∑∂

BROTHERHOOD OF THE ILLUMINATI:MILTON, GALILEO, AND THE

POETICS OF CONSPIRACY

Michael Lieb

oI

In h i s e n g a g i n g t h r i l l e r Angels and Demons, Dan Brownenvisions a sinister world of intrigue and conspiracy, danger and duplicity.∞

At the center of this world is a clandestine movement called the Brotherhoodof the Illuminati, putatively one of the most influential secret societies inhistory.≤ The protagonist of the narrative is an internationally recognizedHarvard ‘‘symbologist,’’ Robert Langdon (who also appears in Brown’s laterbestseller, The Da Vinci Code).≥ In the earlier novel, Langdon is enlisted byan organization known as CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nu-cléaire) to investigate the assassination of one of its most prominent physi-cists, Leonardo Vetra, who has discovered the means of harnessing the powerof antimatter. Responsible for the assassination, the Illuminati henchmanmakes off with the antimatter and its secrets. The dastardly goal of theBrotherhood is in effect to destroy the Catholic Church, along with its monu-ments, by placing a bomb (in the form of the antimatter) in a secret locationin Vatican City. To save the Church as an institution, as well as to apprehendthe assassin, Langdon seeks to discover where the antimatter has been bur-ied. Racing against time, he and Leonardo Vetra’s daughter Vittoria under-take a frantic search for the explosive substance. The quest draws upon all ofLangdon’s abilities as a symbologist. Securing the antimatter requires theconsummate task of decoding enigmas, which in Brown’s novel assume theform of messages left by the Illuminati in its wake. To that end, Langdon andhis companion gain entrance into a secret Vatican vault, where they discoverlong-sequestered, occult documents that will provide information on theIlluminati and its practices. Searching the secret archives, they come upon anobscure papyrus written by the great astronomer Galileo Galilei while underhouse arrest during the Inquisition. Titled Diagramma della Verità, this mostarcane of papyri proves to be the solution to their quest.∂

To understand the lingua pura in which the papyrus is cast, however,

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Brotherhood of the Illuminati ∑∑

Langdon and his companion must first locate the ‘‘key’’ to its meanings. Withthis key, they can then gain insight into the hidden meanings of Galileo’sdiscourse. Within the margins of the long-sequestered text, they discover thatkey, which appears in the form of a quatrain remarkably inscribed not inLatin nor in Italian, but in English:

From Santi’s earthly tomb with demon’s hole,’Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold.The path of light is laid, the sacred test,Let angels guide you on your lofty quest. (222)

Precisely what this quatrain means, what its various terms encode, is itself amystery. What is ‘‘Santi’s earthly tomb’’ with its ‘‘demon’s hole’’? What arethese so-called ‘‘mystic elements’’ or the ‘‘path of light’’? To what ‘‘sacredtest’’ does the quatrain allude? And what are the circumstances by which anEnglish quatrain replete with coded signifiers makes its appearance in atreatise by Galileo Galilei? The remainder of the novel represents an act ofdecoding the meanings implicit in this quatrain. For only by decoding theterms of the riddle will the symbologist and his companion be able to find thelocation of the antimatter hidden by the Illuminati in its devilish plot todestroy the Catholic Church and all that it represents.∑

What makes this bit of chicanery so interesting for our purposes is the‘‘discovery’’ that the quatrain encoded in the margins of the Diagramma dellaVerità is by none other than John Milton, whose signature Langdon at oncerecognizes. Milton, it would seem, is at long last revealed as one fully schooledin the ‘‘Path of Illumination,’’ which has been traversed by every upstandingmember of the Illuminati since the founding of the order. Clearly, ‘‘theinfluential English poet who wrote Paradise Lost,’’ Langdon observes, washimself a member of the Illuminati. ‘‘A contemporary of Galileo’s and asavant,’’ this poet proved true to his calling. His ‘‘alleged affiliation withGalileo’s Illuminati was one legend’’ that Langdon suspected was true. ‘‘Notonly had Milton made a well-documented 1638 pilgrimage to Rome in orderto ‘commune with enlightened men,’ but he had held meetings with Galileoduring the scientist’s house arrest, meetings portrayed in many Renaissancepaintings, including Annibale Gatti’s famous Galileo and Milton, which hungeven now in the IMSS Museum in Florence’’ (219).∏

