Descartes: A Biography

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AFabulous World (–) 

reasons to prove the immobility of the earth. But I would feel even more

sorry for a generation, if I thought that those who would make an article

of faith of this view had no stronger reasons to support it’ (i.).

The immediate context of this comment was the publication in February

of Galileo’s famous bookA Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World

Systems.Toward the end of that year, Descartes wrote to Mersenne,

apparently in reply to queries about the extent to which he agreed with

Galileo, that Galileo’s account of falling bodies ‘does not agree at all with

myphilosophy’ (i.). However, he said he would be interested to find out

what Galileo had said about tides, because that was one of the phenomena

that he found most difficult to explain.OnJuly, Descartes was

finally able to tell his patient correspondent in Paris that ‘my treatise is

nearly finished, but I still have to correct and recopy it’ (i.). By the

end of November,however, Descartes had heard about the Roman

Inquisition’s condemnation of Galileo, and he changed his mind about

even showing his manuscript to Mersenne.

The Trial of Galileo

The Galileo affair inwas not directly concerned with astronomy or

even with the interpretation of the Bible. It was sparked by an apparent

challenge to the teaching authority of the church during a period, after

the Council of Trent, when the church was acutely sensitive to any such

threat. The council had decided, at the conclusion of its fourth session

(April), that the church reserved to itself the exclusive authority to

interpret Scripture:

Besides, in order to control petulant minds, the Council decrees that, in matters of

faith and morals that pertain to the edification of Christian doctrine, no one shall

dare interpret the Holy Scripture by relying on their own judgment and by distorting

sacred Scripture to their own meaning, contrary to the meaning which Holy Mother

Church (to whom it belongs to judge the true meaning and interpretation of the

sacred Scriptures) has held and still holds, or contrary to the unanimous opinion of

the Fathers, even if such interpretations were never published. Those who contravene

this decree shall be identified by their bishops and punished by the penalties established

by law.

The Holy Office had relied on this text, in,toforbid Galileo from

teaching that the Earth moved around the Sun, because it seemed to be

inconsistent with the traditional interpretation of the biblical passage,