Beschreibung:

[Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)] Averani, 'Lettera Apologetica del Galileo'. c. 1695 [GALILEO Galilei (1564-1642) – Benedetto AVERANI (1645-1707), attrib.]. Contemporary manuscript copy of Averani's Difesa di Galileo, here entitled 'Lettera Apologetica del Galileo', c. 1695. In Italian. 26 leaves, 217 x 157mm (light dampstain throughout). Modern vellum. Provenance: possibly in the collection of Stillman Drake (1910-1993, Galileo scholar: his typescript notes after examining the manuscript in 1959). A contemporary copy of a defence of Galileo. Averani's apology for Galileo is framed in mythological terms: 'Simplicio' visits Apollo on Mount Parnassus to present the defence of Galileo, who he complains has been unjustly persecuted, after being tricked into a false confession on the accusation of moving the Earth and subverting the order of the heavens. In response to Simplicio's request, Apollo assigns him Venice as the court at which he can argue Galileo's case: Simplicio then sets out the Copernican anti-Aristotelian argument, and there follows a debate with the prosecution about the different systems, and the rotation of the celestial bodies. Simplicio carries the day, and the Senate writes to Apollo, freeing Galileo from his exile and condemning his opponents to pay damages. Apollo organises a party, Galileo is brought in triumphant and a statue is erected for him. According to Stillman Drake's accompanying typescript, the manuscript 'contains a number of variants from the published text, including some words and phrases omitted by the other copyists ... The absence of author's name and the character of the title both suggest that this copy was made from an original draft which was later somewhat polished and re-titled, at which time the author put his name to the work and allowed it to be circulated'. Drake associates the manuscript with 'the project of Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo's last surviving pupil, to erect a proper monument to his beloved teacher', which was ultimately carried out only in 1737. As Drake notes, the present manuscript lacks an author's name, and it is not impossible that the attribution to the humanist Benedetto Averani, the Jesuit-educated professor of Greek at Pisa from 1676, is in error for his brother Niccolò Averani, a known Galilean, or even the celebrated jurist and scientist Giuseppe Averani (1662-1738), who studied under Viviani. Averani's Defence of Galileo was printed only in 1883, edited by Antonio Favaro to whom only four manuscript copies were known. The present manuscript seems to have been unknown to Favaro, and is an apparently unrecorded exemplar of the text.