Page 291 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1592 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Galileo Galilei on Religion and Science

. . . though the Holy Scripture cannot err, neverthe- other means except the mouth of the Holy Spirit itself.
less some of its interpreters and expositors can However, I do not think it necessary that the same
sometimes err in various ways. One of these would God who furnished us with senses, language, and
be very serious and very frequent, namely, to want intellect would want to bypass their use and give us
to limit oneself always to the literal meaning of the by other means the information we can obtain from
words; for there would thus emerge not only various them.This applies especially to those sciences about
contradictions but also serious heresies and blas- which one can read only very small phrases and scat-
phemies, and it would be necessary to attribute to tered conclusions in the Scripture, as is particularly the
God feet, hands, and eyes, as well as bodily and case for astronomy, of which it contains such a small
human feelings like anger, regret, hate, and some- portion that one does not even find in it the names of
times even forgetfulness of things past and igno- all the planets; but if the first sacred writers had been
rance of future ones. thinking of persuading the people about the arrange-
I should believe that the authority of the HolyWrit ment and the movements of the heavenly bodies, they
has merely the aim of persuading men of those arti- would not have treated them so sparsely. . .
cles and propositions which are necessary for their sal- Source: Galileo’s Letter to Castelli, 21 December 1613. (1989). In M. A. Finocchiaro
vation and surpass all human reason, and could not (Ed.), The Galileo affair, a documentary history (pp. 49-50; 51-52), Berkeley: University
of California Press.
become credible through some other science or any

in new knowledge through contact with other peoples as difficult to accept. In the North the French Wars of Reli-
well as a reconsideration of the place of Europe in the gion (1562–1598), the wars between the Catholic Hab-
world, as evidenced by texts such as the English states- sburg ruling house and Protestant princes in Germany
man Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and the French and the Netherlands, and the struggle between Europe
essayist Michel de Montaigne’s essay Of Cannibals and theTurks led to a movement away from Renaissance
(printed 1580). Finally, new ideas could spread quickly ideals and the economic and social conditions that had
and reliably through printing, developed in Germany in given rise to them.Although humanism continued in the
the mid-fifteenth century. form of classical studies, courtly behavior, elite education,
The decline of the Renaissance followed the decline of and cultural movements in art, architecture, and literature,
the principles that animated it; just as the Renaissance its energy had been depleted and transformed by the reli-
reached different nations at different times, so its eclipse gious, social, and political experiments of the Protestant
occurred later in the North than in Italy. Events such as Reformation, the Counter Reformation (a reaffirmation
the invasion of Italy by King Charles VIII of France of the doctrine and structure of the Roman Catholic
(1494) and the ensuing six decades of warfare on the Church, partly in reaction to the growth of Protestantism),
peninsula, together with the loss of control of the Eastern and the artistic and architectural style of the baroque.
luxury trade and almost continuous war with the
Kenneth Bartlett
Ottoman Turks, sapped both the wealth and the confi-
dence of Italians. Also, the Protestant Reformation (a See also Art—European; Early Modern World; Leonardo
movement during the sixteenth century to reform the da Vinci; Machiavelli, Niccolo
Roman Catholic Church) caused a reaction within the
Roman Catholic Church that often manifested itself in
hostility to new or unorthodox ideas.The establishment Further Reading
of the Roman Inquisition (1542), the Index of Prohibited Aston, M. (Ed.). (1996). The panorama of the Renaissance. New York:
Thames & Hudson.
Books (1559), and the suppression of free inquiry in
Braudel, F. (1981). Civilization and capitalism in the fifteenth to eighteenth
schools and universities made dynamic new ideas more century:The structure of everyday life. New York: Harper & Row.