PROCURATOR: I have come in connection with your application for a rise in salary to 1000 scudi. I regret that I cannot recommend it to the university. As you know, courses in mathematics do not attract new students. Mathematics, so to speak, is an unproductive art. Not that our Republic doesn’t esteem it most highly. It may not be so essential as philosophy or so useful as theology, but it nonetheless offers infinite pleasures to its adepts.
GALILEO busy with his papers: My dear fellow, I can’t manage on 500 scudi.
PROCURATOR: But, Mr Galilei, your week consists of two two-hour lectures. Given your outstanding reputation you can certainly get plenty of pupils who can afford private lessons. Haven’t you got private pupils?
GALILEO: Too many, sir. I teach and I teach, and when am I supposed to learn? God help us, I’m not half as sharp as those gentlemen in the philosophy department. I’m stupid. I understand absolutely nothing. So I’m compelled to fill the gaps in my knowledge. And when am I supposed to do that? When am I to get on with my research? Sir, my branch of knowledge is still avid to know. The greatest problems still find us with nothing but hypotheses to go on. Yet we keep asking ourselves for proofs. How am I to provide them if I can only maintain my home by having to take any thickhead who can afford the money and din it into him that parallel lines meet at infinity?
PROCURATOR: Don’t forget that even if the Republic pays less well than certain princes it does guarantee freedom of research. In Padua we even admit Protestants to our lectures. And give them doctors’ degrees too. In Mr Cremonini’s case we not only failed to hand him over to the Inquisition when he was proved, proved, Mr Galilei – to have made irreligious remarks, but actually granted him a rise in salary. As far as Holland Venice is known as the republic where the Inquisition has no say. That should mean something to you, being an astronomer, that’s to say operating in a field where for some time now the doctrines of the church have hardly been treated with proper respect.
GALILEO: You people handed Mr Giordano Bruno over to Rome. Because he was propagating the ideas of Copernicus.
PROCURATOR: Not because he was propagating the ideas of Mr Copernicus, which anyway are wrong, but because he was not a Venetian citizen and had no regular position here. So you needn’t drag in the man they burned. Incidentally, however free we are, I wouldn’t go around openly citing a name like his, which is subject to the express anathema of the church: not even here, not even here.
GALILEO: Your protection of freedom of thought is pretty good business, isn’t it? By showing how everywhere else the Inquisition prevails and burns people, you get good teachers cheap for this place. You make up for your attitude to the Inquisition by paying lower salaries than anyone.
PROCURATOR: That’s most unfair. What use would it be to you to have limitless spare time for research if any ignorant monk in the Inquisition could just put a ban on your thoughts? Every rose has its thorn, Mr Galilei, and every ruler has his monks.
GALILEO: So what’s the good of free research without free time to research in? What happens to its results? Perhaps you’d kindly show this paper about falling bodies to the gentlemen at the Signoria – he indicates a bundle of manuscript – and ask them if it isn’t worth a few extra scudi.
PROCURATOR: It’s worth infinitely more than that, Mr Galilei.
GALILEO: Sir, not infinitely more, a mere 500 scudi more.
PROCURATOR: What is worth scudi is what brings scudi in. If you want money you’ll have to produce something else. When you’re selling knowledge you can’t ask more than the buyer is likely to make from it. Philosophy, for instance, as taught by Mr Colombe in Florence, nets the prince at least 10,000 scudi a year. I know your laws on falling bodies have made a stir. They’ve applauded you in Prague and Paris. But the people who applaud don’t pay Padua University what you cost it. You made an unfortunate choice of subject, Mr Galilei.
GALILEO: I see. Freedom of trade, freedom of research. Free trading in research, is that it?
