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This altar commemorates
an ancient astronomical congress

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that met in the year 776 AD.

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16 mathematicians came here,

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to the famous centre of Mayan science,
the sacred city of Copan in Central America.

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The Mayans had a system of arithmetic
which was far ahead of Europe.

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For example, they had a symbol for zero.

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They were good mathematicians.

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Nevertheless,
they did not map the motions of the stars.

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Their idea of astronomy was purely formal,

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a matter of keeping their calendars right.

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That is all that was done here.

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It can 't be an accident that the New World
never thought that the earth is round

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and never went out to look for the Old World.

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It was the Old World which set sail
around the earth to discover the New.

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Then did the New World invent nothing?

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Of course not.

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Even so primitive a culture as Easter Island,
here, made one tremendous invention,

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the carving of these statues.

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There's nothing like them in the world,

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and people ask, as usual,
all kinds of irrelevant questions about them.

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Why were they made like this?
How were they transported?

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How did they get to the places that they're at?

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But that's not the problem.

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Stonehenge,
of a much earlier Stone Age civilisation,

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was much more difficult to put up than this.

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So was Avebury, many other monuments.

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No, primitive cultures do inch their way
through these enormous communal enterprises.

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The question about these statues is,
why were they all made alike?

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You see them, sitting there, like Diogenes,
in their barrels, looking at the sky

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with empty eye sockets
and watching the sun and the stars go overhead

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without ever trying to understand them.

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When the Dutch discovered this island,
on Easter Sunday in 1722,

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they said it had
the makings of an earthly paradise.

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But it didn 't.

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An earthly paradise
is not made by this empty repetition,

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like a caged animal going round and round
and making always the same thing.

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These frozen faces,

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these frozen frames
in a film that's running down,

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mark a civilisation which failed to take the
first step on the ascent of rational knowledge.

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Easter Island is over 1,000 miles
from the nearest inhabited island,

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which is Pitcairn, straight over the volcano,

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over 1,500 miles from the next island,
which is over there,

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which is where the original for Robinson Crusoe
was stranded.

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Distances like that cannot be navigated
unless you have a model of the heavens...

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...of star positions,
by which you can tell your way.

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People often ask about the Easter Islands,
how did men come here?

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They came here by accident,
that's not the question.

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The question is, why could they not get off?

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And they could not get off because they did not
have a sense of the movement of the stars

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by which to find their way.

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Why not?

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Well, one obvious reason is
that there is no Pole Star in the southern sky.

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We know that's important
because it plays a part in the migration of birds,

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which find their way by the Pole Star,

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and that's why almost all bird migration is in the
northern hemisphere and not in the southern.

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Well, that could be meaningful down here,
in the southern hemisphere,

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but it can 't be meaningful
for the whole of the New World

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because there's Central America,
there's Mexico,

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there are all sorts of places
which also didn 't have an astronomy

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and yet which lie north of the Equator.

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What was wrong there?

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Nobody knows.

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I think that they lacked that great dynamic image
which so moved the Old World,

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the wheel.

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The wheel was only a toy in the New World.

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But in the Old World,
it was the greatest image of poetry and science.

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Everything was founded on it.

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This sense of the heavens
moving round their hub,

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which inspired Christopher Columbus
when he set sail in 1492.

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He had it from the Greeks,

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who believed that the stars were fixed
on spheres which made music as they turned.

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Wheels within wheels.

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That was the system of Ptolemy
that had worked for over 1,000 years.

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100 years before Christopher Columbus set sail,

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the Old World was able to make
this superb clockwork of the starry heavens.

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It was made by Giovanni De Dondi in Padua
about 1350.

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It took him 16 years to make.

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But more than the mechanical marvel

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is the intellectual conception, which comes
from Aristotle and Ptolemy and the Greeks,

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which is the view of the planets
as seen from the earth.

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From the earth there are seven planets.

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The sun.

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Mars.

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Notice that its motion is running
on a clockwork wheel inside a wheel.

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Jupiter.

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More complex wheels within wheels.

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Saturn.

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Wheels within wheels.

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Then we come back to the moon.

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Isn 't she delicious?

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To Mercury.

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And finally, to Venus.

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And again, the same picture,

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the wheel that carries Venus
turns inside a larger hypothetical wheel.

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It's a marvellous intellectual conception.

