligent man, just as naturally voicing Mr. Galilei's opinions; and the concluding remark, Your Holiness, is made by whom?
THE POPE What was that again? Who states our opinion?
THE INQUISITOR Not the intelligent one.
THE POPE That is impudence. This stamping in the halls is insufferable. Is
the whole world coming here?
THE INQUISITOR Not the whole world, but the best part of it.
(Pause. The pope is now fully robed)
THE POPE At the very most the instruments may be shown to him.
THE INQUISITOR That will suffice, Your Holiness. Mr. Galilei is well versed in
instruments.
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? 13
On June 22, 1633, Galileo Galilei abjures his doctrine of the motion of the earth before the Inquisition.
June twenty-second, sixteen thirty-three A momentous day for you and me.
Of all the days that was the one
An age of reason could have begun.
Palace of the Florentine ambassador in Rome. Galileo ! r pupils are waiting for news. The little monk and Federzoni are playing the new chess with its sweeping movements. Virginia kneels in a corner saying an Ave Maria.
THE LITTLE MONK The pope refused to see him. No more scientific debates. SAGREDO The pope was his last hope. I guess Cardinal Barberini was right when
he said to him years ago: We need you. Now they've got him. ANDREA They'll kill him. The Discorsi will never be finished. SAGREDO (with a furtive glance at him) You think so?
ANDREA Because he'll never recant. (Pause)
THE LITTLE MONK When you He awake at night you chew on the most useless ideas. Last night I couldn't get rid of the thought that he should never have left the republic of Venice.
ANDREA He couldn't write his book there.
SAGREDO And in Florence he couldn't publish it. (Pause)
THE LITTLE MONK I also kept wondering whether they'd let him keep the stone he
always carries in his pocket. His touchstone.
SAGREDO Where they're taking him people don't wear pockets.
ANDREA (screaming) They won't dare! And even if they do, he'll never recant. "Not
to know the truth is just stupid. To know the truth and call it a lie is
criminal. "
SAGREDO I don't think so either, and I wouldn't want to go on living if he
did, but they have the power.
ANDREA Power isn't everything.
SAGREDO Maybenot.
THE LITTLE MONK (softly) He's been in prison for twenty-three days. Yesterday
was the great interrogation. Today the judges are in session. (As Andrea is listening, be raises his voice) When I came to see him here two days after the decree, we were sitting over there; he showed me the little Priapus by the sundial in the garden--you can see it from here--and compared his own work with a poem by Horace, in which it is also impossible to change anything. He spoke of his esthetic sense, which compels him to look for the truth. And he told me his motto: Hieme et aestate, et prope et procul, usque dum vivam et ultra. He was referring to the truth.
ANDREA (to the little monk) Did you tell him what he did in the Collegium Romanum while they were examining his tube? Tell him! (The little monk
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? shakes his head) He acted the same as always. He put his hands on his hams, stuck out his belly and said: Gentlemen, I beg for reason! (Laughingly he imitates Galileo) (Pause)
ANDREA (referring to Virginia) She's praying for him to recant.
SAGREDO Let her pray. She's all mixed up since they talked to her. They
brought her confessor down from Florence. (Enter the shady individual
from the grand ducal palace in Florence)
THE SHADY INDIVIDUAL Mr. Galilei will be here soon. He may want a bed. SAGREDO Has he been released?
THE SHADY INDIVIDUAL Mr. Galilei is expected to recant at five o'clock before the
plenary session of the Inquisition. The big bell of St. Mark's will be rung
and the wording of the abjuration will be proclaimed publicly. ANDREA I don't believe it.
THE SHADY INDIVIDUAL Because of the crowds in the streets, Mr. Galilei will be
conducted to the postern on this side of the palace. (Out)
ANDREA (suddenly in a loud voice) The moon is an earth and has no light of its
own. And Venus has no light of its own either and is like the earth and moves around the sun. And four moons revolve around the planet Jupiter which is as far away as the fixed stars and not fastened to any sphere. And the sun is the center of the universe and immovable in its place, and the earth is not the center and not immovable. And he was the man who proved it.
THE LITTLE MONK No force can make what has been seen unseen. (Silence) SAGREDO (looks at the sundial in the garden) Five o'clock.
(Virginia prays louder)
ANDREA I can't stand it! They're beheading the truth! (He holds his hands to his ears, so
does the little monk. The bell is not rung. After a pause filled with Virginia's murmured
prayers Sagredo shakes his ,. head in the negative. The others drop their hands) SAGREDO (hoarsely) Nothing. It's three minutes past five.
ANDREA He's resisting.
THE LITTLE MONK He hasn't recanted!
SAGREDO No. Oh, my friends!
(They embrace. They are -wildly happy)
ANDREA You see: They can't do it with force! Force isn't everything! Hence: Stupidity is defeated, it's not invulnerable! Hence: Man is not afraid of death!
SAGREDO Now the age of knowledge will begin in earnest. This is the hour of its birth. Just think! If he had recanted!
THE LITTLE MONK I didn't say anything but I was very worried. I was faint of heart.
I knew it.
It would have been as if morning had turned back to night.
ANDREA
SAGREDO
ANDREA
THE LITTLE MONK (kneels down in tears) Lord, I thank Thee.
