THE IGNATIAN PRESUPPOSITION AND ITS EFFECT ON THE GALILEO AFFAIR

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Adam R. Bryan, B.S.
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A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty of

Saint Louis University in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts

2022
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© Copyright by
Adam Robert Bryan
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2022

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COMMITTEE IN CHARGE OF CANDIDACY:

Professor Kent Staley,

Advisor
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Professor Jeff Bishop
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Professor William Rehg, S.J.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1: A CHANGING WORLD ........................................................................................ 3

Galileo’s Celestial Observations ................................................................................................. 3
The Dialogue ............................................................................................................................... 8
Moving Forward ....................................................................................................................... 15

CHAPTER 2: THE SCIENTIST AND THE JESUIT .................................................................. 16

Containing Controversy ............................................................................................................ 16
Copernicanism on Trial............................................................................................................. 22

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Robert Bellarmine’s Role and the Ignatian Presupposition ...................................................... 25

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CHAPTER 3: FALLOUT AND CONSEQUENCES ................................................................... 37
Essentialism and Instrumentalism............................................................................................. 39
Bellarmine’s Unique Approach ................................................................................................ 43
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EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................... 49
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BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 51

VITA AUCTORIS ........................................................................................................................ 53

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INTRODUCTION

Galileo has piqued the interest of scholars over the ages not for only a few reasons. His

contributions to science and philosophy have endured, if not for their correctness then at least for

their ingenuity. Einstein himself crowned Galileo as “the father of modern physics” for his

ability to make connections between logical propositions and empirical data.1 However, perhaps

Galileo’s lasting legacy is preserved in his infamous condemnation by the Catholic church for

refusing to abdicate his position on Copernicanism, the scientific theory which held that the

planets orbited the Sun. This fiasco between Galileo and the Church, which lasted more than

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fifteen years, has come to be known as the “Galileo affair.”

Contemporary scholarship is rich with interpretations of the whole sequence of events,

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where the scholars inevitably try to point out the injustices of both sides and ultimately make
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their own judgment about who is at fault or what was the cause of such a blowup that would,

unbeknownst to the figures in the middle of the controversy, create a rift between the scientific

and religious communities for hundreds of years. The scope of my thesis is not to evaluate the
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scholarship to only then make my own conclusions about the outcome of the Galileo affair.

Instead, I believe there is an essential, yet untold part of this complex story that involves a major

defender of the Church’s geocentric position: Robert Cardinal Bellarmine. Bellarmine was at the

focal point of the first Galileo trial in 1615-16. He was also a Jesuit by religious training.

Nowhere has it been examined in the literature the potential Ignatian influence Bellarmine

displayed in the Galilean controversy. However, as my thesis hopes to show, recognizing the

Ignatian influence in Bellarmine’s actions elucidates clearer reasons why Bellarmine acted the

1
Taken from Einstein's "On the Methods of Theoretical Physics," Essays on modern Science (New York: Dover,
2009) pp. 12-21.
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way he did. The general arc of my project will proceed as follows. In the first section, I will

contextualize Galileo’s research that led him to his firm convictions in Copernicanism. The

second section begins with Galileo’s attempts to contain the outbreak of controversy. As we will

see, the conflict with the Church was not because Copernicanism contradicted Aristotelianism as

much as it contradicted scripture. In the second half of section two, I will demonstrate the crux of

my thesis, that Bellarmine’s Ignatian spirituality cultivates a particular kind of theory of

knowledge that urges patience and understanding—as opposed to hasty condemnation. I

conclude my thesis with a third section that makes my findings relevant to contemporary

conversations of philosophy of science, specifically putting my argument in dialogue with Karl

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Popper.
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CHAPTER 1: A CHANGING WORLD

Galileo’s Celestial Observations

The premier distinction between Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo is that Galileo was not

only computing theoretically calculations (like Copernicus) but that he had access to something

Copernicus did not—the telescope. Therefore, to begin discussing Galileo’s relationship with

Copernicanism means to begin with his celestial observations. Galileo’s motives for turning his

eyes heavenwards were two-fold. He was determined to refute Aristotelian and Ptolemaic

cosmology and, in its place, supplant that system with evidence for the Copernican “System of

the World.” Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology are not identical, but when combined into one

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theory they produce the cosmology that was held by the Catholic church. While ultimately his
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discoveries did not adequately prove the movement of the Earth (and he never claimed that they

did), Galileo believed his research strongly indicated both the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic models
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were incorrect and that the Copernican model was more suited to describe cosmological reality.

Galileo’s celestial discoveries relied upon the new invention of the telescope.

