Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Was it Baronius and Did Galileo Recall His Words Accurately? · Galileo Understood the Then Standard View, But Misunderstood its Application to Joshua 10 · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Where exactly do we know from that the man who had said the famous quote "not how the heavens go, but how to go to Heaven" was Cardinal Baronius? Do we even know it?
In Dr. Robert Sungenis' answer as second mail in the first correspondence, I got the answer, but missed it. But in the last mail, when this is published, or the first mail of the third correspondence, I question the usefulness of the info as given. Footnotes in mails when sent are presented in the same slot as the mail, simply under it, footnotes on mails, when revising, are given separate slots.
[1] Galileo wrote it quite poetically in his native Italian to Madama Cristina di Lorena: “…ciò è l’intenzione dello Spirito Santo essere d’insegnarci come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo” (“that is the intention of the Holy Spirit which is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go”) and attributes it as coming from “Io qui direi quello che intesi da persona ecclesiastic constituita in eminentissimo grado” (“Here I refer to the understandings of an ecclesiastical person in a very eminent position”), who most suppose is Cardinal Cesare Baronio (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, 1968, vol 5, p. 319, lines 25-28). Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).
First Correspondence with Dr. Robert Sungenis.
- Me to Robert Sungenis
- 11/12/2024 at 12:05 PM
- 1598, where is that from?
Advocates of the heliocentric theory often make a glib reference to a certain Cardinal Baronius who in 1598 is said to have made the following summation of the supposed dichotomy between science and Scripture: “The Holy Spirit tells us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
Baronius was a holy man, disciple of San Filippo Neri, prayed most of the night and slept only 4 hours.
WHO has tracked the statement, which Galileo gave anonymously in his letter to Cristina of Tuscany, to Baronius and that year?
I'd love to see Baronius exonerated from that charge!
When Galileo introduced the quote, he actually said, I quote from my quote on my* blog:
“It is clear from a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position that the Holy Spirit’s intention is to teach us how to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go”
Wouldn't someone still alive in 1615 have been better described as "a churchman who has been elevated to a very eminent position"?
I tried to look up footnote 23 on Levi Pingleton's substack, but the footnotes weren't there, so ... who exactly tracked it to 1598? It was certainly a date when Baronius was still alive, but it was also a date before Galileo became involved in Heliocentrism, just as 1998 was before I myself became involved in Geocentrism.
And, by the way, I look up some titles by Tycho Brahe, could Baronius, if it was he, simply have said that Tycho's Geocentrism was as acceptable as Ptolemy's?
De nova et nullius ævi memoria prius visa Stella. Köpenhamn 1573
Utgivare Tycho Brahe: Diarium Astrologicum et Metheorologicum. (astrologisk och meteorologisk dagbok), Uranienborg 1596, sammanställt av Brahes elev Elias Olsen Morsing. (published by Brahe, compiled by Morsing, its a diary of observations)
De mundi aetheri recentioribus phaenomenis. Uranienborg 1588.
Epistolarum Astronomicarum Liber Primus. Uranienborg 1596 (this was his own example of a Renaissance genre, which as you know I'm reviving** on Correspondence de / of / van Hans Georg Lundahl) and 1596 was part 1 (I'm not sure there was a book 2)
Stellarum octavi orbis inerrantium accurata restitutio, Wandsbek 1598 (obviously on the fix stars, obvious both from "eighth sphere" and from "of non-errant stars" ...)
Hans Georg Lundahl
* Was it Baronius and Did Galileo Recall His Words Accurately?
** If you answer, I'll obviously include your letter ... don't worry, the blog as such is not monetised, and if you want royalties, that can be arranged if you make yourself a paper publisher and then you divide your own and my part of the royalties ...
- Robert Sungenis to me
- 11/16/2024 at 4:57 PM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- Hans, this is what I have in GWW, Vol. 3 on Baronius.