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Very complex.

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But that only makes it more marvellous
that in 150 AD, not long after the birth of Christ,

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the Greeks should have been able to conceive
and put into mathematics

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this superb construction.

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Then what is wrong with it?

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One thing only.

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That there are seven dials for the heavens...

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...and the heavens must have one machinery,
not seven.

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But that machinery was not found

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until Copernicus put the sun
at the centre of the heavens.

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Nicolaus Copernicus

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was a distinguished churchman and humanist
intellectual from Poland.

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He had advised his government on currency
reform and the Pope on calendar reform.

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For the last 20 years of his life roughly,

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he devoted himself to the modern proposition
that nature must be simple.

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Why were the paths of the planets
so complicated?

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Because, he decided, we look at them
from the place where we happen to be standing,

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the earth.

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Like the pioneers of perspective, Copernicus
asked why not look at them from another place.

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There are good Renaissance reasons,
emotional rather than intellectual reasons,

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that made him choose the golden sun
as the other place.

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So, in 1543, at the age of 70,

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Copernicus finally braced himself to publish
his mathematical description of the heavens.

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What he called
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium,

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The Revolution Of The Heavenly Orbs,
as a single system moving around the sun.

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The word revolution has an overtone now
which is not astronomical.

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And that's not an accident.

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It comes from this time and this book.

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Copernicus died in the same year.

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It's said that
he only saw copy of his book once,

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when it was put into his hands on his deathbed.

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(Bell rings)

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The system of Copernicus
seemed unnatural to his age,

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even though the planets still run in circles.

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It was a younger man, Johannes Kepler,
working later, here in Prague,

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who showed that the paths are really elliptical.

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That was not what bothered
the man in the street, or in the pulpit.

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They were committed
to the wheel of the heavens.

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The hosts of heaven
must march round the earth.

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That had become an article of faith,
as if the Church had made up its mind

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that the system of Ptolemy was invented,
not by a Levantine Greek,

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but by the Almighty himself.

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Clearly, the issue was not one of doctrine,
but of authority.

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The issue did not come to a head
until 70 years later, in Venice.

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(Crowing)

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Two great men were born in the year 1564.

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One was William Shakespeare, in England,

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the other was Galileo Galilei in Italy.

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When Shakespeare writes about
the drama of power in his own age,

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he twice brings the scene here,
to the Republic of Venice,

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once in The Merchant Of Venice,
and then in Othello.

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That's because in 1600, the Mediterranean
was still the centre of the world,

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and Venice was the hub of the Mediterranean.

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And here ambitious men came to work
because they were free to work without restraint.

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Merchants and adventurers and intellectuals,
a host of artists and artisans,

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crowded these streets as they do now.

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The Venetians had the reputation
of being a secret and devious people.

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Venice was a sort of free port, as we would say,

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and carried with that
some of the conspiratorial air

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which haunts neutral cities
like Lisbon and Tangier.

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It was in Venice that a false patron
had trapped Giordano Bruno

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and handed him to the Inquisition.

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Certainly the Venetians were a practical people.

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Galileo had done deep work
in fundamental science at Pisa,

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but what made the Venetians hire him, I suspect,
was his talent for practical inventions.

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An apparatus rather like a thermometer,

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a delicate hydrostatic balance
to find the density of precious objects,

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and something which Galileo,
who had a knack for salesmanship,

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called a military compass,

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though it's really a calculating instrument
not unlike a modern slide rule.

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Galileo made and sold them
in his own workshop.

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This was sound commercial science
as the Venetians admired it.

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So, it is no wonder that when, late in 1608,

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some spectacle makers in Flanders
invent a primitive form of spyglass,

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they try to come and sell it here,
to the Republic of Venice.

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But of course, the Republic had in its service,
in the person of Galileo,

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a scientist and mathematician immensely
more powerful than any in northern Europe.

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And a much better publicist who,
when he made a telescope,

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bustled the Venetian senate
to the top of the Campanile to show it off.

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Galileo was a short, square, active man
with red hair.

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He was 45 when he heard the news
of the Flemish invention, and it electrified him.

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He thought it out for himself in one night

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and made an instrument about as good,
with a magnification of three...

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...which is only about
a rather superior opera glass.

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But before he came to the Campanile
in Venice...