I invoke Dan Brown’s novel not to endorse the notion that either Miltonor Galileo is to be numbered among the so-called Brotherhood of the Il-luminati. Nor do I wish to suggest the viability of a clandestine or conspir-atorial relationship between poet and astronomer. Such is the stuff of fantasy.Nonetheless, I do invite us to engage in a willing suspension of disbelief inorder to entertain (even if momentarily) the ‘‘wisdom’’ of Robert Langdon’s

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‘‘discovery.’’ Acceding to the spirit, if not the fact, of that discovery willprovide the means by which we may gain insight not only into how Miltonworks but also into how the concept of his relationships (conspiratorial orotherwise) is represented by the scholarly (and perhaps not so scholarly)community from one generation to the next. Specifically, I wish to explore theway in which the various accounts surrounding the relationship betweenMilton and Galileo assume a life of their own.π From the perspective of the‘‘afterlife’’ represented by those accounts, I shall then address the kinds ofinterpretive issues that arise in an attempt to understand Milton’s incorpora-tion of Galileo into the fabric of his great epic, Paradise Lost.

Approaching Milton from this perspective should prove fruitful in com-ing to terms with the complex relationship between poet and astronomer inthe fashioning of Milton’s epic.∫ At the same time, such an approach shouldsensitize us to the intimate connection between how we construe Milton andhis world, on the one hand, and the nature of his poetic practices, on theother. What will emerge is a Milton whose works and sensibility become thefocal point of speculation, of uncertainty, and of the creation of critical co-nundrums that at times appear to be as much the product of Milton’s readersas they are the construction of the author himself. These two modes ofproduction (that of the reader and that of the author), I shall argue, comple-ment each other, indeed, aid and abet each other. Both author and reader arecomplicit in the construction of Milton as the site of relationships that arethemselves ‘‘conspiratorial,’’ not simply in the sense in which the term ‘‘con-spiracy’’ is customarily understood—as that which implies sedition, secrecy,and crisis—but also in the sense in which the term was likewise used duringMilton’s era—as that which implies the possibility of a productive union oreven the idea of working in harmony.Ω Both senses are already present in theroot conspirare, which denotes the act of ‘‘breathing together,’’ uniting in acommon enterprise.∞≠ Although Milton was inclined to draw upon the darker,more threatening implications of the term throughout his works, the morepositive implications appear to obtain as part of the interpretive dynamicsthrough which his relationship with Galileo may be said to arise. What I call apoetics of conspiracy is present both in Milton’s own direct and obliquereferences to Galileo during the poet’s lifetime and in the fictions that repre-sent a crucial dimension of the afterlife through which Milton’s relationshipwith the astronomer is construed.

As a means of exploring that relationship, we return to our brilliantsymbologist, Robert Langdon. In his response to the so-called meetings thatMilton held with Galileo, our symbologist no doubt has in mind Milton’sclaim in Areopagitica that during his trip to the Continent he ‘‘found andvisited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisner to the Inquisition, for thinking

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Brotherhood of the Illuminati ∑π

