Galileo’s Fame and Pupils.—Wishes to be freed from Academic Duties.—Projected Works.—Call to Court of Tuscany.—This change the source of his Misfortunes.—Letter from Sagredo.—Phases of Venus and Mercury.—The Solar Spots.—Visit to Rome.—Triumphant Reception.—Letter from Cardinal del Monte to Cosmo II.—The Inquisition.—Introduction of Theology into the Scientific Controversy.—“Dianoja Astronomica.”—Intrigues at Florence.
Galileo’s fame, especially through his telescopic discoveries, and partly also through the exertions of his noisy opponents, had long extended beyond the narrow bounds of Italy, and the eyes of all central Europe were directed to the great astronomer. Numbers of pupils flocked to him from all countries, so that no lecture room in Padua was large enough to hold them. There were some distinguished personages among them, such as the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the princes of Alsace, Mantua, etc., who mostly came to attend the lectures of the versatile master on fortification. It is, however, another fable of over zealous biographers to state that even Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the thirty years’ war, went to school for some months to Galileo.[57]
This close occupation, with lectures and private lessons of all kinds, took him too much away from his own studies, and after twenty years’ professorship Galileo longed for a post in which he could prosecute his own researches, and devote himself to the completion of his works, free from academic duties. A letter from Padua, even in the spring of 1609,[58] shows his longing for this salaried leisure. But he is aware that the republic can never offer him such a post, “for it would not be suitable to receive a salary from a free state, however generous and magnanimous, without serving the public for it; because if you derive benefit from the public, you have the public to please, and not a mere private person.” He also mentions that he can only hope for such a favour from some absolute sovereign; but it must not be supposed that he wishes for an income without doing anything for it; he was in possession of various inventions, was almost daily making new ones, and should make more if he had the necessary leisure. Galileo adds that it has always been his intention “to offer them to his own sovereign and natural lord before any other, that he may dispose of them and the inventor according to his pleasure; and if it seemed good to his serene highness to accept it, to present him not only with the jewel but with the casket also.”