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...he stepped the magnification up to ten.

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And then he had a real telescope.

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With that, from this height,
where the horizon is about 20 miles,

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you can not only see the ship at sea...

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...you can identify it
two hours' sailing and more away.

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And that was worth a lot of money
to the brokers on the Rialto.

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Galileo is the creator
of the modern scientific method.

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And he did that in the six months
following his triumph on the Campanile,

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which would have been enough for anyone else.

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It occurred to him then

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that it was not enough to turn the Flanders toy
into an instrument of navigation,

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it could also be turned into
an instrument of research,

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an idea which was altogether new to that age.

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He stepped up
the magnification of the telescope to 30

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and he turned it on the stars.

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In that way, he really did for the first time,
what we think of as practical science.

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Build the apparatus, do the experiment,
publish the results.

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And that he did
between September of 1609 and March 1610,

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when he published, in Venice,
the splendid book The Starry Messenger.

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What did it say?

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GALILEO: I've seen stars in millions
which have never been seen before

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<i>and which srpass the old previbsly-known</i>
<i>stars in nmber more than ten times</i>

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<i>Bt that which will excite the greatest</i>
<i>astonishment by far</i>

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<i>and which indeed especially moved me</i>

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<i>to call attentibn of all astronomers</i>
<i>and philosophers is this</i>

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<i>that I have discovered for planets</i>

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<i>neither known nor observed by any one</i>
<i>of the astronomers before my time</i>

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BRONOWSKl:
These were the satellites of Jupiter.

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The Starry Messenger also tells how
he turned the telescope on the moon herself.

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Galileo was the first man
to publish maps of the moon.

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We have his original watercolours.

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GALILEO: <i>It is a most beatifl and delightfl</i>
<i>sight to behold the body of the moon</i>

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<i>It certainly does not possess</i>
<i>a smooth and polished srface</i>

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<i>bt one rogh and neven</i>
<i>and jst like the face of the earth itself</i>

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<i>is everywhere fll of vast protberances</i>
<i>and deep chasms and sinosities</i>

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It was sensational.

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It made a reputation...

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...larger even
than the triumph among the trading community.

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And yet it was not altogether welcome.

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Because what Galileo saw in the sky...

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...and revealed
to everyone who was willing to look,

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was that the Ptolemaic heaven
simply would not work.

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That Copernicus's powerful guess had been
right and now stood open and revealed.

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And, like many more recent scientific results,

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that did not at all please
the prejudice of the establishment of his day.

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Galileo thought that all he had to do
was to show that Copernicus was right

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and everybody would listen.

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That was his first mistake...

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...the mistake of being naive about people's
motives, which scientists make all the time.

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He also thought
that his reputation was now large enough

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for him to be able to go back
to his native Florence,

232
00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:00,835
leave the rather dreary teaching
which had become burdensome to him,

233
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:04,310
for which Venice paid him
at its University of Padua,

234
00:21:04,400 --> 00:21:11,397
leave the protection of this essentially
anti-clerical safe Republic of Venice.

235
00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:17,031
That was his second
and, in the end, fatal, mistake.

236
00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:28,431
The reaction against Luther was in full cry.

237
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,116
~ Kyrie from Mass "Cum Giubilate"

238
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:07,475
The struggle in Europe was for authority.

239
00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:11,517
In 1618, the Thirty Years War began.

240
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:17,277
In 1622, Rome created
the Institution for the Propagation of the Faith

241
00:22:17,360 --> 00:22:20,193
from which we still derive the word propaganda.

242
00:22:21,080 --> 00:22:25,995
Catholics and Protestants were embattled
in what we should now call a cold war,

243
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:32,155
in which, if Galileo had only known it,
no quarter was given to a great man, or small.

244
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,432
The judgment was very simple on both sides.

245
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:40,035
Whoever is not for us is a heretic.

246
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:06,593
Even so unworldly an interpreter of faith
as Cardinal Bellarmine

247
00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:11,515
had found the astronomical speculations
of Giordano Bruno intolerable

248
00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:13,238
and had sent him to the stake.

249
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:28,519
The Church was a great temporal power,

250
00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:32,559
and in that bitter time,
it was fighting a political crusade

251
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,552
in which all means were justified by the end.

252
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,029
The ethics of the police state.

253
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:43,631
Galileo seems to me to have been
strangely innocent about the world of politics.

