Letters to Father: Sister Maria Celeste to Galileo

"Galileo has three children with Marina Gamba, a woman he never marries. We don’t know a lot about this woman, so she’s been an object of some fascination. He has a son and he has two daughters. Virginia Galilei—with whom he has this correspondence—is the oldest daughter and perhaps the child who seems to be closest to his heart and most interested in what he does. They have a very loving relationship and we’re very fortunate that this half of the correspondence, her letters to him, have survived. And we’re all very sad that the other half of the correspondence has not survived, because then we would have the whole story of what really is a fascinating family dynamic. First of all, we owe an enormous debt to Dava Sobel who not only wrote a book, Galileo’s Daughter , which if I were allowed to recommend six books I would recommend, but also had the insight to recognize that she should make her translation of the sources available. That’s not something a writer for a general audience often thinks of doing, and I want to fully credit her for having recognized not only that it would be great to write the story of Galileo from the perspective of his relationship with his oldest daughter, but that we should hear her in her own words. Here again, we see a very human Galileo. We see a Galileo whose daughter loves him and worries about him, and who increasingly becomes aware of the problems that he’s facing, probably in ways that she hasn’t had to be until the trial occurs. We really get to know Galileo as a father, but also as somebody vehemently suspected of heresy while his own daughters, who are nuns, are praying for him. After he is condemned, Suor Maria Celeste demands access to read the terms of the condemnation and his abjuration, and then she volunteers to take on his penance of prayer. Shortly after they’re reunited, when he finally is allowed to return from Rome and comes to Arcetri—where he’s under house imprisonment and she’s in the convent nearby—she gets sick and dies. So the ending is tragic in ways that Brecht should have incorporated into his play. It was one of Galileo’s many tragedies. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The story of Galileo’s daughter provides a lot of insight into this network of family and close friends who are very protective of him. Another moment I especially like in Galileo’s correspondence with his daughter is when, through this network of family and friends, he arranges for her to hand over the keys to his villa at Arcetri so that one of the trusted members of this larger family can go in and make some documents at least temporarily disappear. She may be a nun, but she does not hesitate to protect her father from further recriminations, should there be anything in the house that might get him into further trouble—or simply get lost if the Inquisition decides to come over and rifle through it. Some people have argued—and many of us now think—that it’s the manuscript of what becomes his Two New Sciences that is the thing they’re most concerned about. It goes ‘missing’, but it’s surely not the only part of his archive that disappears. Another great moment in the letters is when she thinks about how she can use her female network to help her father. She’s outside of Florence, in this rather impoverished convent. They’re basically living a subsistence life: this is not one of these aristocratic convents in Florence, where people are eating jellied candies all day. But even from there she mobilizes all the women she knows. She imagines that maybe through talking to people, who can then intervene with the wife of the Florentine ambassador in Rome, she might assist her father in the problems that he’s having during the trial. That gives us some insight into the kind of person that she was, that she would reach out in these ways, as well as hand over the keys to her father’s house. She is actively trying to figure out what’s going on and what role she can play. I love this. We see a very different Galileo than if we just read his publications. We have no idea why they didn’t marry, the assumption is that she’s not of the appropriate social class, since he facilitates her marrying someone else in Padua after he leaves for Florence. Clearly the children matter a lot to him because he brings them all with him to Florence—and not her. Whatever the relationship was, marriage was never in the offing. But the children matter a great deal. He frets a lot over his son, who like so many sons of famous figures is not all his father would want him to be. With the girls, I think there is a problem about the cost of a dowry. It costs a lot less to give somebody a convent dowry than a dowry for marriage. I think there’s a decision made that it’s too costly to marry these daughters, that’s part of it. They are on the younger side when they take their vows. There’s been a bit of a rush. There’s also a clear sense that the youngest daughter, Livia, who’s known as Suor Arcangela, has some kind of psychic distress, she has some problems and that the older sister is looking after her. Maybe that was part of the bargain, too, that they couldn’t be separated. But, again, we have to read between the lines about why this all is. Did the oldest one ultimately have a spiritual vocation? Maybe, but no more or less than many women who enter convents under similar circumstances in this period. One of the reasons he accepts this new position in Florence in 1610 is not only to go back to his native Tuscany, but because he hopes that it will be better financially and so better for his work, because he won’t have to be teaching and housing all these students. He’s very quick to cash in on the benefits of inventing the telescope. One senses he has a messy, needy family in which he is the best source of income for many people—like his brother, the musician, who then dies. He’s constantly having to bail people out. Is he always needy? That’s unclear. One presumes the move to Florence did assist a number of these things. But, of course, with fame come even more expectations by those who want things from you. It was probably a never-ending cycle. I wouldn’t say that he ultimately was poor, but it never seems to have been quite enough for all the people who needed things from him, or perhaps even for his own expectations of who he was."