Authors: Bertolt Brecht
REVELLER
The procession!
(
The litter bearers speedily joggle out the King of Hungary. The Spectators turn and look at the first float of the procession, which now makes its appearance. It bears a gigantic figure of Galileo, holding in one hand an open Bible with the pages crossed out. The other hand points to the Bible, and the head mechanically turns from side to side as if to say “No! No!”
)
A LOUD VOICE
Galileo, the Bible killer!
(
The laughter from the market place becomes uproarious. The Monk comes flying from the market place followed by delighted Children)
Scene Ten
The depths are hot, the heights are chill
The streets are loud, the court is still
.
Ante-Chamber and staircase in the Medicean palace in Florence. Galileo, with a book under his arm, waits with his Daughter to be admitted to the presence of the Prince
.
VIRGINIA
They are a long time.
GALILEO
Yes.
VIRGINIA
Who is that funny looking man? (
She indicates the Informer who has entered casually and seated himself in the background, taking no apparent notice of Galileo)
GALILEO
I don’t know.
VIRGINIA
It’s not the first time I have seen him around. He gives me the creeps.
GALILEO
Nonsense. We’re in Florence, not among robbers in the mountains of Corsica.
VIRGINIA
Here comes the Rector.
(
The Rector comes down the stairs)
GALILEO
Gaffone is a bore. He attaches himself to you.
(
The Rector passes, scarcely nodding)
GALILEO
My eyes are bad today. Did he acknowledge us?
VIRGINIA
Barely. (
Pause
) What’s in your book? Will they say it’s heretical?
GALILEO
You hang around church too much. And getting up at dawn and scurrying to mass is ruining your skin. You pray for me, don’t you?
(
A Man comes down the stairs)
VIRGINIA
Here’s Mr. Matti. You designed a machine for his Iron Foundries.
MATTI
How were the squabs, Mr. Galilei? (
Low
) My brother and I had a good laugh the other day. He picked up a racy pamphlet against the Bible somewhere. It quoted you.
GALILEO
The squabs, Matti, were wonderful, thank you again. Pamphlets I know nothing about. The Bible and Homer are my favorite reading.
MATTI
No necessity to be cautious with me, Mr. Galilei. I am on your side. I am not a man who knows about the motions of the stars, but you have championed the freedom to teach new things. Take that mechanical cultivator they have in Germany which you described to me. I can tell you, it will never be used in this country. The same circles that are hampering you now will forbid the physicians at Bologna to cut up corpses for research. Do you know, they have such things as money markets in Amsterdam and in London? Schools for business, too. Regular papers with news. Here we are not even free to make money. I have a stake in your career. They are against iron foundries because they say the gathering of so many workers in one place fosters immorality! If they ever try anything, Mr. Galilei, remember you have friends in all walks of life including an iron founder. Good luck to you. (
He goes)
GALILEO
Good man, but need he be so affectionate in public? His voice carries. They will always claim me as their spiritual leader particularly in places where it doesn’t help me at all. I have written a book about the mechanics of the firmament, that is all. What they do or don’t do with it is not my concern.
VIRGINIA
(
loud
) If people only knew how you disagreed with those goings-on all over the country last All Fools day.
GALILEO
Yes. Offer honey to a bear, and lose your arm if the beast is hungry.
VIRGINIA
(
low
) Did the prince ask you to come here today?
GALILEO
I sent word I was coming. He will want the book, he has paid for it. My health hasn’t been any too good lately. I may accept Sagredo’s invitation to stay with him in Padua for a few weeks.
VIRGINIA
You couldn’t manage without your books.
GALILEO
Sagredo has an excellent library.
VIRGINIA
We haven’t had this month’s salary yet –
GALILEO
Yes. (
The Cardinal Inquisitor passes down the staircase. He bows deeply in answer to Galileo’s bow
) What is he doing in Florence? If they try to do anything to me, the new Pope will meet them with an iron NO. And the Prince is my pupil, he would never have me extradited.
VIRGINIA
Psst. The Lord Chamberlain.
(
The Lord Chamberlain comes down the stairs)
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
His Highness had hoped to find time for you, Mr. Galilei. Unfortunately, he has to leave immediately to judge the parade at the Riding Academy. On what business did you wish to see His Highness?
GALILEO
I wanted to present my book to His Highness.
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
How are your eyes today?
GALILEO
So, so. With His Highness’ permission, I am dedicating the book …
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
Your eyes are a matter of great concern to His Highness. Could it be that you have been looking too long and too often through your marvelous tube? (
He leaves without accepting the book)
VIRGINIA
(
greatly agitated
) Father, I am afraid.
GALILEO
He didn’t take the book, did he? (
Low and resolute
) Keep a straight face. We are not going home, but to the house of the lens-grinder. There is a coach and horses in his backyard. Keep your eyes to the front, don’t look back at that man. (
They start. The Lord Chamberlain comes back)
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
Oh, Mr. Galilei, His Highness has just charged me to inform you that the Florentine Court is no longer in a position to oppose the request of the Holy Inquisition to interrogate you in Rome.
Scene Eleven
The Pope
A chamber in the Vatican. The Pope, Urban VIII – formerly Cardinal Barberini – is giving audience to the Cardinal Inquisitor. The trampling and shuffling of many feet is heard throughout the scene from the adjoining corridors. During the scene the Pope is being robed for the conclave he is about to attend: at the beginning of the scene he is plainly Barberini, but as the scene proceeds he is more and more obscured by grandiose vestments
.
POPE
No! No! No!
