by Margherita Palumbo
Ecclesiastical censorship and the heliocentric theory
published on the occasion of the exhibition
“Ecclesiastical censorship and the heliocentric theory“
From Rome, March 12, 1616 […] By order of the Most Holy Cardinals of the Congregation of the Index, an edict was published this week regarding the prohibition of certain books, and in part a decree by which the Pythagorean opinion was condemned, namely that the earth moves and the sun stands still as contrary to Holy Scripture, and consequently a letter of Fra Paolo Foscarini, a Carmelite, printed in Naples, was prohibited, and the works of Copernicus and Didaco Astuna in Job were suspended until their correction.
With these words, the Notices of Rome report the issuing, on March 5, 1616, of the decree with which the Congregation of the Index prohibited, as contrary to Sacred Scripture, the heliocentric theory, through the condemnation of three works, the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI by Nicolaus Copernicus, the Commentaria in Job by Diego de Zúñiga and the Lettera sopra l’opinione de’ Pittagorici, E del Copernico by Paolo Antonio Foscarini. The exhibition itinerary revolves precisely around this decree, of whose issuing the Holy Office formally communicated on May 26, 1616 to Galileo, warning him against continuing to teach doctrines condemned by the Roman Church. The text of the censorial provision was then further disseminated – between 1624 and 1632 – thanks to the publication of cumulative collections of decrees issued after 1596, the date of printing of the Index librorum prohibitorum of Clement VIII.
These anthologies also include the text of two other decrees of great importance in the history of the heliocentric question: the condemnation of Kepler’s Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae of 10 May 1619 and the Monitum ad Nicolai Copernici lectorem, ejusque emendatio of 1620, which reports both the list of corrections to be made to De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI and the general prohibition of the «Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem Terrae, immobilitatem Solis», and which with this formulation will be included – until its repeal in 1758 – in the Indexes of prohibited books subsequently published.
A parallel diffusion, even outside the borders of the Papal State, of the prohibition of heliocentric books occurred thanks to philosophical and theological treatises printed in those years, and which include the text of the decree of 1616 and the Monitum of 1620, thus making it clear – as the Jesuit Adam Tanner observed in 1621 – that by now, in light of what was established by the censorship of Rome, it is no longer possible to support, without incurring serious dangers, the thesis of the mobility of the Earth: «hactenus decretum: quo sane fit, ut opposita doctrina tuto defendi amplius non possit». A warning that was given further strength by the sentence of condemnation of Galileo, pronounced by the cardinals of the Holy Office on 22 June 1633, and the consequent prohibition of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the title of which was included in a decree issued by the Congregation of the Index on 23 August 1634. The conclusion of the second Galilean trial and the abjuration pronounced in the Roman Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva are also amply reflected in many works published in that period, for example in the Anticopernicus catholicus by Giorgio Polacco and in the Almagestum novum by the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Between 1655 and 1656 the first edition of Galileo’s Works was published in Florence, and therefore the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems could not be reprinted, and during the 17th century it circulated only in the countries ‘beyond the Alps’, in the Latin version by Matthias Bernegger printed in 1635, therefore immediately after the ecclesiastical condemnation.
The Casanatense Library offers rich testimony of all these events in its historical collections. Among the over seventy thousand documents in the collection of Edicts and Proclamations, the Library preserves both the very rare printed copy of the decree of March 5, 1616, and the manifesto with which the Congregation of the Index made public the prohibition of the Galilean Dialogue. The series of Indexes of prohibited books is almost complete – including the anthologies of 1624 and 1632 – documenting the condemnations of heliocentric books issued by the Church of Rome. There is no lack of seventeenth-century treatises that contributed to the diffusion of these prohibitions, as well as all the editions condemned between 1616 and 1634, to which we have referred. Worthy of note, in particular, are the copies preserved in the Library of the three books named in the decree of 1616, namely the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI by Copernicus, the Commentaria in Job by de Zúñiga and the Lettera sopra l’opinione de’ Pittagorici, E del Copernico by Foscarini. In fact, clear signs of censorship are visible in the copies, and – in the case of Copernicus – completely compliant with the corrections to the text approved by the Congregation of the Index and published in the Monitum of 1620. If the presence of such censorship is already of undoubted interest, a further circumstance enriches the documentary value of these Casanatensi copies.
The heliocentric question was not closed, in fact, with the publication in 1634 of the decree condemning the Galilean Dialogue, but continued to engage the Roman Church for almost another two centuries, until 1822. In 1753 Benedict XIV issued the constitution Sollicita ac provideda, in order to reform the mechanisms and rules of book censorship. The result was the issuing, in 1758, of a new Inde
x librorum prohibitorum, from which the general ban on heliocentric books was repealed.
A sign of openness that undoubtedly received the applause of the scientific community, but which at the same time appeared contradicted by the fact that in the Index of Pope Lambertini, instead, the nominative prohibitions of Copernicus, de Zúñiga, Foscarini, Kepler and Galileo were maintained, with the indication of the relative decrees of condemnation, therefore considered still in force. The ambiguity of this decision was noted from many quarters, and it was perhaps weighed down by the sudden death of the Pontiff on May 3, 1758.
The issue exploded, however, in all its gravity only in 1819, when the then Master of the Sacred Palace, the Dominican Filippo Anfossi, refused to grant the imprimatur to the second volume of the Elements of Optics and Astronomy by Giuseppe Settele, professor at the Roman Archiginnasio. The reason for the refusal to grant the imprimatur was – after two centuries – precisely the decree of March 5, 1616 condemning heliocentrism, a theory widely supported by Settele in his work.
However, another powerful Dominican, the commissioner of the Holy Office Maurizio Benedetto Olivieri, intervened in support of the esteemed author of the Elements of Optics and Astronomy. He decided to take the case to his own department, opening a delicate conflict of jurisdiction with the Master of the Sacred Palace, the authority to which the control of publishing in the city of Rome had always been entrusted. Olivieri did not hesitate to advise Settele to turn to an even higher authority, namely Pius VII himself, to whom the Roman astronomer addressed a plea not only to obtain the printing license denied to him by Anfossi, but also to ask that the much-controversial prohibitions of the five heliocentric books still on the Index be finally repealed.