254
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:49,670
And most innocent in thinking that
he could outwit it because he was clever.

255
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:57,233
For 20 years and more he moved along a path
that led inevitably to his condemnation.

256
00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:01,711
There was never any doubt
that Galileo would be silenced

257
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:06,874
because the division between him
and those in authority was absolute.

258
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:10,115
They believed that faith should dominate.

259
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:14,716
And Galileo believed that truth should persuade.

260
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:20,351
That clash of principles,
and of course of personalities,

261
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:25,150
came into the open at the trial of Galileo in 1633.

262
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:35,153
But every political trial has a long hidden history
of what went on behind the scenes.

263
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:42,999
And the underground history of
what came before the trial of Galileo is here

264
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:45,958
in the locked secret archives of the Vatican.

265
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:57,952
Among all these corridors of documents,

266
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:05,958
there is one modest safe in which the Vatican
keeps what it regards as the crucial documents.

267
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:07,996
Here, for example...

268
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,952
...is the application of Henry Vlll for divorce,

269
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:17,831
the refusal of which brought the Reformation
to England and ended the tie to Rome.

270
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:21,796
The trial of Giordano Bruno.

271
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:27,475
And here, the famous codex 1181:

272
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:31,155
Proceedings Against Galileo Galilei.

273
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,119
The trial was in 1633.

274
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,634
And the first remarkable thing is,

275
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:41,154
that the documents begin when?

276
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,674
In 1611.

277
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:50,318
At the moment of triumph, in Venice,
in Florence, and here in Rome,

278
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:57,317
secret information is being laid against Galileo
before the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

279
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:00,398
1612.

280
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:04,318
1613.

281
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:06,758
1614.

282
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:09,558
1615.

283
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:13,679
By then Galileo himself becomes alarmed.

284
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:16,990
Unbidden, he goes to Rome...

285
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,509
...in order to persuade
his friends among the cardinals

286
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:25,195
not to prohibit the Copernican world system.

287
00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:27,032
But he's too late.

288
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:30,510
In February of 1616,

289
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:32,795
here are the formal words.

290
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:37,593
Propositions to be forbidden.

291
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,958
That the sun is immovable
at the centre of the heaven,

292
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:48,556
that the earth is not at the centre of the heaven
and is not immovable,

293
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:50,995
but moves by a double motion.

294
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:59,918
Galileo seems to have escaped
any severe censure himself.

295
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,073
At any rate, he is called before
the great Cardinal Bellarmine

296
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,551
and he is convinced
and has a letter from Bellarmine

297
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:14,237
to say that he must not hold or defend
the Copernican world system,

298
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:16,959
but there the document stops.

299
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:23,512
Unhappily, there's a document
here in the record which goes further,

300
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,955
and on which the trial then is going to turn.

301
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:30,192
But that's all 17 years in the future.

302
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:37,559
Meanwhile, Galileo goes back to Florence
and he knows two things.

303
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:45,598
One is that the time to defend Copernicus
in public is not yet.

304
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:47,238
And the second,

305
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,232
that he thinks there will be such a time.

306
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:53,196
About the first he's right.

307
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,469
About the second, no.

308
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,028
Well, he bided his time until when?

309
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:06,553
Until an intellectual cardinal
should be elected Pope.

310
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:09,556
Maffeo Barberini.

311
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:12,435
That happened in 1623,

312
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:16,109
when Maffeo Barberini
became Pope Urban Vlll.

313
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:19,516
The new Pope was a lover of the arts.

314
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:21,158
He loved music.

315
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:26,109
He commissioned the composer Allegri
to write the Miserere For 9 Voices,

316
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,636
which long afterwards
was reserved for the Vatican.

317
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,075
The new Pope loved architecture.

318
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:37,188
He wanted to make Rome glorious
as the centre of Christianity.

319
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:40,716
And to make St Peter's the centre of Rome.

320
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:44,634
He put Bernini
in charge of completing St Peter's

321
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,508
and Bernini boldly designed the tall Baldachino

322
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:54,072
which is the only worthy addition
to Michelangelo's original design.

323
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:59,153
Pope Urban Vlll
thought of himself as an innovator.

