Galileo's Daughter (49 page)

The assembly placed the body at the new site, then returned to the little chapel and set about repeating the procedure—smashing the older brick container under the 1674 memorial Viviani had mounted for Galileo, and pulling out another wooden coffin. This one had apparently been damaged over time, its lid bashed in and littered with broken pieces of plaster. As the men dragged the bier from the bricks, they were startled to discover another almost identical wooden box lying directly beneath it. Galileo’s grave contained two coffins, two skeletons, and no lead nameplate on either one of them.

Galileo’s tomb in Santa Croce

Panic no doubt gripped several hearts at the prospect of being unable to decide which body deserved to be deposited in the new monument. But when the grand duke’s chief physician, accompanied by several professors of anatomy, stepped forward to examine the evidence, they accomplished their identification with reassuring ease. Only one of the skeletons could possibly have belonged to Galileo—the top one, because its bones were those of an old man, with the detached mandible containing only four teeth. The skeleton in the lower coffin, the experts all concurred, was unmistakably female. Although the woman had lain dead for at least as long a time as the man, if not longer, she had died at a much younger age.

The congregation divided itself solemnly in half, each group walking Galileo’s body partway through the basilica, so that as many participants as possible could share the honor of being his pallbearers. Then they carried the woman to the mausoleum, too, and they laid her in the sepulchre beside her father.

Once the shock of the discovery had dissipated into the silence of the great empty church, those attendants who remembered Viviani could unfurl the mystery for themselves. The disciple, driven to despair by his failure to pay the tribute he felt he owed his mentor, had given Galileo something dearer than bronze or marble to distinguish his grave.

Even now, no inscription on Galileo’s much-visited tomb in Santa Croce announces the presence of Suor Maria Celeste.

But still she is there.

IN GALILEO’S TIME

1543     Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) publishes
De revolutionibus,
and Andreas Vesalius (1514-64),
On the Fabric of the Human Body.

1545     Council of Trent convenes under Pope Paul III; first ten sessions last two years.

1551     Collegio Romano, or Pontifical Gregorian University, founded by Jesuits in Rome. Council of Trent reconvenes.

1559     First worldwide Index of Prohibited Books promulgated by the Roman Inquisition.

1562-63     Third convention and final sessions of the Council of Trent.

1564     Galileo is born in Pisa, February 15. Michelangelo Buonarroti dies in Florence, February 18. William Shakespeare is born in England, April 23.

1569     Cosimo I, duke of Florence, named grand duke of Tuscany by authority of Pope Pius V.

1572     Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) of Denmark observes a nova and concludes that changes could occur in the heavens.

1577     Studies of comets by Tycho convince him the heavens could not consist of solid spheres, though he rejects the Copernican system.

1581     Galileo enrolls at University of Pisa.

1582     Gregorian calendar replaces Julian in Catholic Europe.

1585     Galileo abandons studies at Pisa without a university degree.

1587     Ferdinando I becomes grand duke of Tuscany when his older brother, Francesco, dies of malaria.

1589     Galileo begins teaching at Pisa; develops a rudimentary thermometer; begins to study falling bodies. 1591 Vincenzio Galilei (father) dies.

1592     Galileo begins teaching at the University of Padua.

1600     Giordano Bruno burns at the stake in Rome. Virginia Galilei (daughter) is born in Padua.

1601     Livia Galilei (daughter) is born in Padua. Tycho Brahe dies.

1603     Prince Federico Cesi founds Lyncean Academy in Rome.

1604     New star appears in the heavens, generating debate and three public lectures by Galileo.

1605     Prince Cosimo de’ Medici takes instruction from Galileo.

1606     Galileo publishes treatise on geometric and military compass; Vincenzio Galilei (son) is born in Padua.

1607     Baldessar Capra publishes pirated Latin edition of Galileo’s instructions for geometric and military compass.

1608     Hans Lippershey invents a refracting telescope in Holland. Prince Cosimo marries Maria Maddalena, archduchess of Austria.

1609     Grand Duke Ferdinando I dies; Cosimo II succeeds him. Galileo improves telescope, observes and measures mountains on the Moon. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) publishes first two laws of planetary motion.

1610     Galileo discovers the moons of Jupiter.
The Starry Messenger
is published. Galileo is appointed chief mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II.

1611     Galileo visits Rome, is elected to membership in the Lyncean Academy.

1612    
Bodies That Stay Atop Water or Move Within It
is published in Florence.

1613     Prince Cesi publishes Galileo’s
Sunspot Letters;
Virginia and Livia Galilei (daughters) enter the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri.

1614     Virginia and Livia Galilei assume religious habit.

1616     Galileo writes his “Theory on the Tides.” Edict issued in Rome against Copernican doctrine. Virginia Galilei professes her vows as Suor Maria Celeste. Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes die.

1617     Livia Galilei professes vows as Suor Arcangela.

1618     Three comets appear, generating interest and debate; Jesuit father Orazio Grassi lectures on comets at Collegio Romano; Thirty Years’ War begins.