PROCURATOR: Really, Mr Galilei, what a way of looking at it! Allow me to tell you that I don’t quite understand your flippant remarks. Our Republic’s thriving foreign trade hardly strikes me as a matter to be sneered at. And speaking from many years of experience as procurator of this university I would be even more disinclined to speak of scientific research in what I would term with respect, so frivolous a manner. While Galileo glances longingly at his work table: Consider the conditions that surround us. The slavery under whose whips the sciences in certain places are groaning. Whips cut from old leather bindings. Nobody there needs to know how a stone falls, merely what Aristotle wrote about it. Eyes are only for reading with. Why investigate falling bodies, when it’s laws governing grovelling bodies that count? Contrast the infinite joy with which our Republic welcomes your ideas, however daring they may be. Here you have a chance to research, to work. Nobody supervises you, nobody suppresses you. Our merchants know the value of better linen in their struggle with their competitors in Florence; they listen interestedly to your cry for better physics, and physics in turn owes much to their cry for better looms. Our most prominent citizens take an interest in your researches, call on you, get you to demonstrate your findings: men whose time is precious. Don’t underrate trade, Mr Galilei. Nobody here would stand for the slightest interference with your work or let outsiders make difficulties for you. This is a place where you can work, Mr Galilei, you have to admit it.
GALILEO in despair: Yes.
PROCURATOR: As for the material aspects: why can’t you give us another nice piece of work like those famous proportional compasses of yours, the ones that allow complete mathematical dunces to trace lines, reckon compound interest on capital, reproduce a land survey on varying scales and determine the weight of cannon balls?
GALILEO: Kids’ Stuff.
PROCURATOR: Here’s something that fascinated and astonished our top people and brought in good money, and you call it kids’ stuff. I’m told even General Stefano Gritti can work out square roots with your instrument.
GALILEO: A real miracle. – All the same, Priuli, you’ve given me something to think about. Priuli, I think I might be able to let you have something of the kind you want. He picks up the paper with the sketch.
PROCURATOR: Could you? That would be the answer. Gets up: Mr Galilei, we realise that you are a great man. A great but dissatisfied man, if I may say so.
GALILEO: Yes, I am dissatisfied, and that’s what you’d be paying me for if you had any brains. Because I’m dissatisfied with myself. But instead of doing that you force me to be dissatisfied with you. I admit I enjoy doing my stuff for you gentlemen of Venice in your famous arsenal and in the shipyards and cannon foundries. But you never give me the time to follow up the hunches which come to me there and which are important for my branch of science. That way you muzzle the threshing ox. I am 46 years old and have achieved nothing that satisfies me.
PROCURATOR: I mustn’t interrupt you any longer.
GALILEO: Thank you.
Exit the Procurator.
Galileo is left alone for a moment or two and begins to work.
Then Andrea hurries in.
GALILEO working: Why didn’t you eat the apple?
ANDREA: I need it to convince her that it turns.
GALILEO: Listen to me, Andrea: don’t talk to other people about our ideas.
ANDREA: Why not?
GALILEO: The big shots won’t allow it.
ANDREA: But it’s the truth.
GALILEO: But they’re forbidding it. – And there’s something more. We physicists may think we have the answer, but that doesn’t mean we can prove it. Even the ideas of a great man like Copernicus still need proving. They are only hypotheses. Give me those lenses.
ANDREA: Your half scudo wasn’t enough. I had to leave my coat. As security.
GALILEO: How will you manage without a coat this winter? Pause. Galileo arranges the lenses on the sheet with the sketch on it.
ANDREA: What’s a hypothesis?
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GALILEO: It’s when you assume that something’s likely, but haven’t any facts. Look at Felicia down there outside the basket-maker’s shop breastfeeding her child: it remains a hypothesis that she’s giving it milk and not getting milk from it, till one actually goes and sees and proves it. Faced with the stars we are like dull-eyed worms that can hardly see at all. Those old constructions people have believed in for the last thousand years are hopelessly rickety: vast buildings most of whose wood is in the buttresses propping them up. Lots of laws that explain very little, whereas our new hypothesis has very few laws that explain a lot.
ANDREA: But you proved it all to me.
GALILEO: No, only that that’s how it could be. I’m not saying it isn’t a beautiful hypothesis; what’s more there’s nothing against it.
ANDREA: I’d like to be a physicist too, Mr Galilei.
GALILEO: That’s understandable, given the million and one questions in our field still waiting to be cleared up. He has gone to the window and looked through the lenses. Mildly interested: Have a look through that, Andrea.
