Dialogo... [bound with:] Manuscript of his 'Letter to Christina' 1615, titled 'Alla Serenissima Madama La Gran' Duchessa Madre di Toscana Galileo Galilei Fiorino' [Florence, ca. 1630] by GALILEI, Galileo - 1632

Florence: Landini, 1632. First edition. With a hitherto unknown manuscript version of Galileo's Letter to Christina.

First edition, and a spectacular copy, of this epoch-making work, Galileo's celebrated defence of the Copernican view of the solar system, the most notorious banned book of the 17th century; the famous frontispiece is here in an excellent impression with rich black tones, printed on thick paper as were all the early issues. The Dialogo is here contemporarily bound with a hitherto unknown manuscript version of Galileo's Lettera to the Grand-duchess of Tuscany, in which he famously said "The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." It is a "superb manifesto of the freedom of thought" (Koestler, p. 436). "Its purpose was to silence all theological objections to Copernicus. Its result was the precise opposite: it became the principal cause of the prohibition of Copernicus, and of Galileo's downfall ... As a work of polemical literature, the Letter is a masterpiece" (ibid., pp. 434). This manuscript was probably made in Rome in the period around Galileo's trial in 1633, thus preceding the first printed version of 1636. The Dialogo "was designed both as an appeal to the great public and as an escape from silence ... it is a masterly polemic for the new science. It displays all the great discoveries in the heavens which the ancients had ignored; it inveighs against the sterility, wilfulness, and ignorance of those who defend their systems; it revels in the simplicity of Copernican thought and, above all, it teaches that the movement of the earth makes sense in philosophy, that is, in physics ... The Dialogo, more than any other work, made the heliocentric system a commonplace" (PMM). "The Dialogo, far more than any work, convinced men of the truth of the Copernican system" (Gingerich). Pope Urban VIII was not persuaded, however, and immediately convened a special commission to examine the book and make recommendations. In casting the Pope as the simple-minded Aristotelian Simplicio, Galileo brought upon himself arrest, trial by the Inquisition and life imprisonment. The sentence was commuted to permanent house arrest, while the printing of any of his works was forbidden. The Dialogo remained on the index until 1832. The Lettera is Galileo's response to Christina of Lorraine, the mother of his Florentine patron Cosimo II de' Medici, who had posed a typical court question: how the truths of science and the Bible were to be reconciled when they were in apparent contradiction. Originally written in 1615 and circulated in manuscript, the Lettera upholds the primacy of science and argues for its freedom from theological interference. "Galileo argued that neither the Bible nor nature could speak falsely and that the investigation of nature was the province of the scientist, while the reconciliation of scientific facts with the language of the Bible was that of the theologian" (Stillman Drake in DSB). The work concludes with an unequivocal argument for the truth of the Copernican system. The ideas expressed were instrumental in the Inquisition's prosecution of Galileo and condemnation of Copernicanism. We can provide a detailed study of the text of the present manuscript, its marginalia, and a watermark analysis relating to place and date (Papal States, first third of the sixteenth century). These two great works are here accompanied with the Bologna edition of the Opere (1655-56) and uniform in bindings. This volume also contains other texts that could not be published at the time in the Opere (see below), and two later manuscripts relating to Galileo.

Provenance: contemporary signature 'Giovanni Fantucci' (or 'Fantuzzi'; the two are
interchangeable) on title; this is most likely Giovanni Fantuzzi (d. 1648), who taught Logic, Medicine and Philosophy at the University of Bologna from 1607. Fantuzzi published a book against the heliocentric theory: Universi Orbis Structura et partium eius motus et quietis Peripateticis principiis constabilita, contra pravam quorundam Astronomorum opinionem (Bononiae: typis Clementi Ferronij, 1637). Fantuzzi was probably the original owner of the Dialogo, and possibly of the Lettera, which has some marginalia similar to the corrected errata in the Dialogo. Fantuzzi died several years before the Opere was published; whoever acquired his Dialogo and Lettera decided to create a third volume of the Opere, binding the aforementioned two works with the relevant portions of the Lyons Systemata mundi, 1641. He must have decided to discard the superfluous Latin translation of the Dialogo, although keeping the fine frontispiece and the Galileo portrait. An eighteenth-century owner would have been responsible for adding the two manuscript documents that are loosely inserted.