324
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:01,390
~ Miserere For 9 Voices

325
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:25,310
POPE URBAN Vlll: <i>I know better</i>
<i>than all the cardinals pt together</i>

326
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:31,632
<i>The sentence of a living pope is worth more</i>
<i>than all the decrees of 100 dead ones</i>

327
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:38,956
BRONOWSKl: But in fact, Barberini as Pope
turned out to be pure baroque.

328
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:46,199
A lavish nepotist. Extravagant, domineering,
restless in his schemes

329
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:50,558
and absolutely tone deaf to the ideas of others.

330
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:55,156
He even had the birds killed in the
Vatican gardens because they disturbed him.

331
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,193
Galileo optimistically came to Rome in 1624

332
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:15,195
and had six long talks in the gardens
with the Pope.

333
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:22,918
Galileo hoped that the intellectual Pope
would withdraw, or at least bypass,

334
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:28,279
the prohibition of 1616
of the world picture of Copernicus.

335
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:32,436
It turned out that Urban Vlll
would not consider that.

336
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:38,310
But Galileo still hoped,
and the officials of the papal court expected,

337
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:45,033
that Urban Vlll would let the new scientific ideas
flow quietly into the Church,

338
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,079
until, imperceptibly, they replaced the old.

339
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,999
After all, that was how
the heathen ideas of Ptolemy and Aristotle

340
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,516
had become Christian doctrine in the first place.

341
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,513
So, Galileo went on believing
that the Pope was on his side,

342
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:06,720
within the limits set by his office,
until it came to the testing time.

343
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:13,677
And then he turned out to be
most profoundly mistaken.

344
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,957
POPE URBAN Vlll: <i>His Holiness</i>
<i>charges the Inqisitor at Florence</i>

345
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:21,670
<i>to inform Galileo that he is to appear at Rome</i>
<i>before the Holy Office</i>

346
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:28,829
The Pope, Maffeo Barberini the friend,
Urban Vlll,

347
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:34,517
has personally delivered him into
the hands of the Holy Office of the Inquisition,

348
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:38,559
whose process is irreversible.

349
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:46,796
This is the Dominican cloister
of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva,

350
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:50,111
where the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition

351
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:54,193
proceeded against those
whose allegiance was in question.

352
00:31:54,280 --> 00:32:03,029
It had been created by Pope Paul III in 1542,
to stem the spread of Reformation doctrines.

353
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,870
The rules of procedure were strict and exact.

354
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:12,589
They had been formalised in 1588

355
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,433
and they were, of course,
not the rules of a court.

356
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,711
The prisoner did not have a copy
either of the charges or of the evidence.

357
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,268
He had no counsel to defend him.

358
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,831
There were ten judges at the trial of Galileo.

359
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,109
All cardinals and all Dominicans.

360
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:38,188
One of them was the Pope's brother
and another was the Pope's nephew.

361
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:43,308
The trial was conducted by the
Commissar General of the Inquisition.

362
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:58,591
The hall in which Galileo was tried
is now part of the post office of Rome.

363
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:02,229
But in 1633, it looked like this.

364
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:04,276
Exactly like this.

365
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,592
A ghostly committee room
in a club for gentlemen.

366
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:15,589
We also know exactly
the steps by which Galileo came to this pass.

367
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:23,550
It had begun on those walks in the garden
with the new Pope in 1624.

368
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:33,117
It was clear that the Pope would not allow
the Copernican doctrine to be avowed openly.

369
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:35,752
But there was another way.

370
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:42,188
And next year, Galileo began to write
a Dialogue On The Great World Systems...

371
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:47,596
...in which one speaker
put objections to the theory

372
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:53,994
and the two other speakers,
who were rather cleverer, answered them.

373
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:59,195
Because of course,
the theory of Copernicus is not self-evident.

374
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:04,400
It's not clear how the earth
can fly around the sun once a year.

375
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:09,759
Or spin on its own axis once a day
and we not fly off.

376
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:14,838
It's not clear how a weight
can be dropped from a high tower

377
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,878
and fall vertically to a spinning earth.

378
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:26,152
These objections Galileo answered,
as it were, on behalf of Copernicus, long dead.

379
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,036
But on his own behalf,

380
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:34,069
Galileo put into the book
that sense that all his science gives us,

381
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,038
from the time that as a young man

382
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:41,910
he had first put his hand on his pulse
and watched a pendulum.

