Of Marina Gamba we know very little; but the fact that she made entries in Galileo's journal and kept his accounts proves that she was a person of considerable intelligence; and this, too, was at a time when semi-oriental ideas prevailed and education was supposedly beyond the feminine grasp.
Galileo did not marry, for the reason that he was practically a priest, a teacher in a religious school, living with and looking after the pupils; and the custom then was that whoever was engaged in such an occupation should not wed.
The stormy opposition to Galileo was not without its advantages. We are advertised no less by our rabid enemies than by our loving friends. Cosimo the Second, Grand Duke of Tuscany, had intimated that Florence would give the great astronomer a welcome. Galileo moved to Florence under the protection of Cosimo, intending to devote all his time to Science.
In giving up schoolteaching and popular lecturing, Galileo really made a virtue of necessity. No orthodox lyceum course would tolerate him; he was neither an impersonator nor an entertainer; the stereopticon and the melodramatic were out of his line, and his passion for truth made him impossible to the many.
He was treading the path of Bruno: the accusations, the taunts and jeers, the denials and denunciations, were urging him on to an unseemly earnestness.
Father Clavius said that Galileo never saw the satellites of Jupiter until he had made an instrument that would create them; and if God had intended that men should see strange things in the heavens, He would have supplied them sufficient eyesight. The telescope was really a devil's instrument.
Still another man declared that if the earth moved, acorns falling from a high tree would all fall behind the tree and not directly under it.
Father Brini said that if the earth revolved, we would all fall off of it into the air when it was upside down; moreover, its whirling through space would create a wind that would sweep it bald.
Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" Only he changed the word "Galilee" to "Galileo," claiming it was the same thing, only different, and as reward for his wit he was made a bishop.