1619     Grassi’s account of the comets is published anonymously; Mario Guiducci delivers
Discourse on the Comets,
provoking pseudonymous
Astronomical and Philosophical Balance.
Kepler publishes third law of planetary motion. Galileo’s mistress, Marina Gamba, dies. Vincenzio Galilei (son) is legitimized.

1623     Galileo’s sister Virginia dies. Maffeo Cardinal Barberini becomes Pope Urban VIII. Galileo dedicates
The Assayer
to him.

1624     Galileo travels to Rome for papal audience.

1628     William Harvey (1578-1657) in England describes the circulation of the blood.

1629     Bubonic plague enters northern Italy from Germany.

1630     Galileo visits Rome to obtain printing license for his
Dialogue.
Prince Cesi dies. Bubonic plague strikes Florence.

1631     Michelangelo Galilei (brother) dies of plague in Germany.

1632     Galileo publishes
Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems:
Ptolemaic and Copernican.

1633     Galileo stands trial for heresy by the Holy Office of the Inquisition;
Dialogue
is prohibited.

1634     Suor Maria Celeste Galilei dies in Arcetri on April 2.

1636    
Letter to Grand Duchess Cristina
is published in Holland, in Latin and Italian.

1637     Galileo discovers lunar libration, loses his eyesight.

1638     Louis Elzevir publishes Galileo’s
Two New Sciences
in Leiden, Holland.

1641     Vincenzio Galilei draws his father’s design for a pendulum clock.

1642     Galileo dies in Arcetri, January 8. Isaac Newton is born in England, December 25.

1643     Galileo’s student Evangelista Torricelli (1608-47) invents mercury barometer.

1644     Pope Urban VIII dies.

1648     Thirty Years’ War ends.

1649     Vincenzio Galilei (son) dies in Florence, May 15.

1654     Grand Duke Ferdinando II improves on Galileo’s thermometer by closing the glass tube to keep air out.

1655-56     Christiaan Huygens (1629-95) improves telescope, discovers largest of Saturn’s moons, sees Saturn’s “companions” as a ring, patents pendulum clock.

1659     Suor Arcangela dies at San Matteo, June 14.

1665     Jean-Dominique Cassini (1625-1712) discovers and times the rotation of Jupiter and Mars.

1669     Sestilia Bocchineri Galilei dies.

1670     Grand Duke Ferdinando II dies, succeeded by his only surviving son, Cosimo III.

1676     Ole Roemer (1644-1710) uses eclipses of Jupiter’s moons to determine the speed of light; Cassini discovers gap in Saturn’s rings.

1687     Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation are published in his
Principia.

1705     Edmond Halley (1656-1742) studies comets, realizes they orbit the Sun, predicts return of a comet later named in his honor.

1714     Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) develops mercury thermometer with accurate scale for scientific purposes.

1718     Halley observes that even the fixed stars move with almost imperceptible “proper motion” over long periods of time.

1728     English astronomer James Bradley (1693-1762) provides first evidence for the Earth’s motion through space based on the aberration of starlight.

1755     Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) discerns the true shape of the Milky Way, identifies the Andromeda nebula as a separate galaxy.

1758     “Halley’s comet” returns.

1761     Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-65) realizes Venus has an atmosphere.

1771     Comet hunter Charles Messier (1730-1817) identifies a list of noncometary objects, many of which later prove to be distant galaxies.

1781     William Herschel (1738-1822) discovers the planet Uranus.

1810     Napoleon Bonaparte, having conquered the Papal States, transfers the Roman archives, including those of the Holy Office with all records of Galileo’s trial, to Paris.

1822     Holy Office permits publication of books that teach Earth’s motion.

1835     Galileo’s
Dialogue
is dropped from Index of Prohibited Books.

1838     Stellar parallax, and with it the distance to the stars, is detected independently by astronomers working in South Africa, Russia, and Germany; Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784-1846) publishes the first account of this phenomenon, for the star 61 Cygni.

1843     Galileo’s trial documents are returned to Italy.

1846     Neptune and its largest moon are discovered by predictions and observations of astronomers working in several countries. 1851 Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault (1819-68) in Paris demonstrates the rotation of the Earth by means of a two-hundred-foot pendulum.

1861     Kingdom of Italy proclaimed, uniting most states and duchies.

1862     French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-95) publishes germ theory of disease.

1877     Asaph Hall (1829-1907) discovers the moons of Mars.

1890-1910     Complete works,
Le Opere di Galileo Galilei,
are edited and published in Florence by Antonio Favaro.

1892     University of Pisa awards Galileo an honorary degree—250 years after his death.

1893    
Providentissimus Deus
of Pope Leo XIII cites Saint Augustine, taking the same position Galileo did in his
Letter to Grand
Duchess Cristina,
to show that the Bible did not aim to teach science.

1894     Pasteur’s student Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943) discovers bubonic plague bacillus and prepares serum to combat it.

1905     Albert Einstein (1879-1955) publishes his special theory of relativity, establishing the speed of light as an absolute limit.

1908     George Ellery Hale (1868-1938) discerns the magnetic nature of sunspots.

1917     Willem de Sitter (1872-1934) intuits the expansion of the universe from Einstein’s equations.