No More Learning

You're not going back to those abominations, Mr. Galilei?
LUDOVICO MRS. SARTI GALILEO
LUDOVICO I said I did, sir.
GALILEO You really like it?
LUDOVICO (stiffly) I like it.
GALILEO Would you go so far as to accept a man's wine or his daughter without
asking him to give up his profession? What has my astronomy got to do with
my daughter? The phases of Venus don't affect my daughter's rear end. MRS. SARTI Don't be vulgar. I'll go get Virginia.
LUDOVICO (holds her back) In families like mine marriages are not decided by
sexual considerations alone.
GALILEO Did they prevent you from marrying my daughter for the last eight years
because I was on probation?
LUDOVICO My wife will also have to cut a figure in our village church.
GALILEO You mean, your peasants won't pay their rent if the lady of the manor is
insufficiently saintly? LUDOVICO In a way.
GALILEO Andrea. Sagredo, get the brass mirror and the screen! We'll project the sun's image on it to protect our eyes. That's your method, Andrea.
(Andrea and the little monk get mirror and screen)
LUDOVICO Years ago in Rome, sir, you signed a pledge to stay away from this earth- around-the-sun business.
GALILEO Oh well. We had a reactionary pope in those days.
MRS. SARTI Had! His Holiness isn't even dead yet!
GALILEO Pretty near, pretty near! --Put a grid over the screen. We'll proceed
methodically. And we'll be able to answer all those letters, won't we,
Andrea?
MRS. SARTI "Pretty near! " Fifty times that man weighs his pieces of ice, but
when something happens that suits his purposes he believes it blindly! (The
screen is put up)
LUDOVICO Mr. Galilei, if His Holiness should die, the next pope--no matter who he is or how much he loves science-- will have to take account of how much the country's leading families love him.
THE LITTLE MONK God made the physical world, Ludovico; God made the human brain; God will allow physics.
MRS. SARTI Galileo, let me tell you something. I've watched my son fall into sin for the sake of these "experiments" and "theories" and "observations," and I
Now I know why your mother sent you here. Barberini is on the rise. Knowledge will be a passion and research a delight. Clavius is right, these sunspots do interest me. You like my wine, Ludovico?
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haven't been able to do anything about it. You set yourself against the authorities and they gave you a warning. The greatest cardinals spoke to you the way you'd speak to a sick horse. It worked for a while, but two months ago, right after the Immaculate Conception, I caught you sneaking back to your "observations. " In the attic! I didn't say anything, but I knew. I ran out and lit a candle for St. Joseph. It's more than I can bear. When we're alone you show some sense, you say you've got to behave because it's dangerous, but two days of "experiments" and you're as bad as ever. If I lose my eternal salvation because I stand by a heretic, that's my business, but you have no right to trample your daughter's happiness with your big feet!
? GALILEO (gruffly) Get the telescope!
? (They uncover the telescope)
LUDOVICO Giuseppe, put the luggage back in the coach. (The manservant goes out) MRS. SARTI She'll never get over this. You can tel! her yourself.
(She runs out, still holding the pitcher)
LUDOVICO I see you've made up your mind. Mr. Galilei, three quarters of the year mother and I live on our estate in the Campagna and I can assure you that our peasants lose no sleep over your treatises on the moons of Jupiter. They work too hard in the fields. It might upset them, though, if they heard that attacks on the holy doctrine of the church were going unpunished. Don't forget that those poor brutalized wretches get everything mixed up. They really are brutes, you have no idea. A rumor that somebody's seen a pear growing on an apple tree makes them run away from their work to gab about it.
GALILEO (with interest) Really?
LUDOVICO Animals. When they come to the manor with a trifling complaint, mother has
to have a dog whipped in front of them to remind them of discipline and order and good manners. You, Mr. Galilei, you may occasionally see flowering corn fields from your traveling coach, or absent-mindedly eat our olives and our cheese, but you have no idea how much effort it takes to raise all these things -- all the supervision!
GALILEO Young man, I never eat my olives absent-mindedly. (Rudely) You're wasting my time. (Calls toward outside) Is the screen ready?
