Free The Forbidden Universe by Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince Page A

Florentine court, and Barberini was an admirer of Galileo’s work, especially his research into the laws of motion. Galileo went to visit Urban in Rome the year after he was elected, and they had six private meetings – during which, as he himself reported in a letter to a friend, Galileo described all believers in Copernicus’ work as ‘heretics’. 20 Clearly he had no desire for another confrontation with a Bellarmino clone.
    In another of those astonishing reversals of fortune that litter the history of that era, Urban’s election was also good news for Campanella. In 1626 Urban requested that the Spanish king release him from prison so he could travel to Rome to perform protective magic to ward off the evil effects of an eclipse that the Pope’s enemies had predicted would kill him. After twenty-seven years, not only was Campanella free but appointed adviser to the Pope. Urban even went so far as to grant him permission to found a college in Rome to train missionaries who espoused his religious and philosophical ideas. Such papal favour being bestowed on his greatest and most controversial supporter was another good sign for Galileo. In 1631, the year before it all fell apart, Urban even appointed him as a canon, which enabled him to draw income from two vacant benefices (without doing a day’s work in either).
    It was during this time that Galileo decided it was safe to have another stab at pushing the heliocentric theory. And sohe wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – unusually for him in Italian rather than Latin, widening his potential readership – in which two scholars debate the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, with a third adjudicating . It was published in Florence in 1632, having been granted formal approval by the Inquisition in that city. Galileo had even sought permission from Urban to publish; the latter only asked that his own views on the matter be included.
    The irony – which is seldom mentioned by modern historians of science – is that the main pro-Copernicus argument that Galileo puts forward in the Dialogue , his old ‘proof’ based on the tides, was wrong. His original title was, in fact, Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea . The Inquisition in Florence forced him to change the title, which is odd, as the new one made it more obvious that the book was about the heliocentric debate. Galileo was careful to keep to the rule of discussing Copernicanism without actually advocating it. Nevertheless, the book caused rumblings, especially among the Jesuits, and Urban came under pressure to act.
    Despite the myth of the ‘clash of egos’, it is clear that Urban had to be pushed into action. His position as pope was far from secure, as many in Rome thought him too soft on Protestantism – there was even talk of deposing him. 21 This was largely because Urban was concerned about the power of the Hapsburg dynasty, which ruled Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, both of which were locked in battle with the Protestant nations. For his own political reasons he had refused to give his sanction to the war or to lend it diplomatic or military support, but it did lead some to wonder where his sympathies really lay. His many opponents among the Cardinal Inquisitors were making much of his endorsement of the Dialogue ’s publication as another sign of his softness on heresy. He therefore had totake action to keep his own position secure. This was no clash of egos. Urban was just running scared.
    As a result of Jesuit pressure, Urban appointed a commission to investigate whether Galileo had broken his ban of sixteen years earlier. Some historians believe that this was an attempt to keep the Inquisition out of the matter, another sign of the Pope’s reluctance to let the Inquisition loose on his old friend. If so, it was remarkably unsuccessful . In September 1632 Urban instructed the Inquisition in Florence to deliver a summons to a shocked Galileo to present himself in Rome to