Scene 1
p. 5
University of Padua -
Italian Università Degli Studi Di Padova, autonomous coeducational state institution of higher learning in Padua, Italy. The university was founded in 1222 by a secession of about a thousand students from the University of Bologna, reinforced by additional migrations from Bologna in 1306 and 1322. Like Bologna, it was a student-controlled university, with students electing the professors and fixing their salaries. In 1228 a number of students seceded from Padua to Vercelli, but the university survived the secession and the vicissitudes of local despotism to achieve its greatest distinction in the 15th and 16th centuries, becoming one of the two or three leading universities of Europe. Among its professors were famous Renaissance philosophers, humanists, and scientists, including Galileo.
Copernican system -
in astronomy, heliocentric model of the solar system centred on the Sun, with Earth and other planets moving around it, formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus, and published in 1543. It appeared with an introduction by Rhäticus (Rheticus) as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”). The Copernican system gave a truer picture than the older Ptolemaic system, which was geocentric, or centred on Earth. It correctly described the Sun as having a central position relative to Earth and other planets. Copernicus retained from Ptolemy of Alexandria, although in somewhat altered form, the imaginary clockwork of epicycles and deferents (orbital circles upon circles), to explain the seemingly irregular movements of the planets in terms of circular motion at uniform speeds.
Ptolemaic system -
mathematical model of the universe formulated by the Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy about ad 150 and recorded by him in his Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses. The Ptolemaic system is a geocentric cosmology; that is, it starts by assuming that the Earth is stationary and at the centre of the universe. The “natural” expectation for ancient societies was that the heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, planets, and stars) must travel in uniform motion along the most “perfect” path possible, a circle. However, the paths of the Sun, Moon, and planets as observed from the Earth are not circular. Ptolemy’s model explained this “imperfection” by postulating that the apparently irregular movements were a combination of several regular circular motions seen in perspective from a stationary Earth. The principles of this model were known to earlier Greek scientists, including the mathematician Hipparchus (c. 150 bc), but they culminated in an accurate predictive model with Ptolemy. The resulting Ptolemaic system persisted, with minor adjustments, until the Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Copernican system and by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
Ptolemy believed that the heavenly bodies’ circular motions were caused by their being attached to unseen revolving solid spheres. For example, an epicycle would be the “equator” of a spinning sphere lodged in the space between two spherical shells surrounding the Earth. He discovered that if he represented the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets with spheres, he could nest them inside one another with no empty space left over and in such a manner that the solar and lunar distances agreed with his calculations. (His estimate of the Moon’s distance was roughly correct, but his figure for the solar distance was only about a twentieth of the correct value.) The largest sphere, known as the celestial sphere, contained the stars and, at a distance of 20,000 times the Earth’s radius, formed the limit of Ptolemy’s universe.
Through Islamic astronomers, Ptolemy’s nested spheres became a standard feature of medieval cosmology. When Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model—with the Earth and planets all orbiting the Sun—he was compelled to abandon the notion that there is no empty space between the spheres. After Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) demonstrated that the comet of 1577 would have had to pass through several of these invisible spheres, the hypothesis of solid spheres also became untenable.
armillary sphere -
early astronomical device for representing the great circles of the heavens, including in the most elaborate instruments the horizon, meridian, Equator, tropics, polar circles, and an ecliptic hoop. The sphere is a skeleton celestial globe, with circles divided into degrees for angular measurement. In the 17th and 18th centuries such models—either suspended, rested on a stand, or affixed to a handle—were used to show the difference between the Ptolemaic theory of a central Earth and the Copernican theory of a central Sun.
p. 7
prelates -
an ecclesiastic (as a bishop or abbot) of superior rank
p. 8
"...in the chess too the rooks have begun sweeping across the boards" -
Around the year 1500 there is evidence of a sudden reform in the rules of chess, creating a game almost identical to chess played today. There were three major modifications to the rules of chess. Each pawn was allowed an extended move on its initial turn. Another change was in the extending of the range of the bishop, which made rethinking of strategies necessary. The final change was to the movement of the queen. The medieval queen was an extremely weak piece, even weaker than the king. The reformed queen, however, became the most powerful piece on the board with its ability to move as both a rook and bishop.