INQUISITOR
(
referring to the owners of the shuffling feet
) Doctors of all chairs from the universities, representatives of the special orders of the Church, representatives of the clergy as a whole who have come believing with child-like faith in the word of God as set forth in the Scriptures, who have come to hear Your Holiness
confirm their faith: and Your Holiness is really going to tell them that the Bible can no longer be regarded as the alphabet of truth?
POPE
I will not set myself up against the multiplication table. No!
INQUISITOR
Ah, that is what these people say, that it is the multiplication table. Their cry is, “The figures compel us,” but where do these figures come from? Plainly they come from doubt. These men doubt everything. Can society stand on doubt and not on faith? “Thou art my master, but I doubt whether it is for the best.” “This is my neighbor’s house and my neighbor’s wife, but why shouldn’t they belong to me?” After the plague, after the new war, after the unparalleled disaster of the Reformation, your dwindling flock look to their shepherd, and now the mathematicians turn their tubes on the sky and announce to the world that you have not the best advice about the heavens either – up to now your only uncontested sphere of influence. This Galilei started meddling in machines at an early age. Now that men in ships are venturing on the great oceans – I am not against that of course – they are putting their faith in a brass bowl they call a compass and not in Almighty God.
POPE
This man is the greatest physicist of our time. He is the light of Italy, and not just any muddle-head.
INQUISITOR
Would we have had to arrest him otherwise? This bad man knows what he is doing, not writing his books in Latin, but in the jargon of the market place.
POPE
(
occupied with the shuffling feet
) That was not in the best of taste. (
A pause
) These shuffling feet are making me nervous.
INQUISITOR
May they be more telling than my words, Your Holiness. Shall all these go from you with doubt in their hearts?
POPE
This man has friends. What about Versailles? What about the Viennese court? They will call Holy Church a cesspool for defunct ideas. Keep your hands off him.
INQUISITOR
In practice it will never get far. He is a man of the flesh. He would soften at once.
POPE
He has more enjoyment in him than any man I ever saw. He loves eating and drinking and thinking. To excess. He indulges in thinking-bouts! He cannot say no to an old wine or a new thought. (
Furious
) I do not want a condemnation of physical facts. I do not want to hear battle cries: Church, church, church! Reason, reason, reason! (
Pause
) These shuffling feet are intolerable. Has the whole world come to my door?
INQUISITOR
Not the whole world, Your Holiness. A select gathering of the faithful.
(
Pause)
POPE
(
exhausted
) It is clearly understood: he is not to be tortured.
(
Pause
) At the very most, he may be shown the instruments.
INQUISITOR
That will be adequate, Your Holiness. Mr. Galilei understands machinery.
(
The eyes of Barberini look helplessly at the Cardinal Inquisitor from under the completely assembled panoply of Pope Urban VIII)
Scene Twelve
June twenty second, sixteen thirty three
,
A momentous date for you and me
.
Of all the days that was the one
An age of reason could have begun
.
Again the garden of the Florentine Ambassador at Rome, where Galileo’s assistants wait the news of the trial. The Little Monk and Federzoni are attempting to concentrate on a game of chess. Virginia kneels in a corner, praying and counting her beads
.
LITTLE MONK
The Pope didn’t even grant him an audience.
FEDERZONI
No more scientific discussions.
ANDREA
The “Discorsi” will never be finished. The sum of his findings. They will kill him.
FEDERZONI
(
stealing a glance at him
) Do you really think so?
ANDREA
He will never recant.
(
Silence)
LITTLE MONK
You know when you lie awake at night how your mind fastens on to something irrelevant. Last night I kept thinking: if only they would let him take his little stone in with him, the appeal-to-reason-pebble that he always carried in his pocket.
FEDERZONI
In the room
they’ll
take him to, he won’t have a pocket.
ANDREA
But he will not recant.
LITTLE MONK
How can they beat the truth out of a man who gave his sight in order to see?
FEDERZONI
Maybe they can’t.
(
Silence)
ANDREA
(
speaking about Virginia
) She is praying that he will recant.
FEDERZONI
Leave her alone. She doesn’t know whether she’s on her head or on her heels since they got hold of her. They brought her Father Confessor from Florence. (
The Informer of Scene Ten enters)
INFORMER
Mr. Galilei will be here soon. He may need a bed.
FEDERZONI
Have they let him out?
INFORMER
Mr. Galilei is expected to recant at five o’clock. The big bell of Saint Marcus will be rung and the complete text of his recantation publicly announced.
ANDREA
I don’t believe it.
INFORMER
Mr. Galilei will be brought to the garden gate at the back of the house, to avoid the crowds collecting in the street. (
He goes)
(
Silence)
ANDREA
The moon is an earth because the light of the moon is not her own. Jupiter is a fixed star, and four moons turn around Jupiter, therefore we are not shut in by crystal shells. The sun is the pivot of our world, therefore the earth is not the center. The earth moves, spinning about the sun. And he showed us. You can’t make a man unsee what he has seen.
(
Silence)
FEDERZONI
Five o’clock is one minute.
(
Virginia prays louder)
ANDREA
Listen all of you, they are murdering the truth.
(
He stops up his ears with his fingers. The two other pupils do the same. Federzoni goes over to the Little Monk, and all of them stand absolutely still in cramped positions. Nothing happens. No bell sounds. After a silence, filled with the murmur of Virginia’s prayers, Federzoni runs to the wall to look at the clock. He turns around, his expression changed. He shakes his head. They drop their hands)
FEDERZONI
No. No bell. It is three minutes after.