ANDREA But now everything has changed. Man is lifting his head, tormented
As if the mountain said: I'm water.
man, and saying: I can live. All this is accomplished when one man gets up and says No!
(At this moment the big bell of St. Mark's begins to boom. All stand transfixed)
VIRGINIA (getting up) The bell of St. Mark's. He hasn't been condemned! (From the street the announcer is heard reciting Galileo's recantation)
ANNOUNCER'S VOICE (recorded) "I, Galileo Galilei, professor of mathematics and
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? physics in Florence, hereby abjure what I have taught, to wit, that the sun is the center of the world and motionless in its place, and the earth is not the center and not motionless. Out of a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, condemn and execrate all these errors and heresies as I do all other errors and all other opinions in opposition to the Holy Church. "
(Darkness)
(When it grows light again, the bell is still booming, then it stops. Virginia has left. Galileo's pupils are still there)
ANDREA (loudly) Unhappy the land that has no heroes!
(Galileo has come in, completely, almost unrecognizably, changed by the trial. He has heard Andrea's exclamation. For a few moments he hesitates at the door, expecting a greeting. As none is forthcoming and his pupils shrink back from him, he goes slowly and because of his bad eyesight uncertainly to the front where he finds a footstool and sits down)
ANDREA I can't look at him. I wish he'd go away.
SAGREDO Calmyourself.
ANDREA (screams at Galileo) Wine barrel! Snail eater! Have you saved your
precious skin? (Sits down) I feel sick. GALILEO (calmly) Get him a glass of water.
(The little monk goes out to get Andrea a glass of water. The others pay no attention to Galileo who sits on his footstool, listening. From far off the announcer's voice is heard again)
ANDREA I can walk now if you'll help me.
(They lead him to the door. When they reach it, Galileo begins to speak)
GALILEO No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
A reading in front of the curtain: (by Andrea as a child)
Is it not obvious that a horse falling from a height of three or four ells will break its legs, whereas a dog would not suffer any damage, nor would a cat from a height of eight or nine ells, or a cricket from a tower, or an ant even if it were to fall from the moon? And just as smaller animals are comparatively stronger than larger ones, so small plants too stand up better: an oak tree two hundred ells high cannot sustain its branches in the same proportion as a small oak tree, nor can nature let a horse grow as large as twenty horses or produce a giant ten times the size of man unless it changes all the proportions of the limbs and especially of
the bones, which would have to be strengthened far beyond the size demanded by mere proportion. --The common assumption that large and small machines are equally durable is apparently erroneous.
Galileo, Discorsi
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? 14
1633-1642. Galileo Galilei spends the rest of his life in a villa near Florence, as a prisoner of the Inquisition. The Discorsi.
Sixteen hundred thirty-three to sixteen hundred forty-two Galileo Galilei remains a prisoner of the church until his death.
A large room with a table, a leather chair and a globe. Galileo, now old and almost blind, is experimenting carefully with a small wooden ball roiling on a curved wooden rail. In the anteroom a monk is sitting on guard. A knock at the door. The monk opens and a peasant comes in carrying two plucked geese. Virginia emerges from the kitchen. She is now about forty years old. The monk takes them from her rand examines them-suspiciously. Satisfied, be gives them back and she carries them by the necks to Galileo in the large room)
A present, dropped off by someone who's passing through. What is it?
VIRGINIA
GALILEO
VIRGINIA
GALILEO
VIRGINIA No.
GALILEO (taking one goose from her) Heavy. Maybe I'll have some.
VIRGINIA You can't be hungry again. You just finished dinner. And what's
wrong with your eyes today? You ought to be able to see them from
where you are.
GALILEO You're standing in the shadow.
VIRGINIA I'm not in the shadow. (She carries the geese out)
GALILEO Put in thyme and apples.
VIRGINIA (to the monk) We must send for the eye doctor. Father couldn't see the
geese.
THE MONK I'll need permission from Monsignor Carpula. -- Has he been
writing again?
VIRGINIA No. He's dictating his book to me, you know that. You have pages
131 and 132, they were the last. THE MONK He's an old fox.
VIRGINIA He doesn't do anything against the rules. His repentance is real. I keep an eye on him. (She gives him the geese) Tell them in the kitchen to fry the liver with an apple and an onion. (She comes back into the large room) And now we're going to think of our eyes and stop playing with that ball and dictate a little more of our weekly letter to the archbishop.
GALILEO I don't feel up to it. Read me some Horace.
VIRGINIA Only last week Monsignor Carpula, to whom we owe so much--those
vegetables the other day--told me the archbishop keeps asking him what you think of the questions and quotations he's been sending you.
(She has sat down ready for dictation)
Can't you see?
No. (He goes closer) Geese, Was there any name?
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? GALILEO Where was I?
VIRGINIA Section four: Concerning the reaction of the church to the unrest in
the arsenal in Venice, I agree with Cardinal Spoletti's attitude concerning
the rebellious rope makers . . .
GALILEO Yes. (Dictates) . . . agree with Cardinal Spoletti's attitude concerning the
rebellious rope makers, to wit, that it is better to dispense soup to them in the name of Christian charity than to pay them more for their ship's cables and bell ropes. All the more so, since it seems wiser to strengthen their faith than their greed. The Apostle Paul says: Charity never faileth. --How does that sound?
VIRGINIA It's wonderful, father.
GALILEO You don't think it could be mistaken for irony?