p. 11
the Campagna -
Campagna di Roma, lowland plain surrounding the city of Rome in Lazio (Latium) regione, central Italy. Occupying an area of about 800 square miles (2,100 square km), it is bounded on the northwest by the Tolfa and Sabatini mountains, on the northeast by the Sabini Mountains, on the southeast by the Alban Hills, and on the southwest by the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the Ancient Roman period, it was an important agricultural and residential area, but it was abandoned during the Middle Ages due to malaria and insufficient water supplies for farming needs. The pastoral beauty of the Campagna inspired the painters who flocked into Rome in the 18th and 19th centuries. During that time, the Campagna became the most painted landscape in Europe (see Gallery below). An excursion into the Roman countryside was an essential part of the Grand Tour.
scudi -
plural of scudo; name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century
p. 13
Republic of Venice-
Venice, Italian Venezia, city, major seaport, and capital of both the provincia (province) of Venezia and the regione (region) of Veneto, northern Italy. An island city, it was once the centre of a maritime republic. It was the greatest seaport in late medieval Europe and the continent’s commercial and cultural link with Asia. Venice is unique environmentally, architecturally, and historically, and in its days as a republic the city was styled la serenissima (“the most serene” or “sublime”). It remains a major Italian port in the northern Adriatic Sea and is one of the world’s oldest tourist and cultural centres.
the Inquisition -
Counter-Reformation also called Catholic Reformation, or Catholic Revival, in the history of Christianity, the Roman Catholic efforts directed in the 16th and early 17th centuries both against the Protestant Reformation and toward internal renewal; the Counter-Reformation took place during roughly the same period as the Protestant Reformation, actually (according to some sources) beginning shortly before Martin Luther’s act of nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door (1517). Early calls for reform grew out of criticism of the worldly attitudes and policies of the Renaissance popes and many of the clergy.
There was little significant papal reaction to the Protestants or to demands for reform from within the Roman Catholic Church before mid-century. Pope Paul III (reigned 1534–49) is considered to be the first pope of the Counter-Reformation. It was he who in 1545 convened the Council of Trent. The council, which met intermittently until 1563, responded emphatically to the issues at hand. Its doctrinal teaching was a reaction against the Lutheran emphasis on the role of faith and God’s grace and against Protestant teaching on the number and nature of the sacraments. Disciplinary reforms attacked the corruption of the clergy. There was an attempt to regulate the training of candidates for the priesthood; measures were taken against luxurious living on the part of the clergy, the appointment of relatives to church office, and the absence of bishops from their dioceses. Prescriptions were given about pastoral care and the administration of the sacraments.
The Roman Inquisition, an agency established in 1542 to combat heresy, was more successful in controlling doctrine and practice than similar bodies in those countries where Protestant princes had more power than the Roman Catholic Church. Political and military involvement directed against Protestant growth is most clearly reflected in the policies of Emperor Charles V and in those of his son Philip II, who was associated with the Spanish Inquisition.
p. 14
Giordano Bruno -
original name Filippo Bruno, byname Il Nolano (born 1548, Nola, near Naples—died Feb. 17, 1600, Rome), Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional geocentric (or Earth-centred) astronomy and intuitively went beyond the Copernican heliocentric (Sun-centred) theory, which still maintained a finite universe with a sphere of fixed stars. Bruno is, perhaps, chiefly remembered for the tragic death he suffered at the stake because of the tenacity with which he maintained his unorthodox ideas at a time when both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed churches were reaffirming rigid Aristotelian and Scholastic principles in their struggle for the evangelization of Europe.
the Signoria -
(Italian: “lordship”), in the medieval and Renaissance Italian city-states, a government run by a signore (lord, or despot) that replaced republican institutions either by force or by agreement. It was the characteristic form of government in Italy from the middle of the 13th century until the beginning of the 16th century. The development of the signoria marked the final stage in the evolution of the Italian city-state. The bitter factional struggles within the republican communes made it seem desirable to transfer power into the hands of one man strong enough to preserve peace. Often an individual began by holding a communal office, such as Captain of the People, and gradually extended his authority until it was permanent and made hereditary in his family. He would then seek papal or imperial titles to legitimize his position.
p. 15
proportional compasses -
aka the sector; As the cannon (introduced in about 1325) became more sophisticated and movable, instruments were developed to help the gunner. To measure the elevation of the barrel, the gunner's compass was introduced in the sixteenth century. It consisted of two arms at right angles, like a carpenter's square, and a circular scale between them, on which a plumb line indicated the elevations (see fig. 1). Other mathematical instruments developed during this time included compasses, or dividers, that had various useful scales on their legs. Galileo combined the uses of both types of instruments, designing a proportional compass or sector that had many useful scales engraved on its legs and could be used for a variety of purposes, including gunnery.
p. 17
Gracia Dei -
Latin for "by the grace of god"
Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster Online, and The Galileo Project
University of Padua -
Italian Università Degli Studi Di Padova, autonomous coeducational state institution of higher learning in Padua, Italy. The university was founded in 1222 by a secession of about a thousand students from the University of Bologna, reinforced by additional migrations from Bologna in 1306 and 1322. Like Bologna, it was a student-controlled university, with students electing the professors and fixing their salaries. In 1228 a number of students seceded from Padua to Vercelli, but the university survived the secession and the vicissitudes of local despotism to achieve its greatest distinction in the 15th and 16th centuries, becoming one of the two or three leading universities of Europe. Among its professors were famous Renaissance philosophers, humanists, and scientists, including Galileo.
