Galileo's Daughter (23 page)

Although Suor Maria Celeste could not leave San Matteo to attend any of her brother’s nuptial festivities, she determined to cater at least part of the wedding feast, to spare her father yet another financial burden. “Here then is a list of the more costly items that we will need for making a platter of pastries,” she wrote him on January 4, enclosing a short shopping list of pricey staples— white sugar, almonds, and fine confectioners’ sugar—on a small separate square of paper, “leaving the less expensive ingredients to me. After this, Sire, you will be able to see if you want me to cook other sweet things for you, such as savories and the like; because I firmly believe you would spend less this way than buying them already prepared by the grocer’s shop, and we will apply ourselves to making them with the utmost possible care.”

As for the bride’s gift, “My thoughts lean toward sewing her a beautiful apron,” Suor Maria Celeste said later in the same letter, “so as to give her something that would be useful, and not require a great expenditure on our part, since we could do all the work ourselves; not to mention that we have no idea how to fashion the high collars and ruffs that ladies are wearing nowadays.

“I might think I had blundered, Sire,” she added, “asking your opinion on these many trifles, if I were not absolutely certain that you, in small details just as in great matters, know far more than we nuns do.”

For his own gift, Galileo helped the newlyweds buy a putty-colored house with a garden and courtyard on the Costa San Giorgio, partway up the road that ascended from Florence to Arcetri.

The month after the wedding, in the course of Galileo’s continuing correspondence with his faithful friend Castelli, the monk raised the old subject of the solar spots. And Galileo, who prided himself on having long since discovered and published everything worth saying about sunspots, presently began to see a new significance in their behavior that could confirm the Copernican world system. Within a few months, the sunspots would light Galileo’s way back to his long-neglected
Dialogue.

Castelli, age fifty, now lived in Rome, where Pope Urban VIII had summoned him as a specialist in hydraulics to supervise water and drainage projects around the Holy City. Urban had performed the same kind of consulting work himself years before, when he regulated the waters of Lake Trasimeno for Pope Clement VIII, so he recognized Castelli’s expertise. While in Rome, Castelli also taught physics at the college called the Sapienza, and wrote a book in 1628 about how to measure running water. He sent Galileo a copy for comment, and during this exchange, late in February 1629, Castelli mentioned the imminent publication of a major new text on sunspots by Galileo’s old rival, Father Christopher Scheiner—the “Apelles” of the
Sunspot Letters.
(Printing problems, however, delayed the appearance of Scheiner’s book,
Rosa Ursina,
for another two years, until April of 1631.)

Father Christopher Scheiner

Castelli also detailed recent observations of a gigantic sunspot that called attention to itself over a period of several weeks. The spot had crossed the body of the Sun, disappearing at length around its western limb on February 9, only to reappear a fortnight later—still recognizable—on February 24, on the Sun’s eastern horizon.

The thought of Scheiner’s reprise of sunspots must have nettled Galileo, for he denounced the forthcoming book in his April correspondence, predicting an assortment of errors and irrelevancies. In private, however, he perused his old sunspot files to see what, if anything, he might have missed before. And indeed he had missed something: He had overlooked the odd way the spots traversed the Sun over the course of the year. Their path appeared occasionally to cut straight across the Sun’s middle, and at other times to trace an upward or a downward slanting arc. Galileo surmised, toward the summer of 1629, that the spots probably stayed a steady course around the Sun’s equator all the time. They merely
appeared
to trek uphill or down as the seasons changed because of the annual revolution of the tilted Earth around the also-tilted Sun.

The Sun thus offered its own physical evidence in support of Copernicus, compounding the testimony of the tides.

What a blow to think that Scheiner, who had foolishly mistaken sunspots for stars before Galileo corrected him, now stood ready to publish this monumental discovery! The shock impelled Galileo back to his unfinished manuscript. If he needed further incentive, he could look to the projected income from sales of the finished book, for his new daughter-in-law was already pregnant, his son still unemployed, and Suor Maria Celeste anxious to improve the quality of her life through the purchase of private quarters in the convent.

  MOST BELOVED LORD FATHER

THE DISCOMFORT I HAVE ENDURED ever since I came to live in this house, for want of a cell of my own, I know that you know, Sire, at least in part, and now I shall more clearly explain it to you, telling you that two or three years ago I was compelled by necessity to leave the one small cell we had, for which we paid our novice mistress (according to the custom we nuns observe) thirty-six
scudi,
and give it over totally to Suor Arcangela, so that (as much as possible) she could distance herself from this same mistress, who, tormented to distraction by her habitual moods, posed a threat, I feared, to Suor Arcangela, who often finds interaction with others unbearable; beyond that, Suor Arcangela’s nature being very different from mine and rather eccentric, it pays for me to acquiesce to her in many things, in order to be able to live in the kind of peace and unity befitting the intense love we bear each other. As a result I spend every night in the disturbing company of the mistress (although I get through the nights easily enough with the help of the Lord, who suffers me to undergo these tribulations undoubtedly for my own good) and I pass the days practically a pilgrim, having no place whatsoever where I can retreat for one hour on my own. I do not yearn for large or very beautiful quarters, but only for a little bit of space, exactly like the tiny room that has just become available, now that a nun who desperately needs money wants to sell it; and, thanks to Suor Luisa’s having spoken well on my behalf, this nun prefers me over any of the others offering to buy it. But because its price is 35
scudi,
while I have only ten, which Suor Luisa kindly gave me, plus the five I expect from my income, I cannot take possession of the room, and I rather fear I may lose it, Sire, if you do not assist me with the remaining amount, which is 20
scudi.