ANDREA Yes. Are you coming?
GALILEO You whip more than dogs to keep discipline, don't you, Marsili?
LUDOVICO Mr. Galilei, you have a marvelous brain. Too bad.
THE LITTLE MONK (amazed) He's threatening you.
GALILEO Yes, I might stir up his peasants to think new thoughts. And his servants
and his overseers.
SAGREDO How? They don't know Latin.
GALILEO I could write in the vernacular for the many instead of in Latin for the few. For
our new ideas we need people who work with their hands. Who else wants to know the causes of everything? People who never see bread except on their tables have no desire to know how it's baked; those bastards would rather thank God than the baker. But the men who make the bread will understand that nothing can move unless something moves it. Fulganzio, your sister at the olive press won't be much surprised -- she'll probably laugh -- when she hears that the sun is not a gold escutcheon, but a lever: The earth moves because the sun moves it.
LUDOVICO You'll always be a slave to your passions. Convey my apologies to Virginia. It's better, I think, if I don't see hernow.
GALILEO The dowry is at your disposal. At any time.
LUDOVICO Good day. (He goes) ANDREA Our regards to all the Marsilis!
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? SAGREDO Who tell the earth to stand still so their castles won't fall off. ANDREA And to the Cencis and Villanis!
SAGREDO The Cervillis!
ANDREA The Lecchis!
SAGREDO The Pierleonis!
ANDREA Who'll only kiss the pope's foot as long as he tramples the people with it.
THE LITTLE MONK (also at the instruments) The new pope will be an enlightened man. GALILEO And now let's start observing these spots in the sun which interest us--at our
own risk, not counting too much on the protection of a new pope . . . ANDREA (interrupting) But fully confident of dispelling Mr. Fabricius' star shadows and the solar vapors of Prague and Paris, and proving that the sun rotates.
GALILEO Reasonably confident that the sun rotates. My aim is not to prove that I've been right, but to find out whether or not I have been. I say: Abandon hope, all ye who enter upon observation. Maybe it's vapors, maybe it's spots, but before we assume that they're spots, though it would suit us if they were, we'd do better to assume they're fishtails. Yes, we shall start all over again from scratch. And we won't rush ahead with seven-league boots, but crawl at a snail's pace. And what we find today we'll wipe from the blackboard tomorrow, and not write it down again until we find it a second time. And if there's something we hope to find, we'll regard it with particular distrust when we do find it. Accordingly let us approach our observation of the sun with the inexorable resolve to prove that the earth stands still! Only after we have failed, after we have been totally and hopelessly defeated and are licking our wounds in utter dejection, only then shall we begin to ask whether the earth does not indeed move! (With a twinkle) But then, when every other hypothesis has gone up in smoke, then no mercy for those who have never observed anything, yet go on talking. Take the cloth off the tube and focus it on the sun!
(He adjusts the brass mirror)
THE LITTLE MONK I knew you had taken up your work again. I knew it when you didn't recognize Mr. Marsili. (
(In silence they begin their examinations. When the flaming image of the sun appears on the screen Virginia in her bridal gown runs in)
VIRGINIA You've sent him away! (She faints. Andrea and the little monk rush to her aid) GALILEO I've got to know.
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? 10
In the course of the next ten years Galileo's doctrine is disseminated among the common people. Pamphleteers and ballad singers everywhere seize upon the new ideas. In the carnival of 1632 the guilds in many Italian cities take astronomy as the theme for their carnival processions.
A half-starved couple of show people with a five-year-old girl and an infant enter a market place where many people, some with masks, are awaiting the carnival procession. They carry bundles, a drum and other props.
THE BALLAD SINGER (drumming) Citizens, ladies and gentlemen! Before the great carnival procession of the guilds arrives we bring you the latest Florentine song which is being sung all over northern Italy. We've imported it at great expense. The title is: The horrendous doctrine and teaching of Mr. Galileo Galilei, court physicist, or, A Foretaste of the Future. (He sings) When the Almighty made the universe He made the earth and then he made the sun. Then round the earth he bade the sun to turn-- That's in the Bible, Genesis, Chapter One. And from that time all beings here below Were in obedient circles meant to go.