ANDREA: Holy Mary, it’s all quite close. The bells in the campanile very close indeed. I can even read the copper letters: GRACIA DEI
GALILEO: That’ll get us 500 scudi.
2
Galileo presents the Venetian Republic with a new invention
No one’s virtue is complete:
Great Galileo liked to eat.
You will not resent, we hope
The truth about his telescope.
The great arsenal of Venice, alongside the harbour.
Senators, headed by the Doge. To one side, Galileo’s friend Sagredo and the fifteen-year-old Virginia Galilei with a velvet cushion on which rests a two-foot-long telescope in a crimson leather case. On a dais, Galileo. Behind him the telescope’s stand, supervised by Federzoni the lens-grinder.
GALILEO: Your Excellency; august Signoria! In my capacity as mathematics teacher at your university in Padua and director of your great arsenal here in Venice I have always seen it as my job not merely to fulfil my exalted task as a teacher but also to provide useful inventions that would be of exceptional advantage to the Venetian Republic. Today it is with deep joy and all due deference that I find myself able to demonstrate and hand over to you a completely new instrument, namely my spyglass or telescope, fabricated in your world-famous Great Arsenal on the loftiest Christian and scientific principles, the product of seventeen years of patient research by your humble servant. Galileo leaves the dais and stands alongside Sagredo. Applause. Galileo bows.
GALILEO softly to Sagredo: Waste of time.
SAGREDO softly: You’ll be able to pay the butcher, old boy.
GALILEO: Yes, they’ll make money on this. He bows again.
PROCURATOR steps on to the dais: Your Excellency, august Signoria! Once again a glorious page in the great book of the arts is inscribed in a Venetian hand. Polite applause. Today a world-famous scholar is offering you, and you alone, a highly marketable tube, for you to manufacture and sell as and how you wish. Louder applause. What is more, has it struck you that in wartime this instrument will allow us to distinguish the number and types of the enemy’s ships at least two hours before he does ours, with the result that we shall know how strong he is and be able to choose whether to pursue, join battle or run away? Very loud applause. And now, your Excellency, august Signoria, Mr Galileo invites you to accept this instrument which he has invented, this testimonial to his intuition, at the hand of his enchanting daughter.
Music. Virginia steps forward, bows and hands the telescope to the Procurator, who passes it to Federzoni. Federzoni puts it on the stand and focusses it. Doge and Senators mount the dais and look through the tube.
GALILEO softly: I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stick this circus. These people think they’re getting a lucrative plaything, but it’s a lot more than that. Last night I turned it on the moon.
SAGREDO: What did you see?
GALILEO: The moon doesn’t generate its own light.
SAGREDO: What?
SENATORS: I can make out the fortifications of Santa Rosita, Mr Galilei. – They’re having their dinner on that boat. Fried fish. Makes me feel peckish.
GALILEO: I’m telling you astronomy has stagnated for the last thousand years because they had no telescope.
SENATOR: Mr Galilei!
SAGREDO: They want you.
SENATOR: That contraption lets you see too much. I’ll have to tell my women they can’t take baths on the roof any longer.
GALILEO: Know what the Milky Way consists of?
SAGREDO: No.
GALILEO: I do.
SENATOR: One should be able to ask 10 scudi for a thing like that, Mr Galilei. Galileo bows.
VIRGINIA leading Ludovico up to her father: Ludovico wants to congratulate you, Father.
LUDOVICO embarrassed: I congratulate you, sir.
GALILEO: I’ve improved it.
LUDOVICO: Yes, sir. I see you’ve made the casing red. In Holland it was green.
GALILEO turning to Sagredo: I’ve even begun to wonder if I couldn’t use it to prove a certain theory.
SAGREDO: Watch your step.
PROCURATOR: Your 500 scudi are in the bag, Galileo.
GALILEO disregarding him: Of course I’m sceptical about jumping to conclusions.
The Doge, a fat unassuming man, has come up to Galileo and is trying to address him with a kind of dignified awkwardness.