In 1589, on the recommendation of Guidobaldo del Monte, Galileo (1564-1642) was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. While in Pisa, in addition to carrying out his alleged demonstration at the Leaning Tower, he composed an untitled treatise on motion, now usually referred to as De motu, in which he attempted to destroy the Aristotelian dichotomy of natural versus forced motions. Its opening sections developed a theory of falling bodies derived from the buoyancy principle of Archimedes, an idea previously published by Giovanni Battista Benedetti in his Diversarum speculationum (1585). In the same treatise, Galileo derived the law governing equilibrium of weights on inclined planes and attempted to relate this law to speeds of descent. However, the results did not accord with experience-as Galileo noted and he withheld the treatise from publication.

Galileo's position at Pisa was poorly paid, and he was out of favour with the faculty of philosophy owing to his opposition to Aristotelianism. At the end of his three-year contract he moved, once again with Guidobaldo's assistance, to the chair of mathematics at Padua. While he was at Padua, Galileo was retained by the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine (1565-1637) to tutor her eldest son, Cosimo II de' Medici. The granddaughter of Catherine de' Medici, Christina re-cemented her ties to the family in 1589, when she married Ferdinando I de' Medici of Florence. When Christina's husband died in 1609, Cosimo succeeded him as Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Christina stayed on at the court. 

In August 1597, Galileo wrote to Kepler expressing his sympathies for Copernicanism, having received a copy of the Mysterium cosmographicum (1596) from him. At this time Galileo's support for Copernicus was Earth-based: Galileo had devised a theory of the tides involving the combined rotational motions of the Earth around its axis and, after Copernicus, around the Sun. Everything changed early in 1610 when Galileo first turned a telescope to the skies. Not only was the moon revealed to be mountainous and the Milky Way to consist of separate stars, contrary to Aristotelian principles, but a host of new fixed stars and four satellites of Jupiter were promptly discovered. Galileo's account of these discoveries was published in the Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610). Galileo saw in the satellites of Jupiter a miniature planetary system in which, as in Copernican astronomy, it could no longer be held that all moving heavenly bodies revolved exclusively about the earth.

These discoveries made Galileo famous and in June 1610 he returned from Padua to his native Tuscany as Chief Mathematician and 'Mathematician and Philosopher' to the Grand Duke, Cosimo II. Galileo gave Cosimo the telescope with which he discovered the four moons of Jupiter in 1610, naming them the "Medicean stars" in his honor. After Galileo joined the Medici court, he became better acquainted with the Duchess (who was actually a year younger than Galileo), and on several occasions she asked Galileo how the Copernican idea of a moving earth could be compatible with those passages of Scripture that discuss a fixed earth and a moving sun.

"What precipitated the letter was actually a conversation at a dinner party given by ... Christina of Lorraine. She had voiced concern about the new Copernican system in view of the prevailing interpretations of the Scriptures, especially those texts that spoke of the earth as stationary. Father Benedetto Castelli, a Benedictine monk and a friend of Galileo, tried to allay her doubts and to counter the objections of Cosimo Boscaglia, a Pisan professor, who was also present. Castelli had succeeded Galileo in the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa and was aware of the growing opposition to Galileo's views on astronomy and physics from Boscaglia and others, such as the Florentine philosopher Ludovico delle Colombe. Their antipathy had been growing since the publication of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius in 1610, describing his discoveries with the telescope and the inferences he drew from them. His critics thought he claimed too much in view of the Scriptures and the province of natural philosophy. Castelli reported by letter on the argument, outlining his own answers, which he felt effectively refuted the contentions of Professor Boscaglia.