in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licensersthought’’ (YP 4:538). As is well known, that claim has fostered no end ofscholarly debate. As early as S. B. Liljegren’s indictment of the claim (alongwith Milton in general), scholars have debated whether or not Milton actuallyhad such an encounter with the great astronomer.∞∞ Those who have soughtto call Milton’s veracity into question ask why this is the only reference to thevisit that appears in his works, especially since he had the opportunity toallude to the encounter on other occasions. (One thinks, for example, ofDefensio Secunda, in which he excludes any mention of Galileo in defense ofhis standing but does include a list of illustrious personages such as HugoGrotius, Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Gati, and others who welcomed him in hisContinental sojourn [YP 4:614–19].)∞≤ More surprising still for these critics isthat at the very point of describing the astronomer as ‘‘the famous Galileogrown old’’ and ‘‘a prisner to the Inquisition,’’ Milton says nothing aboutGalileo’s blindness, a condition that would most certainly have made animpression on the young visitor, even had he not had premonitions of whatwas to be his own blindness in the years ahead.∞≥ (Once again, one thinks ofDefensio Secunda, this time in the context of Milton’s act of defending hisown blindness by reciting a list of all those illustrious figures whose blindnesswas a sign not of their failings but rather of their ‘‘special status’’ as trueservants of God [YP 4:584–87].) Although the list includes such notables asTiresias, Phineas, Timoleus of Corinth, Appius Claudius, John Zizka, JeromeZanchius, among others, no mention is made of Galileo Galilei, a remarkableomission, under the circumstances. Additional arguments have been ad-vanced in the cause of those who seek to cast doubt on the veracity of Milton’sclaim. In short, the issue of his visit with Galileo has been transformed into averitable conundrum. The entry on Galileo in the Milton Encyclopedia byFrank B. Young effectively canonizes the issue: ‘‘It is generally assumed thatMilton met Galileo during his Italian journey, 1638–39. There is, however,considerable mystery surrounding the visit. Indeed, it cannot be proved fromexternal evidence that Milton actually met and talked with the old astron-omer.’’∞∂ Accordingly, one must be careful not to take Milton at his word,even in a treatise such as Areopagitica, which professes so dramatically itsbelief that in the wars of truth, one must have faith that truth will triumphover falsehood ‘‘in a free and open encounter’’ (YP 4:151).∞∑

The discursive context through which Milton alludes to the visit withGalileo is revealing. Addressing the Lords and Commons throughout Areo-pagitica, Milton as orator argues on behalf of ‘‘the Liberty of Vnlicenc’dPrinting’’ (as the full title of his treatise indicates) by distinguishing betweenthe freedom that his own country enjoys as opposed to the tyranny (tanta-mount to the Inquisition) under which other countries labor. In the passage

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under consideration, Milton draws upon his personal experience to supporthis position: ‘‘I could,’’ he avers,

recount what I have seen and heard in other Countries, where this kind of Inquisitiontyrannizes; when I have sat among their lerned men, for that honor I had, and bincounted to be born in such a place of Philosophic freedom, as they suppos’d Englandwas, while themselvs did nothing but bemoan the servil condition into which learningamongst them was brought; that this was it which dampt the glory of Italian wits; thatnothing had bin there writt’n now these many years but flattery and fustian. There itwas that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisner to the Inquisition,for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licensersthought. (YP 2:537–38)

From the perspective of one who portrays himself in his prose treatise as afigure doing battle against an oppressive institution, Milton recalls his visitwith Galileo as a means of supporting his overall contention that by imposingtheir licensing orders, the Lords and Commons are unwittingly subjectingtheir own citizens to the travails that beset those seekers after truth subject tothe tyrannical excesses of popery in other lands.

Rhetorically, Milton portrays himself not simply as a visitor but as aconfidant, that is, as one invited into the inner circles of those willing todisclose to this outsider their most secret of thoughts as he sits among them.For those who have taken this visitor into their confidence, the act of disclos-ing such sensitive matters is itself potentially perilous in the atmospherefostered by the Inquisition. It is dangerous enough to bemoan (even in se-cret) one’s servile condition among one’s fellow citizens, but to do so in thepresence of one who hails from a world that looks upon the beliefs repre-sented by the Catholic Church as the seat of the Antichrist is another matteraltogether. Nor does one have the impression that Milton was particularlycircumspect among those who received him, and perhaps his determinationto be outspoken on matters of religion while abroad might have justified hisfears that plots had been laid against him as one who had ‘‘seen’’ and ‘‘heard’’matters that were best left untold.∞∏ How, then, is one to understand Milton’sclaim to have visited Galileo? If the claim is misleading or indeed a falsehood,is there something at work in the discourse to promote our suspicions and toelicit our distrust? Must we indeed approach Milton’s discourse through whathas been termed a ‘‘hermeneutics of suspicion’’?∞π If so, what are the reper-cussions of such a reading? Until the external evidence that Milton actuallymet and talked with the ‘‘old astronomer’’ is brought forward to clarify thematter, the mystery surrounding the visit will remain at the forefront.∞∫

However one responds to the discursive context through which Miltonclaims in Areopagitica to have visited Galileo, the response among those