383
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,958
The sense that it's the laws here on earth

384
00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:51,797
which reach out into the universe
and burst right through the crystal spheres.

385
00:34:54,480 --> 00:35:02,592
The book was finished in 1630,
and Galileo did not find it easy to get it licensed.

386
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:06,310
The censors were sympathetic.

387
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:13,158
But it soon became clear that there were
more-powerful forces against the book.

388
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:22,391
Well, in the end,
Galileo collected no fewer than four imprimaturs.

389
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:26,317
And, early in 1632,

390
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,870
the book was published in Florence.

391
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:36,353
It was an instant success
and, for Galileo, instant disaster.

392
00:35:37,240 --> 00:35:43,952
At once, from Rome, the thunder came,
stop the presses, buy back all the copies,

393
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,349
which by then had been sold out.

394
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:50,954
And Galileo must come to Rome to answer for it.

395
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,839
And nothing that he said
could countermand that.

396
00:35:57,160 --> 00:36:00,436
His age, he was now nearly 70,

397
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:02,511
his illness, which was genuine...

398
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:06,068
...the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

399
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,072
Nothing counted. He must come to Rome.

400
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:15,150
It was clear that the Pope himself
had taken great umbrage at the book.

401
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:21,393
He had found at least one passage
which he had insisted on,

402
00:36:22,240 --> 00:36:25,596
put in the book in the mouth of the man

403
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,878
who really makes
rather the impression of a simpleton.

404
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:35,756
It may be that the Pope felt that to be
a caricature, certainly he felt insulted.

405
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:42,830
The Pope felt that Galileo had hoodwinked him
and that his own censors had let him down.

406
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:52,630
So, on the 12th April, 1633, Galileo
was brought into this room, sat at this table,

407
00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:56,793
and answered the questions from the Inquisitor.

408
00:36:59,240 --> 00:37:02,357
The questions were addressed to him
courteously,

409
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,115
in the intellectual atmosphere
which reigned in the Inquisition,

410
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:08,919
in Latin in the third person.

411
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:12,916
How was he brought to Rome?

412
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:14,956
Is this his book?

413
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:16,996
How did he come to write it?

414
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,036
What is in his book?

415
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,954
All those, Galileo expected.
He expected to defend the book.

416
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,874
But then came a question
which he did not expect.

417
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:34,474
Were you in Rome particularly in the year...

418
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:38,519
INQUISITOR: <i>particlarly in the year 1616</i>
<i>and for what prpose?</i>

419
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,592
GALILEO: <i>I was in Rome</i>
<i>in the year 1616 becase</i>

420
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:45,355
<i>hearing dobts expressed</i>
<i>on the opinibns of Nicolas Copernics</i>

421
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:48,910
<i>I came to find ot</i>
<i>what views it was sitable to hold</i>

422
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:53,232
INQUISITOR: <i>Let him say what was decided</i>
<i>and made known to him then</i>

423
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:56,357
GALILEO: <i>In the month of Febrary 1616</i>

424
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:01,275
<i>Cardinal Bellarmine said to me that to hold</i>
<i>the opinibn of Copernics as a proven fact</i>

425
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,590
<i>was contrary to the sacred scriptres</i>

426
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:07,113
<i>Therefore it cold be neither held nor defended</i>

427
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,715
<i>Bt it cold be taken and sed as an hypothesis</i>

428
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:17,399
<i>In confirmatibn of this I have a certificate from</i>
<i>Cardinal Bellarmine given on May 26th 1616</i>

429
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:22,751
INQUISITOR: <i>Whether at that time any other</i>
<i>precept was given him by someone else</i>

430
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:28,195
GALILEO: <i>I do not remember anything else</i>
<i>that was said or enjoined pon me</i>

431
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:31,795
INQUISITOR: <i>If it is stated to him</i>
<i>that in the presence of witnesses</i>

432
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:35,953
<i>there is the instrctibn that</i>
<i>he mst not hold or defend the said opinibn</i>

433
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:40,238
<i>or teach it in any way whatsoever</i>
<i>let him now say whether he remembers</i>

434
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:45,759
GALILEO: <i>I remember that the instrctibn was</i>

435
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,071
<i>that I was neither to hold nor to defend</i>
<i>the said opinibn</i>