"Fearing perhaps a threat to his position as the Tuscan court philosopher and mathematician, Galileo gathered his observations on the problem and sent them to Castelli, and the monk seems to have widely circulated copies of the missive. During the year following the exchange, anti-Galileist sentiment grew in Florence among friends and supporters of Colombe. On December 14, I614, the Dominican Tomasso Caccini preached a sermon in Santa Maria Novella attacking Galileo, reputedly by using a pun on the text of Acts I:1, 'ye men of Galilee [Galileo], why stand ye gazing up into heaven?' About the same time another Dominican friar, Niccolo Lorini, sent to the Holy Office a replica of Galileo's letter to Castelli, which seems to have contained some alterations by an unknown hand that rendered the thought suspect of heresy. Upon hearing of this Galileo retrieved the original and sent his own authenticated copy to his friend Bishop Piero Dini in Rome. He asked that it be shown to influential clerics, Cardinal Bellarmine among them, to aid in the defense of the Copernican system, rumored to be facing condemnation. At the same time, mid-February of 1615, he told Bishop Dini that he was at work on an amplified version of the letter that he would send to him soon. Galileo took much more time than he had anticipated, however, probably because he decided to consult theologians in order to buttress his views with references to the Scriptures and the Church Fathers. He evidently pressed Castelli and others into helping him in this. A letter from Castelli in January 1615 mentions that he will send on to Galileo some opinions of St. Augustine and other recognized authorities, which had been compiled by a Barnabite priest on the subject of the proper relationship of science to Scripture.

"The new version of the letter was completed sometime before Galileo made a visit to Rome at the end of 1615 to press his case for Copernicus. In its much-expanded form the letter seems to have been widely circulated there, as the numerous extant manuscript copies and correspondence about it suggest. Neither it nor the original version had the desired effect, unfortunately, for on February 26, 1616, Galileo was told in an interview in Rome with Cardinal Bellarmine that the Holy Office had decided to ban the teaching of the heliocentrism espoused by Copernicus. For this reason Galileo would be expected not to advocate the system. Under this stricture he could not afford to expose his 'Letter to Christina' to a wider audience at that time" (Moss, pp. 548-550). A committee then pronounced in 1616 that Copernicanism was heretical, and Copernicus' book On the Revolutions (1543) was, for the first time, placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. Galileo's trial was still 16 years away, but the stage had now been set, thanks to the Letter to Christina.

Returning to Florence, Galileo took up less theologically controversial topics, culminating in the publication of Il Saggiatore in 1623. Just before it emerged from the press, Maffeo Barberini became pope as Urban VIII. Galileo journeyed to Rome in 1624 to pay his respects to Urban, and secured from him permission to discuss the Copernican system in a book, provided that the arguments for the Ptolemaic view were given an equal and impartial discussion. Urban refused to rescind the edict of 1616, although he remarked that had it been up to him, the edict would not have been adopted.

"The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems occupied Galileo for the next six years. It has the literary form of a discussion between a spokesman for Copernicus, one for Ptolemy and Aristotle, and an educated layman for whose support the other two strive. Galileo thus remains technically uncommitted except in a preface which ostensibly supports the anti-Copernican edict of 1616. The book will prove, he says, that the edict did not reflect any ignorance in Italy of the strength of pro-Copernican arguments. The contrary is the case; Galileo will add Copernican arguments of his own invention, and thus he will show that not ignorance of or antagonism to science, but concern for spiritual welfare alone, guided the Church in its decision.