The telescope was invented by a Dutch lensmaker by the name of Hans Lippershey.
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Galileo writes about how he learned of the novel invention in the Starry Messenger, which

appeared in April 1610:

About 10 months ago a report reached my ears that a Dutchman had constructed a
spyglass by the aid of which visible objects, although at a great distance from the
eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if near; and some demonstrations of its
wonderful performances were reported, which some gave credence to, but other
contradicted. A few days later I received confirmation of the report in a letter
written from Paris by a noble Frenchman, Jacques Badovere. This finally
determined me to give myself up first to inquire into the principle of the spyglass,
and then to consider the means by which I might arrive at the invention of a
similar instrument. After a little while I succeeded, through deep study of the
theory of refraction.2

2
Galileo Galilei, Starry Messenger, translated by Edward Stafford Carlos in The Essential Galileo, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2008, p. 49-50.
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The first discovery with his newly created telescope that supported the heliocentric model

was the observation of the satellites of Jupiter. By January 1610, the optical power of Galileo’s

telescope was now twenty times strong, a rapid advancement from the 8x or 9x magnification he

had the year before. Galileo first encountered the moons of Jupiter on January 7, where he saw

three small stars in the immediate vicinity of Jupiter. Over the next several nights, Galileo

noticed modulations in the stars’ positions. Some stars would appear west of Jupiter and some to

the east. Furthermore, Galileo observed that the stars had varied in brightness over the course of

the week. On the 13th, a fourth star became visible; three stars were to the west and one to the

east of Jupiter. Finally, on the 15th only three stars remained to the west of Jupiter, which was a

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complete transposition from the night of the 7th. What Galileo discovered were the Medicean
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Planets that orbit Jupiter. Galileo makes two significant comments regarding the motion of the

Medicean planets. The first is that Galileo attributes the motion of the planets to orbits around
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Jupiter. He says,

In the first place, since they are sometimes behind and sometimes before Jupiter at
like distances and deviate from this planet towards the east and towards the west
only within very narrow limits of divergence, and since they accompany this
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planet when its motion is retrograde as well as when it is direct, no one can doubt
that they perform their revolutions around this planet while at the same time they
all together accomplish orbits of twelve years’ duration around the center of the
world.3

According to Galileo’s conclusions from his observations, the four Medicean planets

traverse the solar system as a unit. They orbit Jupiter, even while the planet moves in retrograde,

and by keeping their orbits around Jupiter, Jupiter’s moons also revolve around the Sun once

every 12 years—like Jupiter. Therefore, the discovery of the motion of the Medicean Planets

around Jupiter had profound implications not only for Jupiter but for the rest of the cosmos as

3
Ibid., 83.
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well. Galileo’s remarks reveal that, with this discovery, the Copernican model can now be on the

offensive against not only the Ptolemaic model of convoluted epicycles but even the acute model

of Tycho Brahe, who had the planets orbit the sun, and the sun orbit the earth. Galileo remarks:

Additionally, we have a notable and splendid argument to remove the scruple of

those who can tolerate the revolution of the planets around the sun in the
Copernican system, but are so disturbed by the motion of one moon around the
earth (while both accomplish an orbit of a year’s length around the sun) that they
think this constitution of the universe must be rejected as impossible. For now we
have not just one planet revolving around another while both traverse a vast orbit
around the sun, but four planets which our sense of sight presents to us circling
around Jupiter (like the moon around the earth) while the whole system travels
over a mighty orbit around the sun in the period of twelve years.4

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One of the objections to the heliocentric model was that if the Earth were to orbit the Sun,

then the Moon’s orbit could not, in addition to orbiting the Earth, also orbit the Sun with the
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Earth, and therefore be “left behind” in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. In short, the argument is

if the Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth cannot orbit the Sun. Since the Moon clearly orbits the
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Earth, the Earth cannot, by reason, orbit the Sun, no matter what the observational evidence may

imply. With the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites, Galileo could now wholly discredit the
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objection that the Earth could not orbit the Sun without also losing its Moon because Jupiter

orbits the Sun with its moons. In both the heliocentric and geocentric models, Jupiter moves

around a central body (the Sun in the former, the Earth in the latter). If Galileo could not explain

why the Earth did not leave its Moon in orbit, the Aristotelians were equally at a loss to say why

Jupiter held on to its satellites.5

One of the toughest challenges raised against the Copernican theory was the fact that

Mercury and Venus, like the Moon, should display phases since they lie between the Sun and the

4
Ibid., 83-84.
5
Shea, William. “Galileo’s Copernicanism: The science and the rhetoric” in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo,
ed. by Peter Machamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 221.
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Earth. Copernicus believed it was possible to see these phases with the naked eye. Galileo,

therefore, undertook the project of validating Copernicus’ claim with the help of his telescope. If

Venus did orbit the Sun, then not only would the planet undergo a series of phases, but it would

also vary in size. At its greatest distance from Earth, Venus would be seen as a perfectly round

disk, fully illuminated. As it moved toward the Earth it would grow in size until at quadrature

(corresponding to the first and third quarter of the moon) it would be half-illumined. When

Venus would be at perigee, the planet, theoretically, would become invisible (like the Moon

when it is new).6 A complete sequence of phases would be impossible under the Ptolemaic

system because Venus moved on an epicycle attached to a larger deferent circle whose center is

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always on the line that joins the Earth to the Sun. Under the Ptolemaic system, Venus would

never at any point be fully illumined.