PROCURATOR: Mr Galilei, His Excellency the Doge. The Doge shakes Galileo’s hand.
GALILEO: Of course, the 500! Are you satisfied, your Excellency?
DOGE: I’m afraid our republic always has to have some pretext before the city fathers can do anything for our scholars.
PROCURATOR: But what other incentive can there be, Mr Galilei?
DOGE smiling: We need that pretext.
The Doge and the Procurator lead Galileo towards the Senators, who gather round him. Virginia and Ludovico slowly go away.
VIRGINIA: Did I do all right?
LUDOVICO: Seemed all right to me.
VIRGINIA: What’s the matter?
LUDOVICO: Nothing, really. I suppose a green casing would have been just as good.
VIRGINIA: It strikes me they’re all very pleased with Father.
LUDOVICO: And it strikes me I’m starting to learn a thing or two about science.
3
10 January 1610. Using the telescope, Galileo discovers celestial phenomena that confirm the Copernican system. Warned by his friend of the possible consequences of his research, Galileo proclaims his belief in human reason
January ten, sixteen ten:
Galileo Galilei abolishes heaven.
Galileo’s study in Padua. Night. Galileo and Sagredo at the telescope, wrapped in heavy overcoats.
SAGREDO looking through the telescope, half to himself: The crescent’s edge is quite irregular, jagged and rough. In the dark area, close to the luminous edge, there are bright spots. They come up one after the other. The light starts from the spots and flows outwards over bigger and bigger surfaces, where it merges into the larger luminous part.
GALILEO: What’s your explanation of these bright spots?
SAGREDO: It’s not possible.
GALILEO: It is. They’re mountains.
SAGREDO: On a star?
GALILEO: Huge mountains. Whose peaks are gilded by the rising sun while the surrounding slopes are still covered by night. What you’re seeing is the light spreading down into the valleys from the topmost peaks.
SAGREDO: But this goes against two thousand years of astronomy.
GALILEO: It does. What you are seeing has been seen by no mortal except myself. You are the second.
SAGREDO: But the moon can’t be an earth complete with mountains and valleys, any more than the earth can be a star.
GALILEO: The moon can be an earth complete with mountains and valleys, and the earth can be a star. An ordinary celestial body, one of thousan
ds. Take another look. Does the dark part of the moon look completely dark to you?
SAGREDO: No. Now that I look at it, I can see a feeble ashy-grey light all over it.
GALILEO: What sort of light might that be?
SAGREDO: ?
GALILEO: It comes from the earth.
SAGREDO: You’re talking through your hat. How can the earth give off light, with all its mountains and forests and waters; it’s a cold body.
GALILEO: The same way the moon gives off light. Both of them are lit by the sun, and so they give off light. What the moon is to us, we are to the moon. It sees us sometimes as a crescent, sometimes as a half-moon, sometimes full and sometimes not at all.
SAGREDO: In other words, there’s no difference between the moon and earth.
GALILEO: Apparently not.
SAGREDO: Ten years ago in Rome they burnt a man at the stake for that. His name was Giordano Bruno, and that is what he said.
GALILEO: Exactly. And that’s what we can see. Keep your eye glued to the telescope, Sagredo, my friend. What you’re seeing is the fact that there is no difference between heaven and earth. Today is 10 January 1610. Today mankind can write in its diary: Got rid of Heaven.
SAGREDO: That’s frightful.
GALILEO: There is another thing I discovered. Perhaps it’s more appalling still.
MRS SARTI quietly: Mr Procurator.
The Procurator rushes in.
PROCURATOR: I’m sorry to come so late. Do you mind if I speak to you alone?
GALILEO: Mr Sagredo can listen to anything I can, Mr Priuli.
PROCURATOR: But you may not exactly be pleased if the gentleman hears what has happened. Unhappily it is something quite unbelievable.
GALILEO: Mr Sagredo is quite used to encountering the unbelievable when I am around, let me tell you.
PROCURATOR: No doubt, no doubt. Pointing at the telescope: Yes, that’s the famous contraption. You might just as well throw it away. It’s useless, utterly useless.