"The opening section of the Dialogue critically examines the Aristotelian cosmology. Only those things in it are rejected that would conflict with the motion of the earth and stability of the sun or that would sharply distinguish celestial from terrestrial material and motions. Thus the idea that the universe has a center, or that the earth is located in such a center, is rejected, as is the idea that the motion of heavy bodies is directed to the center of the universe rather than to that of the earth. On the other hand, the Aristotelian concept of celestial motions as naturally circular is not rejected; instead, Galileo argues that natural circular motions apply equally to terrestrial and celestial objects. This position appears to conflict with statements in later sections of the book concerning terrestrial physics. But uniform motion in precise circular orbits also conflicts with actual observations of planetary motions, whatever center is chosen for all orbits. Actual planetary motions had not been made literally homocentric by any influential astronomer since the time of Aristotle. Galileo is no exception; in a later section he remarked on the irregularities that still remained to be explained. Opinion today is divided; some hold that the opening arguments of the Dialogue should be taken as representative of Galileo's deepest physical and philosophical convictions, while others view them as mere stratagems to reduce orthodox Aristotelian opposition to the earth's motion.

"Important in the Dialogue are the concepts of relativity of motion and conservation of motion, both angular and inertial, introduced to reconcile terrestrial physics with large motions of the earth, in answer to the standard arguments of Ptolemy and those added by Tycho Brahe. The law of falling bodies and the composition of motions are likewise utilized. Corrections concerning the visual sizes and the probable distances and positions of fixed stars are discussed. A program for the detection of parallactic displacements among fixed stars is outlined, and the phases of Venus are adduced to account for the failure of that planet to exhibit great differences in size to the naked eye at perigee and apogee. Kepler's modification of the circular Copernican orbits is not mentioned; indeed, the Copernican system is presented as more regular and simpler than Copernicus himself had made it. Technical astronomy is discussed with respect only to observational problems, not to planetary theory.

"To the refutation of conventional physical objections against terrestrial motion, Galileo added two arguments in its favor. One concerned the annual variations in the paths of sunspots, which could not be dynamically reconciled with an absolutely stationary earth. Geometrically, all rotations and revolutions could be assigned to the sun, but their conservation would require very complicated forces. The Copernican distribution of one rotation to the sun and one rotation and one revolution to the earth fitted a very simple dynamics. The second new argument concerned the existence of ocean tides, which Galileo declared, quite correctly, to be incapable of any physical explanation without a motion of the earth. His own explanation happened to be incorrect; he argued that the earth's double motion of rotation and revolution caused a daily maximum and minimum velocity, and a continual change of speed, at every point on the earth. The continual variation of speed of sea basins imparted different speeds to their contained waters. The water, free to move within the basins, underwent periodic disturbances of level, greatest at their coasts; the period depended on sizes of basins, their east-west orientations, depths, and extraneous factors such as prevailing winds. In order to account for monthly and annual variations in the tides, Galileo invoked an uneven speed of the earth-moon system through the ecliptic during each month, caused by the moon's motion with respect to the earth-sun vector; for annual seasonal effects, he noted changes of the composition of rotational and revolutional components in the basic disturbing cause.

"The Dialogue was completed early in 1630. Galileo took it to Rome, where it was intended to be published by the Lincean Academy. There he sought to secure a license for its printing. This was not immediately granted, and he returned to Florence without it. While the matter was still pending, Federico Cesi died, depriving the Academy of both effective leadership and funds. Castelli wrote to Galileo, intimating that for other reasons he would never get the Roman imprimatur and advising him to print the book at Florence without delay. Negotiations ensued for permission to print the book at Florence. Ultimately these were successful, and the Dialogue appeared at Florence in March 1632. A few copies were sent to Rome, and for a time no disturbance ensued. Then, quite suddenly, the printer was ordered to halt further sales, and Galileo was instructed to come to Rome and present himself to the Inquisition during the month of October ...

"Confined to bed by serious illness, he at first refused to go to Rome. The grand duke and his Roman ambassador intervened stoutly in his behalf, but the pope was adamant. Despite medical certificates that travel in the winter might be fatal, Galileo was threatened with forcible removal in chains unless he capitulated. The grand duke, feeling that no more could be done, provided a litter for the journey, and Galileo was taken to Rome in February 1633.

