I have once again come across this quotation purportedly from Cardinal Robert Bellarmine:

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.

—Cardinal Robert Bellarmine / Trial of Galileo / 1615 (???)

I searched Google and found plenty of references to the quotation all over the internet, but it always appears either without attribution, or with just a date (1615), or with the mistaken claim that it was said “at the trial” of Galileo. I am wondering if anyone knows the exact source for this quotation, because there is something clearly wrong to me with it. Galileo was not put on trial until 1632 after Bellarmine was long since dead – not in 1615 or even 1616 when the Vatican released its decree against Copernicus and heliocentrism.

Having studied the Galileo affair in some depth, and having read much of Bellarmine’s words with regards to Galileo and Copernicus, I have never seen this quotation. The closest thing that I could find to this quotation comes from a letter that Bellarmine wrote in 1615:

Thus anyone who would say that Abraham did not have two sons and Jacob twelve would be just as much of a heretic as someone who would say that Christ was not born of a virgin, for the Holy Spirit has said both of these things through the mouths of the Prophets and the Apostles.

— Letter from Cardinal Bellarmine to Antonio Foscarini, 12 April 1615.

Bellarmine was responding to an argument that essentially goes like this: The portions of scripture that imply that the sun moves around the Earth are not a matter of faith (what’s necessary to believe to be redeemed) or morals, and therefore do not have to be taken in their literal meaning. This happened to also have been one of Galileo’s arguments. Just before the above quotation Bellarmine states that “Nor can one reply that this is not a matter of faith, because even if it is not a matter of faith because of the subject matter, it is still a matter of faith because of the speaker.” You can read much more about Bellarmine’s associations with Galileo and this affair in Richard Blackwell’s excellent book, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (1991, University of Notre Dame Press).

My conclusion is that the quotation is likely bogus but nevertheless has somehow rapidly (and carelessly) spread all over the internet. If you are using this quotation on your website and are also equally unsure of the source, I would recommend that you remove it. The last thing that we need is to perpetuate a questionable, let alone bogus, quotation.

Posted in History

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