Thomas F. Mayer and Maurice A. Finocchiaro, in their respective works, share much intellectual ground in their presentation and analysis of Galileo’s infamous troubles with the Roman Inquisition. Each scholar, however, approaches Galileo’s significance from his own field-specific perspective. Finocchiaro, both here and in past work, focuses on Galileo’s scientific and philosophical importance in the seventeenth and subsequent centuries; in presenting this selection of key documents, drawn from both Galileo’s publications and trial records, he hopes to “[outline] the balanced approach which is necessary to avoid common pitfalls and derive sound lessons” (1). Mayer concerns himself with examining Galileo’s trial dossier down to every last detail. He examines the trial participants’ choices and decisions, from the pope to Inquisitors and bureaucrats, secular authorities, and Galileo himself. Read in conjunction, these two books offer a wealth of complementary primary and secondary sources to anyone interested in exploring Galileo’s trial process.
Mayer and Finocchiaro, however, diverge in assessing the importance of legal procedure in Galileo’s condemnation. Finocchiaro focuses on how Galileo’s work came to be construed as heretical at the time, and thinks procedural questions to be of secondary importance. Many of the documents Finocchiaro presents in his collection are drawn from the trial records (especially documents 8–11), including the precept or special injunction the Roman Inquisition issued to Galileo in February 1616, which prohibited the philosopher and mathematician from “hold[ing], teach[ing], or defend[ing]” the Copernican view of the universe (108). Finocchiaro (and other scholars) tends to interpret the precept as an improper violation of standard inquisitorial procedure, and to interpret Galileo’s abjuration in 1633 (both for heresy and violating the injunction, technically) as Galileo effectively being “railroaded.”
Mayer, in his third and culminating volume, concludes that the Roman Inquisition “treated Galileo no differently than most” even when it came to “inventive jurisprudence” (5). Mayer has thoroughly examined the parameters of legal appropriateness in the Roman Inquisition’s procedural activities in his other two volumes. The Roman Inquisition had a sense of following proper procedural parameters, but there was no one specific rulebook meant to be followed at all times. Within those parameters, Mayer finds that individuals had a significant amount of legal space within which to maneuver.
In Mayer’s view, the inquisitorial personnel involved in the case (especially the commissary Maculano) and Urban VIII himself maneuvered well, and Galileo rather badly. Mayer also thinks that the religious authorities involved in the case pursued either Galileo’s supposed heresy, or his violation of the precept, at varying points throughout the trial. Mayer thinks Maculano pursued the precept strategy in the case as the tactic most likely to be successful; the commissary then pursued Galileo’s heresy first and foremost in the last stages of the trial in response to Urban VIII’s direction. According to Mayer, Urban VIII wanted Galileo condemned for heresy in 1633 — a point upon which Finocchiaro would agree. But for Mayer, it was Maculano who figured out how to do so procedurally.
Finocchiaro presents the documents that resulted from those procedures alongside selections from Galileo’s own work, which is of enormous value to scholars and students alike. Mayer examines the legal and political maneuverings that frame the Galileo trial and the documents it generated. Each chapter is constructed in chronological order. In particular, chapters 3 and 6 prove pivotal to Mayer’s argument. Chapter 3 discusses the precept — how it was generated and recorded, and how Cardinal Bellarmino went about administering it. But in many ways this chapter is the culmination of his other two volumes as well, with Mayer arguing that the precept itself was not an uncommon item in inquisitorial prosecutions; while not a standard part of every trial, use of precepts (and the expectation that they be obeyed) was not unusual at all, in Mayer’s view, and were used in other trial processes. It was a tool or instrument within the broadly set parameters of tactics available to Inquisitors.
Mayer also argues that precepts were commonly perceived of as suspending a trial, not bringing one to a close; therefore, Galileo’s appearance in 1633 constituted a continuation of the process begun in 1616. And in chapter 6, Mayer discusses two of the most fascinating aspects of Galileo’s trial. Maculano, in April 1633, under Urban VIII’s orders, in his report to the Roman Inquisition, asserted that Galileo was a “negative heretic” (191), or one who refused to confess in spite of overwhelming evidence. As such (as all Inquisition manuals agreed), Galileo could be subjected to imprisonment, torture, and the death penalty. Maculano was therefore given permission to approach Galileo “extrajudicially” (192) and warn him that his case was heading in a seriously grave direction. These two events led to Galileo’s confession and abjuration, although Mayer carefully notes that it was hard to come up with a heresy for the sentence, and both heresy and disobedience were given as reasons for Galileo’s sentence in the official documentation.
In Mayer’s account of the Galileo trial, he reasserts the agency of all the participants, including Galileo (who, according to Mayer, was badly advised and had far too optimistic a view of his chances in 1632–33). And although he and Finocchiaro diverge concerning their interpretations of the 1616 precept, read in conjunction these two works are complementary in their assessments of Galileo and his trial. As Mayer puts it in his introduction, going after Galileo for heresy or for violating the precept were not inherently incompatible tactics; they could be, and were, pursued concurrently. Mayer’s magisterial examination of Galileo’s trial as a political and legal event does not detract from other avenues of investigation and interpretation. But his three volumes form a massive contribution to our knowledge of the Roman Inquisition’s power dynamics and procedures, and of the papacy’s use of the Inquisition to build both political and religious power in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which led to Galileo’s condemnation.