I explain this need to you, Sire, with a daughter’s security and without ceremony, so as not to offend that loving tenderness I have experienced so often. I will only repeat that this is of the greatest necessity, on account of my having been reduced to the state in which I find myself, and because, loving me the way that I know you love me, and desiring my happiness, you can well imagine how this step will bring me the greatest satisfaction and pleasure, of a proper and honest sort, as all I seek is a little quiet and solitude. You might tell me, Sire, that to make up the sum I require, I could avail myself of the 30
scudi
of yours that the convent is still holding: to which I respond (aside from the fact that I could not lay claim to that money quickly enough in this extreme case, as the nun selling the room faces dire straits) that you promised the Mother Abbess you would not ask her for those funds until such time as the convent enjoyed some relief from the constraint of constant expenditures; given all that, I do not think you will forsake me, Sire, in doing me this great charitable service, which I beg of you for the love of God, numbering myself now among the neediest paupers locked in prison, and not only needy, I say, but also ashamed, since I would not dare to speak so openly of my distress to your face: no less to Vincenzio; but only by resorting to this letter, Sire, can I appeal with every confidence, knowing that you will want and be able to help me. And here to close I send you regards with all my love, and also to Vincenzio and his bride. May the Lord bless you and keep you happy always.

FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 8TH DAY OF JULY 1629.

Most affectionate daughter,

S.M. Coloste
  

The novice mistress, from whom Suor Maria Celeste and Suor Arcangela purchased their first small room for thirty-six
scudi,
had been chosen by the abbess as the one to “form them in holy living and becoming behavior,” according to the practice of the order. But the mistress, who is never mentioned by name in any of Suor Maria Celeste’s letters, herself abused the Rule because of serious emotional disturbances that provoked her to constant prattling.

The Sisters must keep silence from the hour of Compline until Terce.
. . . Let them also be silent continually in the church, in the dormitory,
[RULE OF SAINT CLARE,
chapter V
]

Most of the residents of San Matteo slept in a common dormitory, though the convent contained numerous private chambers that could be bought for a price—over and above the dowry a nun’s family members paid to the monastery, and in addition to the allowance they meted out to her for living expenses. In this sense, although every Poor Clare lived in poverty, some lived more poorly than others. And yet, because the sisters dined together and shared the same food, the convent’s income from the sale of private quarters served to improve the fare for all.

It may not be allowed any Sister to send out letters, or to receive
anything, or to give anything outside the monastery without permission
of the Abbess. Nor is it allowed to have anything which
the Abbess has not given or permitted. But if anything should be
sent to a Sister by her relatives or by others, the Abbess should have
it given to the Sister. Then, if she needs it, she may use it; otherwise,
let her charitably give it over to a Sister in need. If, however,
any money would be sent to a Sister, the Abbess with the advice of
the Discreets should have provision made for her in those things
she may need,
[RULE OF SAINT CLARE,
chapter VIII
]

Galileo sent Suor Maria Celeste the twenty
scudi,
naturally, but her living situation held even more complexity and danger than the self-conscious, convoluted language of her request could indicate. In fact she required several months to resolve her plight and find the courage to explain the full chain of events involving the money, the mistress, and the cell to her father, who had resumed his ruminations on the two chief systems of the world.

“And to give you some news of my studies,” he wrote on October 29 to his lawyer friend Elia Diodati in Paris, ‘you must know that a month ago I took up again my
Dialogue
about the tides, put aside for three years on end, and by the grace of God have got on the right path, so that if I can keep on this winter I hope to bring the work to an end and immediately publish it.” The two men had met when Diodati visited Florence in 1620 and had maintained an intellectual correspondence ever since. To Diodati, who had been born in Italy but moved first to Geneva and then to Paris because of his family’s Protestant faith, Galileo could be perfectly blunt about his book’s pro-Copernican slant. “In this, besides the material on the tides, there will be inserted many other problems and a most ample confirmation of the Copernican system by showing the nullity of all that had been brought by Tycho and others to the contrary. The work will be quite large and full of many novelties, which by reason of the freedom of dialogue I shall have scope to introduce without drudgery or affectation.”