This is the famous statement often translated as: “The Holy Spirit tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” In some colloquial versions “Holy Scripture” replaces “Holy Spirit.” The speech says that it has been “attributed” (original: “attribuita”) to Cardinal Baronius because no exact quote exists from Baronius’ writings.[1] It is not indicative of any magisterial decree or even an authoritative statement, but a mere cliché that may have been circulating in the pro-Galilean Accademia die Lincei circles during the seventeenth century controversy. It has no more weight than any other opinion being propagated at that time, and thus it is quite inappropriate in a 1992 papal address. Cardinal Poupard’s resorting to such specious statements perhaps shows the pressure he was under to provide some plausibility for his assault on the literal interpretation of Scripture.
More to the point, however, is that Baronius’ statement is false. No one in the whole history of Catholic Scripture study up to that point had ever uttered such a denial on the domain of either the Holy Spirit’s teaching or the content of Holy Writ. Baronius’ quip can easily be countered with one that Robert Bellarmine was sure to have thought: “The Holy Spirit tells us how the heavens go, as well as how to get to heaven.” Unfortunately, however, the papal speech has made exegetical delinquents of all those of the Church who lived prior to and in the time of Baronius’ cliché. If the Bible does not concern itself with “how the heavens go” then why did the Fathers of the Church, in unanimous consent, believe it to be so, and why did Cardinal Bellarmine and his fellow cardinals, with the popes afterwards who for decades sanctioned their verdicts against Galileo, ever dare say that, because it was spoken by the Holy Spirit, a motionless Earth and a moving sun were “a matter of faith”? As we noted in Chapters 14 and 15, celestial motion rotating around an immobile Earth permeates the divine record, from the Pentateuch to the Deuterocanonicals and everything between them.
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[1] Galileo wrote it quite poetically in his native Italian to Madama Cristina di Lorena: “…ciò è l’intenzione dello Spirito Santo essere d’insegnarci come si vadia al cielo, e non come vadia il cielo” (“that is the intention of the Holy Spirit which is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go”) and attributes it as coming from “Io qui direi quello che intesi da persona ecclesiastic constituita in eminentissimo grado” (“Here I refer to the understandings of an ecclesiastical person in a very eminent position”), who most suppose is Cardinal Cesare Baronio (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, 1968, vol 5, p. 319, lines 25-28). Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).
- Me to Robert Sungenis
- 11/16/2024 at 5:19 PM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- The problems are two:
1) Baronius was personal disciple of St. Filippo Neri, and personally a saintly man, if the attribution were genuine, this would actually be an argument for the sentiment;
2) But while you state "attributed to" you then go on to speak of "Baronius' statement." That's also why I asked about "1598, where is that from?" since it gave the impression of a specific year and therefore an identified quote.
Thank you very much for "because no exact quote exists from Baronius’ writings"!
I was beginning to be worried there. It is first of all Galileo's statement, and behind him that of an anonymised Church man.
I think that anonymised Church man only in the 19th C. became the saintly Baronius, also known for refuting the Magdeburg centuries in his annales, and my own guess would be that such an illustrious origin of the quote could come from the 19th C, around the time one was pushing Pope Pius VII to get Settele into print. As I recall you stating things on misinformations he was exposed to, that would not have been the only lie told to him, if this were the origin of the quote attribution to Baronius.
So, again, where* did you find the attribution to "1598"? What year is that source from?
Is it based on a guess when Baronius and Galileo could have met as being in the same city?
Hans Georg Lundahl
- *
- Already answered in previous, apparently.
- Robert Sungenis to me
- 11/18/2024 at 8:19 PM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- The 1598 is from the historian, Stillman Drake.
- Me to Robert Sungenis
- 11/19/2024 at 8:21 AM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- Thank you.
He died 11 years before I arrived in Santiago: Stillman Drake (December 24, 1910 – October 6, 1993)
So, he was obviously not an eyewitness. I think historians usually give references as to their source material, what* was his?
