Galileo by David Wootton

Author:David Wootton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780300197297
Publisher: Yale University Press

Diodati had written to Galileo in 1620 asking if he had plans for publication, and offering to help him get round any ‘local obstacles’ – news of the condemnation of Copernicanism was only now beginning to circulate amongst French intellectuals.55 Galileo replied making clear that he was prevented from publishing.56 The surviving correspondence would seem to suggest that there was no further contact between Galileo and Diodati for five years, but it seems unlikely that matters were really allowed to rest there. What Allacci reports is exactly what one would expect: a semi-clandestine visit by Diodati to discuss the possibilities of publishing abroad. If he came in the autumn of 1622 he may have brought with him a copy of Campanella's Defence of Galileo, written in 1616, before the condemnation of Galileo, but published in Frankfurt in the spring of 1622, with a suitable cover story absolving Campanella from all responsibility.57 This will have provided the model for a planned publication by Galileo: all he need do was supply Diodati with a revised version of his discourse on the tides, one that could be passed off as having been written before 1616. Diodati could look after the rest (as he did in 1636 with the publication of Galileo's letter to Christina, written in 1615). Galileo was evidently intending to implement a plan of this sort when he was overtaken by events. In later years, any evidence relating to it will have been carefully destroyed, if not by Galileo and Diodati, then by Viviani, for such evidence would have been proof that Galileo had never intended to respect either the condemnation of Copernicanism or the injunction of 1616.

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