attributed to Copernicus, that the Earth moves around the Sun and that the Sun is stationary in the center of the world and does not move from east to west, is contrary to the Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we have written and subscribed these presents with our own hand this 26th day of May 1616.
Silenced but exonerated, Galileo confined himself for the next several years to the safe application of his great discoveries, such as using the moons of Jupiter to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea—especially as success might win him the lucrative prize offered by the king of Spain—and studying the companion bodies of Saturn to try to determine their true size and shape.
On October 4, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, Galileo heard his elder daughter profess her vows at the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, about a mile from Florence, where she had already lived for three years. It is possible that when Galileo first arranged for his girls’ entry into the convent, he had only their immediate future in mind, and not a lifetime plan. Nevertheless, no husbands had been found.
The form of life of the Order of the Poor Sisters which the blessed Francis founded is this: to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, by living in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter 7]
At the ceremony of her investiture Virginia relinquished her given name to be known henceforward as Suor Maria Celeste— the name God had chosen for her and whispered in her heart.
From then on, it shall not be permitted her to go outside the monastery, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter II ]
The next autumn, on October 28, 1617, Livia followed her sister to become Suor Arcangela. Both girls would spend the rest of their lives at San Matteo.
He Himself deigned and willed to be placed in a sepulchre of stone. And it pleased Him to be so entombed for forty hours. So, my dear Sisters, you follow Him. For after obedience, poverty, and pure chastity, you have holy enclosure to hold on to, enclosure in which you can live for forty years either more or less, and in which you will die. You are, therefore, already now in your sepulchre of stone, that is, your vowed enclosure, [TESTAMENT OF SAINT COLETTE]
In a desultory manner, Galileo continued to share his abortive theory on the tides with friends in Italy and abroad. “I send you a treatise on the causes of the tides,” Galileo replied in 1618 to a request from Austrian archduke Leopold for a sample of his work, “which I wrote at the time when the theologians were thinking of prohibiting Copernicus’s book and the doctrine enounced therein, which I then held to be true, until it pleased those gentlemen to prohibit the work and to declare the opinion to be false and contrary to Scripture. Now, knowing as I do that it behooves us to obey the decisions of the authorities and to believe them, since they are guided by a higher insight than any to which my humble mind can of itself attain, I consider this treatise which I send you to be merely a poetical conceit, or a dream . . . this fancy of mine . . . this chimera.”
[VIII]
Conjecture
here among shadous
Galileo’s collected correspondence brims with allusions to illnesses that often kept him from replying sooner to someone or forced him to close a letter in haste. Changes in the weather “molested” him, his first biographer noted, and he typically fell sick in spring or fall, or both, about every other year throughout his adult life. Although Galileo rarely elaborated on the nature of these health crises, he may have suffered from some form of relapsing fever contracted during the cave incident in Padua. Or he may have been a victim of malaria or typhoid, a common enough plight in Italy during that period. Another possible explanation for his pattern of repetitive malaise is an unspecified rheumatic disease, possibly gout, which could have
Silenced but exonerated, Galileo confined himself for the next several years to the safe application of his great discoveries, such as using the moons of Jupiter to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea—especially as success might win him the lucrative prize offered by the king of Spain—and studying the companion bodies of Saturn to try to determine their true size and shape.
On October 4, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, Galileo heard his elder daughter profess her vows at the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, about a mile from Florence, where she had already lived for three years. It is possible that when Galileo first arranged for his girls’ entry into the convent, he had only their immediate future in mind, and not a lifetime plan. Nevertheless, no husbands had been found.
The form of life of the Order of the Poor Sisters which the blessed Francis founded is this: to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, by living in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter 7]
At the ceremony of her investiture Virginia relinquished her given name to be known henceforward as Suor Maria Celeste— the name God had chosen for her and whispered in her heart.
From then on, it shall not be permitted her to go outside the monastery, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter II ]
The next autumn, on October 28, 1617, Livia followed her sister to become Suor Arcangela. Both girls would spend the rest of their lives at San Matteo.
He Himself deigned and willed to be placed in a sepulchre of stone. And it pleased Him to be so entombed for forty hours. So, my dear Sisters, you follow Him. For after obedience, poverty, and pure chastity, you have holy enclosure to hold on to, enclosure in which you can live for forty years either more or less, and in which you will die. You are, therefore, already now in your sepulchre of stone, that is, your vowed enclosure, [TESTAMENT OF SAINT COLETTE]
In a desultory manner, Galileo continued to share his abortive theory on the tides with friends in Italy and abroad. “I send you a treatise on the causes of the tides,” Galileo replied in 1618 to a request from Austrian archduke Leopold for a sample of his work, “which I wrote at the time when the theologians were thinking of prohibiting Copernicus’s book and the doctrine enounced therein, which I then held to be true, until it pleased those gentlemen to prohibit the work and to declare the opinion to be false and contrary to Scripture. Now, knowing as I do that it behooves us to obey the decisions of the authorities and to believe them, since they are guided by a higher insight than any to which my humble mind can of itself attain, I consider this treatise which I send you to be merely a poetical conceit, or a dream . . . this fancy of mine . . . this chimera.”
[VIII]
Conjecture
here among shadous
Galileo’s collected correspondence brims with allusions to illnesses that often kept him from replying sooner to someone or forced him to close a letter in haste. Changes in the weather “molested” him, his first biographer noted, and he typically fell sick in spring or fall, or both, about every other year throughout his adult life. Although Galileo rarely elaborated on the nature of these health crises, he may have suffered from some form of relapsing fever contracted during the cave incident in Padua. Or he may have been a victim of malaria or typhoid, a common enough plight in Italy during that period. Another possible explanation for his pattern of repetitive malaise is an unspecified rheumatic disease, possibly gout, which could have
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