Copernican system -
in astronomy, heliocentric model of the solar system centred on the Sun, with Earth and other planets moving around it, formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus, and published in 1543. It appeared with an introduction by Rhäticus (Rheticus) as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”). The Copernican system gave a truer picture than the older Ptolemaic system, which was geocentric, or centred on Earth. It correctly described the Sun as having a central position relative to Earth and other planets. Copernicus retained from Ptolemy of Alexandria, although in somewhat altered form, the imaginary clockwork of epicycles and deferents (orbital circles upon circles), to explain the seemingly irregular movements of the planets in terms of circular motion at uniform speeds.
Ptolemaic system -
mathematical model of the universe formulated by the Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy about ad 150 and recorded by him in his Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses. The Ptolemaic system is a geocentric cosmology; that is, it starts by assuming that the Earth is stationary and at the centre of the universe. The “natural” expectation for ancient societies was that the heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, planets, and stars) must travel in uniform motion along the most “perfect” path possible, a circle. However, the paths of the Sun, Moon, and planets as observed from the Earth are not circular. Ptolemy’s model explained this “imperfection” by postulating that the apparently irregular movements were a combination of several regular circular motions seen in perspective from a stationary Earth. The principles of this model were known to earlier Greek scientists, including the mathematician Hipparchus (c. 150 bc), but they culminated in an accurate predictive model with Ptolemy. The resulting Ptolemaic system persisted, with minor adjustments, until the Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Copernican system and by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
Ptolemy believed that the heavenly bodies’ circular motions were caused by their being attached to unseen revolving solid spheres. For example, an epicycle would be the “equator” of a spinning sphere lodged in the space between two spherical shells surrounding the Earth. He discovered that if he represented the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets with spheres, he could nest them inside one another with no empty space left over and in such a manner that the solar and lunar distances agreed with his calculations. (His estimate of the Moon’s distance was roughly correct, but his figure for the solar distance was only about a twentieth of the correct value.) The largest sphere, known as the celestial sphere, contained the stars and, at a distance of 20,000 times the Earth’s radius, formed the limit of Ptolemy’s universe.
Through Islamic astronomers, Ptolemy’s nested spheres became a standard feature of medieval cosmology. When Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model—with the Earth and planets all orbiting the Sun—he was compelled to abandon the notion that there is no empty space between the spheres. After Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) demonstrated that the comet of 1577 would have had to pass through several of these invisible spheres, the hypothesis of solid spheres also became untenable.
armillary sphere -
early astronomical device for representing the great circles of the heavens, including in the most elaborate instruments the horizon, meridian, Equator, tropics, polar circles, and an ecliptic hoop. The sphere is a skeleton celestial globe, with circles divided into degrees for angular measurement. In the 17th and 18th centuries such models—either suspended, rested on a stand, or affixed to a handle—were used to show the difference between the Ptolemaic theory of a central Earth and the Copernican theory of a central Sun.
p. 7
prelates -
an ecclesiastic (as a bishop or abbot) of superior rank
p. 8
"...in the chess too the rooks have begun sweeping across the boards" -
Around the year 1500 there is evidence of a sudden reform in the rules of chess, creating a game almost identical to chess played today. There were three major modifications to the rules of chess. Each pawn was allowed an extended move on its initial turn. Another change was in the extending of the range of the bishop, which made rethinking of strategies necessary. The final change was to the movement of the queen. The medieval queen was an extremely weak piece, even weaker than the king. The reformed queen, however, became the most powerful piece on the board with its ability to move as both a rook and bishop.
