Abstract
The relationship between astronomy and biblical exegesis has received only very unsystematic attention from historians. Where it has been considered, the central points of reference have normally been Copernican theory and, in particular, the Galileo affair of 1616. The literature on the history of biblical exegesis and the Galileo affair can be divided into two groups: one focuses on the period before 1600, with a particular emphasis on Protestant reactions to Copernican theory.1 The other is devoted to investigating the period after 1610, primarily the reaction of Catholic exegesis to Copernican theory. In both cases, the search for Galileo’s sources and the reaction of the exegetes to his position have stood at the centre of research interest.2 Only a few studies have given detailed attention to Catholic or Jesuit biblical exegesis before 1610, so that historical knowledge about this topic remains incomplete, although this is precisely the field which needs to be closely investigated if we are to understand the relationship between science and exegesis among the Jesuits, as one of the foremost intellectual elites of the seventeenth century, and the situation between 1610 and 1616, when Galileo composed his famous letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany.3 However, beyond this rather narrow perspective, the relationship between the mathematical sciences in general (not only astronomy) and biblical exegesis from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries is an important element for the historical understanding of the relationship between science and religion since the Scientific Revolution.
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Notes
See most recently Peter Barker, ‘The Role of Religion in the Lutheran Response to Copernicus’, in Margaret J. Osler (ed.), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 59–88;
Kenneth J. Howell, ‘Copernicanism and the Bible in Early Modern Science’, in Jitse M. van der Meer (ed.), Facets of Faith and Science, vol. 4, Interpreting God’s Action in the World (Lanham, New York and London: University Press of America, 1996), pp. 261–84;
Kenneth J. Howell, ‘The Role of Biblical Interpretation in the Cosmology of Tycho Brahe’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29 (1998), 515–37.
Jean-Robert Armogathe, ‘La vérité des Ecritures et la nouvelle physique’, in Jean-Robert Armogathe (ed.), Le Grand Siècle et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), pp. 49–60;
Bernard R. Goldstein, ‘Galileo’s Account of Astronomical Miracles in the Bible: A Confusion of Sources’, Nuncius. Annali di Storia della Scienza 5 (1990), 3–16;
Paolo Ponzio, Copernicanesimo e teologia. Scrittura e natura in Campanella, Galilei e Foscarini (Ban: Levante, 1998);
François Russo, ’Galilée et la culture théologique de son temps’, in Paul Poupard (ed.), Galileo Galilei 350 ans d’histoire (1633–1983) (Tournai: Desclée, 1983), pp. 151–78.
See most recently Corrado Dollo, ‘Le ragioni del geocentrismo nel Collegio Romano’, in Massimo Bucciantini and Maurizio Torrini (eds), La diffusione del Copernicanesimo in Italia 1543–1610 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1997), pp. 99–167, especially pp. 102–21;
Rinaldo Fabris, Galileo Galilei e gli orientamenti esegetici del suo tempo (Vatican City: Specola Vaticana, 1986);
Irving A. Kelter, ‘The Refusal to Accommodate: Jesuit Exegetes and the Copernican System’, Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), 273–83; Ponzio, Copernicanesimo e teologia;
also Ann Blair, ‘Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance’, Isis 91 (2000), 32–58;
Kenneth J. Howell, God’s Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002);
Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor: An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis, 1527–1633 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1948).
For a more detailed treatment of this, see Volker R. Remmert, ‘Im Zeichen des Konsenses: Bibelexegese und mathematische Wissenschaften in der Gesellschaft Jesu um 1600’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 33 (2006), pp. 10–45.
On Clavius, see Ugo Baldini, ‘Christoph Clavius and the Scientific Scene in Rome’, in George V. Coyne, M. A. Hoskin and Olaf Pedersen (eds), Gregorian Reform of the Calendar (Vatican City: Specola Vaticana, 1983), pp. 137–70;
Eberhard Knobloch, ‘Sur la vie et l’oeuvre de Christophore Clavius’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 41 (1988), 331–56;
Eberhard Knobloch, ‘Christoph Clavius — Ein Astronom zwischen Antike und Kopernikus’, in Klaus Döring and Georg Wöhrle (eds), Vorträge des ersten Symposions des Bamberger Arbeitskreises “Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption” (AKAN) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 113–40;
Eberhard Knobloch, ‘L’oeuvre de Clavius et ses sources scientifiques’, in Luce Giard (ed.), Les Jésuites à la Renaissance. Système éducatif et production du savoir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), pp. 263–83;
James M. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Michel-Pierre Lerner, ‘L’entrée de Tycho Brahe chez les Jésuites ou le chant du cygne de Clavius’, in Giard (ed.), Les Jésuites à la Renaissance, pp. 145–85;
Antonella Romano, La contre-réforme mathématique: Constitution et diffusion d’une culture mathématique Jésuite à la Renaissance (1540–1640) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1999), pp. 85–180;
Ugo Baldini and Pier Daniele Napolitani (eds), Christoph Clavius: Corrispondenza, 7 vols. (Pisa, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 33–58.
Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo, pp. 23f.; Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 26.
On the following, see Volker R. Remmert, “‘Sonne steh still über Gibeon”: Galileo Galilei, Christoph Clavius, katholische Bibelexegese und die Botschaft der Bilder’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 28 (2001), 539–80.
Bellarmine to Foscarini, April 12, 1615; Maurice A. Finocchiaro (ed.), The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1989), p. 67.
Diego de Zuñiga, In Iob commentaria (Toledo, 1584; reprint, Rome, 1591), pp. 205–207. For an English translation, see Blackwell, Galileo, pp. 185f.; Victor Navarro Brotóns, ‘The Reception of Copernicus in Sixteenth-Century Spain. The Case of Diego de Zuñiga’, Isis 86 (1995), 52–78, at 67–69. On Zuñiga,
see Francesco Barone, ‘Diego de Zuñiga e Galileo Galilei: Astronomia eliostatica ed esegesi biblica’, Critica storica 19 (1982), 319–34.
Juan de Pineda, Commentariorum in Iob Libri Tredecim (Cologne, 1600), p. 339. On the system of ratings (notes and censures) that could be formally applied to theological propositions, see Charles H. Lohr, ‘Modelle für die Überlieferung theologischer Doktrin: Von Thomas von Aquin bis Melchior Cano’, in Werner Löser, Karl Lehmann and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (eds), Dogmengeschichte und katholische Theologie (Würzburg: Echter, 1988), pp. 148–67.
For details, see Remmert, “Sonne steh still über Gibeon”; Volker R. Remmert, ‘Picturing Jesuit anti-Copernican Consensus: Astronomy and Biblical Exegesis in the Frontispiece of Clavius’s Opera mathematica (1612)’, in John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy (eds), The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540–1773 (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
Ibid., pp. 288–91: Quaestio octava, An stellae sint nobis innumerabiles. On Pereira and the mathematical sciences, see Rivka Feldhay, ‘The Use and Abuse of Mathematical Entities: Galileo and the Jesuits Revisited’, in Peter Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 80–145; Romano, La contre-réforme mathématique, p. 16.
Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 438f., 443–46.
Clavius, In Sphaeram (1570), pp. 238–44. Cf. Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 53.
Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 160.
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Remmert, V.R. (2007). ‘Whether the Stars are Innumerable for Us?’: Astronomy and Biblical Exegesis in the Society of Jesus around 1600. In: Killeen, K., Forshaw, P.J. (eds) The Word and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230206472_9
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