"The outcome of the trial, which began in April, was inevitable. Although Galileo was able to produce an affidavit of Cardinal Bellarmine to the effect that he had been instructed only according to the general edict that governed all Catholics, he was persuaded in an extrajudicial procedure to acknowledge that in the Dialogue he had gone too far in his arguments for Copernicus. On the basis of that admission, his Dialogue was put on the Index, and Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment after abjuring the Copernican "heresy." The terms of imprisonment were immediately commuted to permanent house arrest under surveillance. He was at first sent to Siena, under the charge of its archbishop, Ascanio Piccolomini. Piccolomini, who is said to have been Galileo's former pupil, was very friendly to him. Within a few weeks he had revived Galileo's spirits-so crushed by the sentence that his life had been feared for-and induced him to take up once more his old work in mechanics and bring it to a conclusion. While at Siena, Galileo began the task of putting his lifelong achievements in physics into dialogue form, using the same interlocutors as in the Dialogue" (DSB).

Also bound with the Dialogo and Lettera in the 'third' volume of the Opere are the following printed and manuscript works:

Excerpts from the Lyons 1641 Galilei Systema Cosmicum, comprising further texts that could not be included in the Bologna Opere. It begins with the 1641 frontispiece, on the verso of which is pasted the engraved portrait of Galileo, a version of the one that first appeared in Il Saggiatore (1623). This is followed by signatures Xx2-Bbb1 (pp. 347-377 [1, imprimatur], which consist of Johannes Kepler's Copernican preface from the Nova astronomica 'Perioche ex introductione in Martem' (pp. 348-352) and then Paolo Foscarini's Epistola ... circa Pythagoricorum, & Copernici opinionem de mobilitate terrae et stabilitate solis: et de novo systemate seu constitutione mundi ... Iuxta editionem Neapoli typis excusam ... 1615 (pp. 353-377), which used many of the same arguments employed by Galileo in the letter to Christina to defend Copernicanism as compatible with Scripture. All of these texts, including the Galileo Lettera manuscript, have been bound between the main text of the Dialogo and its thirty-page index. One might suggest that this was an attempt to disguise the contents by 'sandwiching' two of the most controversial texts, the Lettera, and the Lyons printing of Foscarini, which was immediately condemned by Cardinal Bellarmine and put on the Index, between the end of the main text of the Dialogo and its index.
One quarto leaf with manuscript text on verso, ca. 1706, concerning lunar rays and
Newton's reflecting telescope, specifically the lack of heat of focused lunar compared to solar rays, sunspot observations of Cassini, etc. Full transcript and translation available.
Loosely inserted: four-page bifolium (page dimensions 277 x 200 mm), with text on first two pages in a fine cursive hand, in brown ink, 1737, titled 'Disumazione' (Exhumation), concerning the exhumation of the bodies of Galileo and of his disciple Vincenzo Viviani. On the evening of March 12, 1737, the bodies of Galileo and Viviani were moved to a new sepulchre in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence. The operation was described in a Instrumento notarile (a notary's official report) by the notary Giovanni Camillo Piombanti, and our document is closely related to that one (Archivio di Stato, Florence, Notarile modern, Protocolli 25439. Notaio Giovanni Cammillo di Pasquale di Piero Piombanti, cc. 142v-148v.

A full transcript and translation of this document is available upon request.

4to (214 x 156 mm), pp [viii] 458 [30 (index), without errata leaf; see below], with engraved frontispiece and numerous woodcut diagrams in the text, the letter 'H' added in manuscript to the diagram on p 192 (as usual), and errata corrected in manuscript throughout (75 in all); frontispiece on thick paper in a fine, dark, early impression, , a very good copy in contemporary Italian vellum, bound and lettered uniformly with the two-volume Opere (Bologna, 1655-56), and lettered in ms on spine: 'Opere del Galileo Tom III', spines partially perished.