I wish I had been able to bring enough of them with me to leave one with you as a gift, Your Eminence, but I was only allowed a small traveling trunk for baggage.
Barberini nodded at this awkwardness. I understand, he murmured as he looked through it. Seeing through yours is enough, for now, and more than enough. Although I do want one, it is true. Its simply amazing how much you can see. He pulled back to look at Galileo. Its oddyou wouldnt think that more could be held there for the eye, in distant things, than we already see.
I wish I had been able to bring enough of them with me to leave one with you as a gift, Your Eminence, but I was only allowed a small traveling trunk for baggage.
Barberini nodded at this awkwardness. I understand, he murmured as he looked through it. Seeing through yours is enough, for now, and more than enough. Although I do want one, it is true. Its simply amazing how much you can see. He pulled back to look at Galileo. Its oddyou wouldnt think that more could be held there for the eye, in distant things, than we already see.
No, its true. We must admit that our senses dont convey everything to us, not even in the sensible world.
Certainly not.
They looked through it at the distant hills east of Rome, and the cardinal marveled and clapped him on the shoulder in the manner of any other man.
You have given us new worlds, he said.
The seeing of them, anyway, Galileo corrected him, to seem properly humble.
And how do the Peripatetics take it? And the Jesuits?
Galileo tipped his head side to side. They are none too pleased, Your Grace.
Barberini laughed. He had been trained by the Jesuits, but he did not like them, Galileo saw, and so continued. There are some of them who refuse to look through the glass at all. One of them recently died, and as I said at the time, since he would not look at the stars through my glass, he could now inspect them from up close, on his way past them to Heaven!
Barberini laughed uproariously. And Clavius, what does he say?
He admits the moons orbiting Jupiter are really there.
The Medici moons, you have called them?
Yes, Galileo admitted, realizing for the first time how this could be another awkwardness. I expect to make many more discoveries in the heavens, and hope to honor those who have helped me accordingly.
The little smile that twitched over the cardinals face was not entirely friendly. And you think these Jovian moons show that the Earth goes around the sun in an analogous manner, as Copernicus claimed?
Well, it shows at least that moons go around planets, as our moon goes around the Earth. Better proof of the Copernican view, Your Grace, is how you can see the phases of Venus through the glass. Galileo explained how in the Copernican understanding the phases of Venus had combined with its varying distance from Earth to make it seem to the naked eye as if it had always the same brightness, which had argued against the idea it had phases, when one had no glass to see them; and how its position, always low in the sky in the mornings and evenings, added to the actual discovery of the phases through the glass to support the idea that Venus was orbiting the sun inside the Earths own orbiting of the sun. The ideas were complicated to describe in words, and Galileo felt at ease enough to stand and take three citrons from a bowl, then place them and move them about on the table to illustrate the concepts, to Barberinis evident delight.
And the Jesuits deny this! the cardinal repeated when Galileo had completed a very convincing demonstration of the system.
Well, no. They are agreeing now that the phenomena at least are real.
But then saying that the explanation is not yet so clear. Yes, that makes sense. That sounds like them. And after all, I suppose God could have arranged it any way He wanted.
Of course, Your Grace.
And what does Bellarmino say?
I dont know, Your Grace.
The cardinals smile was even a little wicked in its foxiness. Perhaps we will find out.
Then he spoke of Florence, of his love for the city and its nobility, which Galileo happily echoed. And when Barberini asked the usual question about favorite poets, Galileo declared, Oh, I prefer Ariosto to Tasso, as meat over candied fruit, which made the cardinal laugh, as being the reverse of the usual characterization of the two. Thus the interview continued well, to its conclusion and Galileos obsequious withdrawal. And Cardinal Barberini must have enjoyed it, for that very afternoon he wrote to Buonarotti, Michelangelos nephew, and to Antonio de Medici, to say he appreciated their recommendations of Florences new court philosopher, and would be delighted to help him in any way he could.
A few days later, Galileo was invited to a party organized by Giovanni Battista Deti, nephew of the late Pope Clement III, where he met four more cardinals, and listened to a talk given to the group by Giovanni Battista Strozzi. In the discussion afterward, Galileo held his tongue, as he told all his correspondents later, feeling that as a newcomer this was the courteous thing to do. Staying silent was difficult for him, given his natural tendency toward speech, not to say continuous babble, and also given what could only be called his growing intimacy with the topic of Strozzis talk, which was Pride. For the success of all these visits was going to his head. Night after night he was joining evening meals, often at Cardinal Ottavio Bandinis residence on the Quirinal, right next to the popes palace, and after enjoying the food and the musicians efforts, standing up to become the featured entertainment, speaking and then showing the guests what could be seen through his glass of nearby landmarks. People never ceased to be amazed by what they saw, and Galileo puffed up accordingly. Back at the Palazzo Firenze after these events we could barely get him out of his jacket and boots.