436
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:54,712
<i>The other two particlars that is neither to</i>
<i>teach nor consider in any way whatsoever</i>

437
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,315
<i>they are not stated in the certificate</i>
<i>on which I rely</i>

438
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:02,439
INQUISITOR: <i>After the aforesaid precept</i>
<i>did he obtain permissibn to write the book?</i>

439
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:05,318
GALILEO: <i>I did not seek permissibn</i>
<i>to write this book</i>

440
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,439
<i>becase I consider that I did not disobey</i>
<i>the instrctibns I had been given</i>

441
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:12,273
INQUISITOR: <i>When he asked permissibn</i>
<i>to print the book</i>

442
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:17,115
<i>did he disclose the command of</i>
<i>the sacred congregatibn of which we spoke?</i>

443
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:20,913
GALILEO: <i>I said nothing</i>
<i>when I soght permissibn to pblish</i>

444
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:24,993
<i>not having in the book</i>
<i>either held or defended the opinibn</i>

445
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:29,789
Galileo has a signed document which says

446
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:35,671
he is forbidden only to hold or defend
the theory of Copernicus,

447
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:40,197
which means
as if it were a proven matter of fact.

448
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:44,311
That was a prohibition
laid on every Catholic at the time.

449
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:53,036
The Inquisition claims that there is a document
which prohibits Galileo, and Galileo alone,

450
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:56,795
to teach in any way whatsoever.

451
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:00,915
He doesn 't have to produce this document.

452
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,673
It's not part of the rules of procedure.

453
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,399
But we have the document.

454
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:13,989
It's in the secret archives, and it's manifestly
a forgery, or at the most charitable,

455
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:18,039
a draft for some suggested meeting
which was rejected.

456
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:22,232
It's not signed by Cardinal Bellarmine.

457
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:24,834
It's not signed by the witnesses.

458
00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:31,238
It's not signed by the notary, it's not signed
by Galileo to show that he received it.

459
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:40,829
Did the Inquisition really
have to stoop to the use of legal quibbles

460
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:46,153
between "hold or defend",
"teach in any way whatsoever",

461
00:40:46,240 --> 00:40:50,279
in the face of documents which
could not have stood up in any court of law?

462
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,633
Yes, it did. There was nothing else to do.

463
00:40:56,280 --> 00:41:01,354
The book had been published.
It had been passed by several censors.

464
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:04,430
The Pope could rage at the censors now.

465
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,034
He ruined his own Secretary.

466
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:13,150
But some remarkable public display
had to be made

467
00:41:13,240 --> 00:41:18,268
to show that the book was to be condemned.

468
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:26,749
It was on the index for 200 years
because of some deceit practiced by Galileo.

469
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:32,436
The court did not meet again.

470
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:34,476
The trial ended here.

471
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:38,838
That is to say,
Galileo was twice more brought into this room

472
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:44,074
and allowed to testify on his own behalf,
but no questions were asked of him.

473
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:50,875
The verdict was reached at a meeting
of the Congregation of the Holy Office,

474
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:56,478
over which the Pope presided, which laid down
absolutely what was to be done.

475
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,670
The dissident scientist was to be humiliated,

476
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:08,313
authority was to be shown large,
not only in action, but in intention.

477
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,430
Galileo was to retract...

478
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:19,993
...and he was to be shown the instruments
of torture as if they were to be used.

479
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:28,795
What that threat meant
to a man who had started life as a doctor,

480
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:34,910
we can judge by listening to
the testimony of a contemporary

481
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:38,549
who had actually suffered the rack
and survived it.

482
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:42,189
That was William Linlithgow, an Englishman.

483
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,238
LINLITHGOW: <i>broght to the rack</i>
<i>then monted on the top of it</i>

484
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:49,313
<i>My legs were drawn to the two sides</i>
<i>of the three-planked rack</i>

485
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:52,153
<i>A cord was tied abot my ankles</i>

486
00:42:52,240 --> 00:42:57,951
<i>As the levers bent forward the main force</i>
<i>of my knees against the two planks</i>

487
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:03,160
<i>brst asnder the sinews of my hams</i>
<i>and the lids of my knees were crshed</i>

488
00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:05,993
<i>My lips were shivering</i>
<i>my groans were vehement</i>

489
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:10,756
<i>and blood sprang from my arms</i>
<i>broken sinews hands and knees</i>

490
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:16,957
<i>Being loosed from these pinnacles of pain</i>
<i>I was hand-fast set on the floor</i>

491
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:20,635
<i>with this incessant imploratibn "Confess"</i>

492
00:43:20,720 --> 00:43:22,790
BRONOWSKl: Galileo was not tirtured.

