Galileo’s mother-in-law
I’ve just finished the second draft for a non-fiction book for release next spring, dealing with science, with the working title Who Made The Moon?. Because of it, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Galileo. As I tell kids during writing workshops, it’s absolutely amazing men and women from the past can reach across distance and time and speak directly to us through their writings.
I’ve grown to have a soft spot for Galileo. Not the scientist but the man, who had two daughters, just as I do. (Couldn’t help but post the photo of a day at the beach on my home page when I finished this blog.)
When Galileo was a young man, he fell in love with a woman in Venice named Marina di Andrea Gamba and entered into — as we so delicately phrase it these days — a relationship. Keep in mind that this was in the late 1500s.
Let me put it this way. When a girl was born out of wedlock, the baptismal record was apt to read, “Daughter by fornication of _____” (fill in the mother’s name). The father was never mentioned, as if the sin belonged solely to the mother. So Galileo’s first daughter, Virginia, entered the world under a description bestowed upon her by the church: “Daughter of Marina of Venice born by fornication”.
Some historians believe that Galileo simply did not have enough money to marry Marina of Venice. That might sound like a lame excuse, but I think there’s compelling evidence to back up the claim.
The more I learn about the man, the more I admire him. As head of his family, Galileo was faithful to his obligations to his sisters. He provided them with dowries that allowed them to get married, leaving him with debt that prevented his own marriage. He also supported his younger brother, a musician who couldn’t get or keep a paying job and who later sent his wife and seven children to Galileo’s household for support. Galileo was so financially strapped that he had to open his house as a private boarding school.
Given the financial strain imposed upon Galileo, I speculate that love was more important to him than social propriety. He was committed to Marina of Venice and had three children with her. Daughter Livia followed Virginia. Then came their son, Vincenzio. Three children over six years. Galileo later claimed that these were the happiest years of his life except for the visits of Giulia, Galileo’s mother-in-law. (Read whatever you want into that additional fact.)
“Born of fornication.”� I think of my two little girls and wince at the cruelty of such a label haunting their lives.
When Virginia was ten and Livia was nine, Galileo was offered a prestigious position in Florence. To take it, he had to leave his household behind. Yet Galileo took both daughters with him. It makes me think their presence was more important to him than the potential that gossip had to ruin his social standing. And it makes me believe that his little girls were important enough to him to be worth the logistical complications of caring for them while pursuing his career.
In defense of my perhaps wishful thinking, I offer proof that Galileo was motivated by love and that his investment paid off as he entered old age:
You can find Virginia’s testimony to the love she had for her father among the surviving 120 letters she wrote to him. At age twenty-three, she began one letter exactly the way I’d love to receive an e-mail from one of my daughters someday: “I cannot rest any longer without news, both for the infinite love I bear you, and also for fear lest the sudden cold, which in general disagrees so much with you, should have caused a return of your usual pains. . . . I beg you to be so kind as to send me that book of yours which has just been published.”