An Interim Report on a Census of Galileo's Sunspot Letters

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)Galileo's fourth book, Sunspot letters (Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari [Rome: Giacomo Mascardi, 1613]), has not had the attention it deserves. Only in 2010 did a complete English translation finally appear, bolstered by an excellent study of his controversy with the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner in which the book played a central role.1 Otherwise, it has attracted attention recently mainly for its plates.2 In addition to the dispute with Scheiner which no doubt helped to change the initially positive attitude of Jesuit scientists to Galileo, Sunspot letters more than his Dialogue on the two chief world systems caused his troubles with the Roman Inquisition. Heavily censored before publication, very possibly by that body, the condemnation by the Inquisition of two propositions allegedly drawn from it undergirded the notorious precept given Galileo in 1616. It ordered him not to consider Copernicus's ideas in any manner whatsover (quovis modo). To judge from the censoring of the book, the condemnation rested on Galileo's use of scripture, not his allegiance to Copernicus.3Given the book's importance to Galileo's career and its relative neglect, I have undertaken a census of copies, along the lines of Owen Gingerich's monumental study of Copernicus's De revolutionibus. To compensate in part for that neglect and to draw more attention to the book - as well as the fact that completing the census will take years - this article offers an interim report on the eighty-five copies thus far examined, representing about 42.5% of the copies certainly known and between 4% and 6% of those originally printed (see below). This is a sufficient number to allow tentative conclusions both about the publication history and also about how the book has been collected. For each copy, I have given a brief but to the degree possible exhaustive physical description, tried to trace provenance, and finally, made a note of any annotations. This last point gave Gingerich his most important clue to the fate of De revolutionibus. It has not thus far done the same for Galileo's book, except for one heavily annotated copy now in the British Library that will be reserved for separate treatment.Despite the provisional nature of the results, one hypothesis about the book's fate already suggests itself. Although never officially banned - the suspension by the Congregation of the Index of Copernicus's De revolutionibus shortly after Galileo received his precept failed to mention any of Galileo's books - the book's low survival rate may mean that it was unofficially suppressed.4 Thus far, I have certainly identified 200 copies, plus about a hundred others known from auctions and sales from the eighteenth century forward, the precise relationship between which and those securely identified is difficult to work out. Taking perhaps seventy-five as the total of this second group allowing for multiple sales of the same book as well as some number of them appearing among the certainties beyond the copies in the two sets already linked to one another, the total number known to survive is about 275. This number is an underestimate, since I have yet to consult in person 100 of the libraries (sixty-five of which have at least partial online catalogues) on the lists of those holding either Copernicus, De revolutionibus or Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo.5 Allowance should also be made for the evidence from the four sophisticated volumes (that is, made up from different copies) presently known, each of which represents at least two original copies and possibly more (see especially 1 .39), as well as imperfect copies at Jesus College, Oxford, the Universiteit Leiden and the Universita di Bologna (unconfirmed) consisting only of Scheiner's De maculis and perhaps Accuratior disquisitio with the titlepage of the Rome edition.6The book appeared in two issues, one with and one without Scheiner's Tres epistolae de maculis solaribus scriptae ad Marcum Welserum and De maculis solaribus et de stellis circa Iovem errantibus accuratior disquisitio (both originally published in Augsburg in 1612), jointly titled De maculis solaribus tres epistolae. …