p. 11
the Campagna -
Campagna di Roma, lowland plain surrounding the city of Rome in Lazio (Latium) regione, central Italy. Occupying an area of about 800 square miles (2,100 square km), it is bounded on the northwest by the Tolfa and Sabatini mountains, on the northeast by the Sabini Mountains, on the southeast by the Alban Hills, and on the southwest by the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the Ancient Roman period, it was an important agricultural and residential area, but it was abandoned during the Middle Ages due to malaria and insufficient water supplies for farming needs. The pastoral beauty of the Campagna inspired the painters who flocked into Rome in the 18th and 19th centuries. During that time, the Campagna became the most painted landscape in Europe (see Gallery below). An excursion into the Roman countryside was an essential part of the Grand Tour.
scudi -
plural of scudo; name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century
p. 13
Republic of Venice-
Venice, Italian Venezia, city, major seaport, and capital of both the provincia (province) of Venezia and the regione (region) of Veneto, northern Italy. An island city, it was once the centre of a maritime republic. It was the greatest seaport in late medieval Europe and the continent’s commercial and cultural link with Asia. Venice is unique environmentally, architecturally, and historically, and in its days as a republic the city was styled la serenissima (“the most serene” or “sublime”). It remains a major Italian port in the northern Adriatic Sea and is one of the world’s oldest tourist and cultural centres.
the Inquisition -
Counter-Reformation also called Catholic Reformation, or Catholic Revival, in the history of Christianity, the Roman Catholic efforts directed in the 16th and early 17th centuries both against the Protestant Reformation and toward internal renewal; the Counter-Reformation took place during roughly the same period as the Protestant Reformation, actually (according to some sources) beginning shortly before Martin Luther’s act of nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door (1517). Early calls for reform grew out of criticism of the worldly attitudes and policies of the Renaissance popes and many of the clergy.
There was little significant papal reaction to the Protestants or to demands for reform from within the Roman Catholic Church before mid-century. Pope Paul III (reigned 1534–49) is considered to be the first pope of the Counter-Reformation. It was he who in 1545 convened the Council of Trent. The council, which met intermittently until 1563, responded emphatically to the issues at hand. Its doctrinal teaching was a reaction against the Lutheran emphasis on the role of faith and God’s grace and against Protestant teaching on the number and nature of the sacraments. Disciplinary reforms attacked the corruption of the clergy. There was an attempt to regulate the training of candidates for the priesthood; measures were taken against luxurious living on the part of the clergy, the appointment of relatives to church office, and the absence of bishops from their dioceses. Prescriptions were given about pastoral care and the administration of the sacraments.
The Roman Inquisition, an agency established in 1542 to combat heresy, was more successful in controlling doctrine and practice than similar bodies in those countries where Protestant princes had more power than the Roman Catholic Church. Political and military involvement directed against Protestant growth is most clearly reflected in the policies of Emperor Charles V and in those of his son Philip II, who was associated with the Spanish Inquisition.
p. 14
Giordano Bruno -
original name Filippo Bruno, byname Il Nolano (born 1548, Nola, near Naples—died Feb. 17, 1600, Rome), Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional geocentric (or Earth-centred) astronomy and intuitively went beyond the Copernican heliocentric (Sun-centred) theory, which still maintained a finite universe with a sphere of fixed stars. Bruno is, perhaps, chiefly remembered for the tragic death he suffered at the stake because of the tenacity with which he maintained his unorthodox ideas at a time when both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed churches were reaffirming rigid Aristotelian and Scholastic principles in their struggle for the evangelization of Europe.
the Signoria -
(Italian: “lordship”), in the medieval and Renaissance Italian city-states, a government run by a signore (lord, or despot) that replaced republican institutions either by force or by agreement. It was the characteristic form of government in Italy from the middle of the 13th century until the beginning of the 16th century. The development of the signoria marked the final stage in the evolution of the Italian city-state. The bitter factional struggles within the republican communes made it seem desirable to transfer power into the hands of one man strong enough to preserve peace. Often an individual began by holding a communal office, such as Captain of the People, and gradually extended his authority until it was permanent and made hereditary in his family. He would then seek papal or imperial titles to legitimize his position.
p. 15
proportional compasses -
aka the sector; As the cannon (introduced in about 1325) became more sophisticated and movable, instruments were developed to help the gunner. To measure the elevation of the barrel, the gunner's compass was introduced in the sixteenth century. It consisted of two arms at right angles, like a carpenter's square, and a circular scale between them, on which a plumb line indicated the elevations (see fig. 1). Other mathematical instruments developed during this time included compasses, or dividers, that had various useful scales on their legs. Galileo combined the uses of both types of instruments, designing a proportional compass or sector that had many useful scales engraved on its legs and could be used for a variety of purposes, including gunnery.
p. 17
Gracia Dei -
Latin for "by the grace of god"
Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster Online, and The Galileo Project