They all began to turn around The little fellows round the big shots And the hindmost round the foremost On earth as it is in heaven. Around the popes the cardinals Around the cardinals the bishops Around the bishops the secretaries Around the secretaries the aldermen Around the aldermen the craftsmen Around the craftsmen the servants Around the servants the dogs, the chickens and the beggars.
That, my friends, is the great order, ordo ordinum, as the theologians call it, regula aeternis, the rule of rules. And then, my friends, what happened then? (He sings)
Up stood the learned Galileo
(Chucked the Bible, pulled out his telescope, and took a look at the universe)
And told the sun: Stand still!
From this time on, the wheels
Shall turn the other way.
Henceforth the mistress, ho!
Shall turn around the maid.
Now that was rash, my friends, it is no matter small: For heresy will spread today like foul diseases. Change Holy Writ, forsooth? What will be left at all? Why: each of us would say and do just what he pleases!
Esteemed citizens, such doctrines are utterly impossible. (He sings)
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? Good people, what will come to pass
If Galileo's teachings spread?
The server will not serve at mass
No servant girl will make the bed. Now that is grave, my friends, it is no matter small: For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases! Yet life is sweet and man is weak and after all-- How nice it is, for once, to do just as one pleases!
Now, my good friends, here, look to the future and see what the most learned doctor Galileo Galilei predicts. (He sings)
Two ladies at a fishwife's stall
Are in for quite a shock
The fishwife takes a loaf of bread And gobbles up all her stock.
The carpenters take wood and build Houses for themselves, not pews And members of the cobblers' guild Now walk around in shoes!
Is this permitted? No, it is no matter small:
For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases! Yet life is sweet and man is weak and after all-- How nice it is, for once, to do just as one pleases!
The tenant kicks his noble master
Smack in the ass like that
The tenant's wife now gives her children
Milk that made the parson fat. No, no my friends, for the Bible is no matter small: For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases! Yet life is sweet and man is weak and after all-- How nice it is for once to do just as one pleases!
THE SINGER'S WIFE
The other day I tried it too And did my husband frankly tell Let's see now if what you can do Other stars can do as well.
BALLAD SINGER
No, no, no, no, no, no, stop, Galileo, stop!
For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases.
People must keep their place, some down and some on top! Though it is nice for once to do just as one pleases.
BOTH
Good people who have trouble here below
In serving cruel lords and gentle Jesus
Who bids you turn the other cheek just so While they prepare to strike the second blow: Obedience will never cure your woe
So each of you wake up and do just as he pleases!
THE BALLAD SINGER Esteemed citizens, behold Galileo Galilei's phenomenal discovery: The earth revolving around the sun!
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? A DEEP VOICE (calls out) The procession!
(Enter two men in rags drawing a little cart. The "Grand Duke of Florence," a figure in sackcloth with a cardboard crown, sits on a ridiculous throne and peers through a telescope. Over the throne a painted sign "Looking for trouble. " Next, four masked men march in carrying a huge tarpaulin. They stop and bounce a large doll representing a cardinal. A dwarf has posted himself to one side with a sign "The New Age. "Among the crowd a beggar raises himself by his crutches and stomps the ground in a dance until he collapses. Enter a stuffed figure, more than life-size, Galileo Galilei, which bows to the audience. In front of it a child displays a giant open Bible with crossed-out pages.
THE BALLAD SINGER Galileo Galilei, the Bible-smasher!
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? 11
1633. The inquisition summons the world-famous scholar to Rome.
The depths are hot, the heights are chill The streets are loud, the court is still.
Antechamber and staircase of the Medici Palace, Florence. Galileo and his daughter are waiting to be admitted to the grand duke.
It's been a long wait. Y es.
VIRGINIA GALILEO VIRGINIA
GALILEO (whose eyesight is impaired) I don't know him.
VIRGINIA I've seen him several times lately. He gives me the shivers. GALILEO Nonsense. We're in Florence, not among Corsican robbers. VIRGINIA There's Rector Gaffone.
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
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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!