One banquet with lasting consequences took place at the palazzo of Federico Cesi, the Marquis of Monticelli. This young man had founded the Accademia dei Lincei, the Academy of the Lynxes, to gather on a regular basis to discuss matters of mathematics and natural philosophy. Cesi paid for the meetings, and he also had used his fortune to gather in his palazzo an ever-growing collection of natural wonders. When Galileo arrived at his palazzo, Cesi took him on a tour of two rooms that were filled to overflowing with lodestones, chunks of coral, fossils, unicorn horns, griffin eggs, coconuts, nautilus shells, shark teeth, jars containing monstrous births, carbuncles that glowed in the dark, turtle shells, a rhinoceros horn worked in gold, a bowl of lapis lazuli, dried crocodiles, model cannons, a collection of Roman coins, and a box of truly exquisite lapidary specimens.
Galileo inspected each one of these objects with genuine curiosity. Marvelous, he said as he looked in the hollow end of a unicorn horn chased with gold. It must be as big as a horse.
It does seems so, doesnt it? Cesi replied happily. But come look at my herbarium.
Most of all, it turned out, Cesi was a botanist; he had hundreds of leaves and flowers arranged in big thick books, all dried and displayed with descriptions. He pointed out his favorites enthusiastically. Galileo watched him closely. He was young and handsome, very wealthy, fond of the company of men. And his admiration for Galileo was boundless. You are the one weve waited for, he said as they closed the plant books. Weve needed an intellectual leader to blaze the path to the higher levels, and now that youre here, Im sure it will happen.
Maybe so, Galileo allowed. He liked the idea of the Lincean Academy very much. To get out from under the thumb of the universities and all their Peripatetics, to elevate mathematics and natural philosophy to the highest level of thought and inquiry; it was a great new thing, a way forward. A new kind of institution, and a potential ally too.
Maybe so, Galileo allowed. He liked the idea of the Lincean Academy very much. To get out from under the thumb of the universities and all their Peripatetics, to elevate mathematics and natural philosophy to the highest level of thought and inquiry; it was a great new thing, a way forward. A new kind of institution, and a potential ally too.
Later that day Cesi hosted a dinner to introduce Galileo to the rest of the Lynxes. The party took place up in the vineyard of Monsignor Malvasia, on top of the Janiculum, the highest of the Roman hills. The Lincean membership and a dozen other like-minded gentlemen met while it was still day, for from the Janiculum the views over the city were unobstructed in all directions. Among the guests were the foreign Linceans Johann Faber and Johann Schreck from Germany, Jan Eck from Holland, and Giovanni Demisiani from Greece.
Galileo trained his glass first on the basilica of St. John Lateran, across the Tiber at a distance of about three miles, adjusting it until all could look through it and read in the glass the chiseled inscription on the loggia over the side entrance, placed there by Sixtus V in the first year of his pontificate:
Sixtus
Pontifex Maximus
anno primo
Everyone there was startled as usual by their sudden ability to read an inscription at such a distance. When they had all looked through the occhialino more than once, and read and reread the distant inscription, several toasts were proposed and drunk down. The group grew raucous, even a little giddy; Cesis musicians, sensing the spirit of the moment, played a fanfare on horns they pulled out from beneath their chairs. Galileo bowed, and while the brassy music played on, turned his glass on the residence of the Duke of Altemps, on a hill in the first rise of the Apennines, far to the east of them. When he had it fixed the Linceans again crowded round, taking turns counting the windows on the façade of the great villa, some fifteen miles away. This made the Janiculum ring with cheers.
Later that night, after a great deal of eating and drinking and talk, and a brief look at the moon, which was too full to see through the glass as other than a white blaze, Demisiani the Greek sat down by Galileo and leaned in to him.
You should name your device with a new Greek word, he said, his saturnine face alive with the humor of his suggestion, or the fact that he was the one making it. You should call it a telescope.
Telescopio? Galileo repeated.
To see at a distance. Tele scopio, distance seeing. Its better than perspicillum, which means merely a lens after all, or visorio, which is only to say visual or optical. And occhialino is petty somehow, as if you wanted only to spy on someone. Its too small, too provincial, too Tuscan. The other languages will never use it, and will have to make up words of their own. But telescope all will understand and use together. As always with Greek!
Galileo nodded. Certainly the best scientific names were always either Latin or Greek. Kepler had been calling it a perspicillum.