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What did Galileo observe with his telescope? Sequential phases of Venus. Galileo, boldly
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asserting his position of the Copernican model, wrote to Father Christopher Clavius, S.J., on 30

December 1610 that Venus and all the other planets shine only by the light of the Sun and that

the Sun is “without any doubt the center of the great revolutions of all the planets.”7 The
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empirical evidence that Venus has phases was a fatal punch to the Ptolemaic model.

If Galileo’s observations of Jupiter’s moons and Venus’ phases injured the Ptolemaic

model, then it was Galileo’s analysis of sunspots that undermined Aristotelian cosmology. Like

the other astronomical observations already mentioned, Galileo began viewing sunspots in 1610.

Galileo was not the first to see sunspots, nor was he the first to conclude that the observed

anomalies were located on the Sun, or that the Sun rotated.8 Solar filters did not exist in Galileo’s

6
Ibid., 221-22.
7
Swerdlow, Noel M. “Galileo’s discoveries with the telescope and their evidence for the Copernican theory” in The
Cambridge Companion to Galileo, ed. by Peter Machamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 261.
8
Ibid., 262.
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day, so he needed a clever way to observe the Sun without looking straight into the eyepiece.

The best method was found by one of Galileo’s former students, Benedetto Castelli, who had the

idea of projecting the image of the Sun on a screen just behind the telescope.9

Another Jesuit father by the name of Christopher Scheiner sent a pamphlet titled Three

Letters on Sunspots to Marcus Welser in 1612 to be published under the pseudonym “Apelles

hiding behind the painting.”10 In this pamphlet, Scheiner discloses the conclusions of his

research on sunspots. Scheiner thought the Sun could not have spots on its surface that were

darker than the dark parts of the Moon, and because the spots did not return regularly to the same

positions showed that they were not carried by the rotation of the Sun. The Jesuit astronomer

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purported that the spots were small planets orbiting the Sun. Galileo was pulled into publishing
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his interpretations of sunspots after reading Scheiner’s pamphlet. Galileo could not understand

how someone could be so misguided in their conclusions, and therefore wrote his own retort
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titled, History and Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots, which he published in 1613. He

demonstrated with cunning geometrical prowess that the spots observed were on the surface (or

at least very near the surface). Aristotelianism held that the celestial spheres were composed of
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special, unchanging material called aether. Showing that the Sun experiences compositional

changes seemed, in the eyes of Galileo, to put to rest any credence to the Aristotelian notion that

the composition of heavenly bodies is extraterrestrial matter.

Galileo’s ingenuity lies not in what he discovered as much as in how he interpreted his

discoveries. Within a year after publishing the Starry Messenger, Galileo was the most

acclaimed natural philosopher in Europe.11 Indeed, Galileo’s impact on Europe is nothing less

9
Shea, 224.
10
Swerdlow, 262.
11
Ibid., 246.
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than astronomical, but what is more noteworthy is the effect Galileo’s discoveries had on

himself. Before his discoveries, Galileo was sympathetic to Copernicus and critical of Aristotle

and Ptolemy, but he had published nothing on these subjects.12 After his discoveries, however,

Galileo becomes the strongest endorser of the Copernican theory in Italy and the most

antagonistic to Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy anywhere. Galileo’s commitment

to the Copernican theory became explicit, too. In the Starry Messenger, for example, Galileo

unabashedly states that all the planets orbit the Sun. Galileo’s most important piece of

professional writing that defends the Copernican worldview, however, is his Dialogue

Concerning the Two Chief World Systems of 1632. It is the Dialogue more than any other writing

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that gets Galileo in hot water with the Inquisition, and, ultimately, the publication that leads to
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Galileo’s condemnation in 1633. In the Dialogue, which mirrors that of a Platonic dialectic,

Galileo argues explicitly that the Copernican model is a true description of nature. To better
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understand Galileo’s commitment to Copernicanism and how it would lead to the inevitable

fiasco with the Catholic hierarchy, a thorough examination of the Dialogue is in order.
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The Dialogue
The First Day of the Dialogue contrives a refutation of Aristotle’s assumption that the

Moon divides the universe into two sharply distinct regions, the terrestrial and the celestial. As

stated earlier, bodies in the celestial world were understood to be composed of a special kind of

matter, the aether. Furthermore, these bodies only went through one kind of change: uniform,

circular motion. Bodies on the Earth were susceptible to material corruption as well as an array

of different kinds of motion. Galileo makes this argument in the Dialogue through the voice of

Salviati, the character who endorses the Copernican model. Simplicio, an Aristotelian, states that

12
Ibid.

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