493
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,952
He was only threatened with torture twice.

494
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:28,395
His imagination would do the rest.

495
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,436
That was the object of the trial,

496
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:34,957
to show men of imagination
that they were not immune

497
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:39,238
from the process of fear that was irreversible.

498
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:42,276
GALILEO: <i>I Galileo Galilei</i>

499
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:47,718
<i>aged 70 years kneeling before yo</i>
<i>most eminent and reverent Lord Cardinals</i>

500
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:51,270
<i>Inqisitors General against heretical depravity</i>

501
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:56,878
<i>wrote and printed a book in which I addce</i>
<i>argments in favor of the false opinibn</i>

502
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:00,475
<i>that the sn is the centre of the world</i>
<i>and immovable</i>

503
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:05,509
<i>and that the earth is not the centre of the world</i>
<i>and moves</i>

504
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:09,990
<i>For this case</i>
<i>I have been prononced by the Holy Office</i>

505
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,355
<i>to be vehemently sspected of heresy</i>

506
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:21,039
<i>Therefore I abjre crse and detest</i>
<i>the aforesaid errors and heresies</i>

507
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:27,912
<i>and I swear that in ftre I will never again</i>
<i>say or assert verbally or in writing</i>

508
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:31,549
<i>anything that might frnish occasibn</i>
<i>for a similar sspicibn</i>

509
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,272
<i>Bt shold I know</i>
<i>any person sspected of heresy</i>

510
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,716
<i>I will denonce him to this Holy Office</i>

511
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:51,351
BRONOWSKl:
Galileo was confined for the rest of his life...

512
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:58,278
...in his villa, here in Arcetri,
at some distance from Florence,

513
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,238
under strict house arrest.

514
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:04,356
The Pope was implacable.

515
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:07,156
Nothing to be published,

516
00:45:07,240 --> 00:45:09,800
the forbidden doctrine not to be discussed.

517
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,350
Galileo was not even to talk to Protestants.

518
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:21,032
The result was silence
among Catholic scientists.

519
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:28,116
Galileo's greatest contemporary,
Rene Descartes, stopped publishing in France

520
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:30,395
and finally went to Sweden.

521
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,472
Galileo made up his mind to do one thing.

522
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:41,072
He was going to write the book
that the trial had interrupted.

523
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,195
The book on the new sciences,

524
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:53,871
by which he meant physics, not in the stars,
but concerning matter here on earth.

525
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:59,310
He finished it in 1636,

526
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:05,191
that's three years after the trial,
an old man of 72.

527
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:08,714
Of course, he couldn 't get it published,

528
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:12,679
until finally some Protestants,
in Leiden in the Netherlands,

529
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:15,320
printed it two years later.

530
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,033
By that time, Galileo was totally blind.

531
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:25,197
He writes of himself,

532
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:31,833
"I, who enlarged the universe
a hundred thousand times,

533
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:36,072
am now shrunk to the space of my own body."

534
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:43,558
Among those who came to see him
was the young poet, John Milton, from England,

535
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:46,200
preparing for his life's work.

536
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:55,276
It's ironic that by the time Milton came to write
the great poem, 30 years later,

537
00:46:55,360 --> 00:47:01,469
he was totally blind, he also was dependant
on his children to finish it.

538
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:08,591
Milton, at the end of his life,
identified himself with Samson Agonistes,

539
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:11,717
Samson among the Philistines.

540
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:16,514
"Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves",

541
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:21,879
who destroyed the Philistine Empire
at the moment of his death.

542
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:28,910
And that's what Galileo did against his own will.

543
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:34,389
The effect of the trial and of the imprisonment

544
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:40,032
was to put a total stop to the scientific tradition
in the Mediterranean.

545
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:46,635
From now on, the scientific revolution
moved to northern Europe.

546
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:57,075
Galileo died,
still a prisoner in this house, in 1642.

547
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:04,913
On Christmas Day of the same year,
in England,

548
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:08,749
Isaac Newton was born.