Hans Georg Lundahl
- *
- The marginal note, obviously. My bad.
- Robert Sungenis to me
- 11/19/2024 at 7:48 PM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- He doesn't give a source. Only what I put in the footnote.
- Me to Robert Sungenis
- 11/20/2024 at 12:18 AM
- Re: 1598, where is that from?
- OK, he doesn't give a source ... not even a footnote?
As for your own footnote, I read you over Pingleton's substack, where that was missing.*
- *
- And I had apparently missed the fact that his 11/16/2024 at 4:57 PM answer involved the actual book quote with the actual footnote. No wonder Robert Sungenis did not respond.
Second (so far one-sided) correspondence with Dr. Ellen Abrams:
- Me to Dr. Ellen Abrams
- 11/19/2024 at 8:31 AM
- You are successor of Stillman Drake, I presume? I heard a thing of a book of his
- Robert Sungenis had cited him* for Cardinal Baronius in 1598 stating what Galileo cited in his 1615 letter to Cristina of Tuscany.
However, in the letter, Galileo said nothing of who had said it, except it was a Churchman who (in English academic translations) "has been highly promoted" ... to me it sounds as if the Churchman was still alive when Galileo wrote and Baronius wasn't in his earthly life.
I am aware that it's a longstanding tradition to identify that Churchman with Baronius, and Cardinal is a high promotion. For my own part, I think Galileo had spoken to another Cardinal, known to have been his friend, namely Barberini. The future Pope Urban VIII under whom he was judged. However, Baronius in 1598 sounds like a fairly specific occasion, known from the life of Baronius. What were Stillman Drake's primary sources for that reference ?
And, bonus question, was the context sth like if it was acceptable to be Tychonian instead of Ptolemaic?
Hans Georg Lundahl
* He did not state in what book by Stillman Drake, and I accessed his own text via Levi Pingleton's substack which doesn't have the footnotes.*
- *
- I was wrong.
- Me to Dr. Ellen Abrams
- 11/20/2024 at 12:47 PM
- Was Stillman Drake referring to 1598 as en entry in Annales ecclesiastici ?
Robert Sungenis had cited him for Cardinal Baronius in 1598 stating what Galileo cited in his 1615 letter to Cristina of Tuscany.
Because, Sungenis just told me that Stillman Drake's book wasn't offering a specific reference on where he got it from that it was Baronius. Or that it was 1598.
I obviously mean the sentence that Galileo presents as cited from an undisclosed high-ranking clergymen, "not how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven" ...
Hans Georg Lundahl
Third correspondence with Dr. Robert Sungenis and Dr. Ellen Abrams:
- Me to Robert Sungenis and to Ellen Abrams
- 12/1/2024 at 11:07 AM
- Re: 1598, where is that from? / Stillman Drake (To Dr. Robert Sungenis and Dr. Ellen Abrams jointly)
- Wait, sometimes my lack of sleep plays pranks on me. I missed this part, where you (Robert) quoted your footnote:
Stillman Drake claims that “a marginal note by Galileo assigns this epigram to Cardinal Baronius” who “vistited Padua with Cardinal Bellarmine in 1598, and Galileo probably met him at that time” (Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 186).
Missed this.
A marginal note by Galileo on what exemplar?
The one he sent Cristina? Sounds unlikely.
Or on a copy he kept for reference? How many years afterwards did he keep it, and could the attribution to Baronius have been to protect someone else, if his papers were searched?
Like Cardinal Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII?
And if it actually was Baronius and Bellarmine together, could they have been discussing the Giordano Bruno case? Obviously, the man was (two years later) burned for mainly other things than astronomic aberrations, but they finally did land on a longer list of what he was required to abjure. Any way, at the time we don't see Galileo himself involved in Heliocentrism. So it is definitely not as if Galileo was likely to have asked them "is it OK to be Heliocentric" since that wasn't so far on his radar.
Hans Georg Lundahl
- To be continued?
- we'll see.