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Brotherhood of the Illuminati ∑Ω

inclined to take Milton at his word has been one of crafting accounts ofvarious sorts in order to flesh out the details of the putative encounter. Theseaccounts provide insight into the afterlife of the encounter that has en-tered into the imagination of the interpretive community.∞Ω Milton’s greatnineteenth-century biographer, David Masson, represents a case in point. InMasson’s account of the visit, Milton is conceived as one who, ‘‘in the com-pany of Malatesti, or Gaddi, or Buommatei, or some one else of the Floren-tine group,’’ is determined to undertake ‘‘a sojourn to Galileo’s delightful villaat Arcetri, just beyond the walls of Florence.’’ There, Milton is formallyintroduced to the blind sage, who greets the poet cordially ‘‘according to hiswont in such cases.’’ This formality is followed by ‘‘a stroll perhaps, under theguidance of one of the disciples in attendance, to the adjacent observatory, aconversation afterwards with the assembled little party over some of the finewines produced in welcome, and all the while, surely, a reverent attention bythe visitor to the features and the mien of Italy’s most famous son, who couldjudge reciprocally of him only through courteous old mind and ear, unable toreturn his visual glance.’’ From this narrative, Masson proceeds to view therelationship between the poet and the astronomer as one in which Milton,even at this juncture in his early years, gains a sense of what will befall him inlater life. ‘‘Already in Milton’s writing,’’ Masson observes, ‘‘there may havebeen observed a certain fascination of the fancy, as if by unconscious presen-timent on the subject of blindness. How in men like Homer and Tiresias ahigher and more prophetic vision had come when terrestrial vision was de-nied, and the eyes had to roll in a less bounded world within, was an idea . . .vivid with Milton from the first, and cherished imaginatively by verbal repeti-tion.’’ In Galileo, ‘‘frail and old,’’ Milton had ‘‘seen one of those blind il-lustrious of whom he had so often dreamt, and of whom he was to be himselfanother. The sight was one which he could never forget’’ (1:788).

Masson’s observation is of interest not only because of its acuity insuggesting that the visit was somehow prophetic of what would befall Miltonin later life but also because of its failure to take into account the significanceof the lack of any reference to Galileo’s blindness in the passage from Areopa-gitica. If the sight of the astronomer in his blindness was one Milton couldnever forget, it is, ironically, one he never acknowledged in the first place.Had Milton in fact visited Galileo, he may well have experienced the ‘‘uncon-scious presentiment’’ of his own future blindness, but if he did experiencethis presentiment, he never took the occasion to register it in any form in hisallusion to the visit.≤≠ Once again, this is not to say that Milton did notundertake the visit and, if he had, that Galileo’s blindness had no effect onhim. Rather, I am simply suggesting that Milton’s silence on the subject ofGalileo’s blindness is remarkable, considering the poet’s habits of mind both

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before and after his own blindness, habits that prompted him to associatehimself throughout his career (early and late) with ‘‘blind’’ visionaries such asHomer and Tiresias.≤∞

What is one to make of Milton’s silence on an issue that would loom solarge in his life and writings? It is impossible to say. What is not impossible tosay is that, if Milton failed to acknowledge Galileo’s blindness in his ownauthentic writings, there were others more than willing to have him acknowl-edge it in his apocryphal writings. Not long before the publication of Mas-son’s biography, there appeared an allegedly ‘‘new discovery’’ in the form of aseries of letters between Milton and Galileo, among other contemporaries,including Louis XIV, and Molière. Although the letters are considered to beoutright forgeries, they are nonetheless what J. Milton French calls an ‘‘inter-esting fiction.’’≤≤ As such, they augment and complement the ‘‘interestingfiction’’ that Masson devises in his own account of the visit. In the process,they provide a voice for the silence through which the ‘‘presentiment’’ ofMilton’s own future blindness emerges. Thus, in one of the letters addressedto the king (putatively to Louis XIV), dated August 23, 1642, Milton recountshis visit with Galileo in a manner that brings to bear the whole issue ofblindness. The letter begins by acknowledging the king’s desire to have Mil-ton describe his trip to Italy and in particular to recount his visit with the‘‘very illustrious Galileo.’’≤≥ Traveling to Florence and from there to Arcetri,Milton found Galileo ‘‘at home busy at work on a telescope’’ that the astron-omer informed Milton he wished to perfect in order to study Saturn and itssatellites. Milton then dined with Galileo, who insisted that Milton return tosee him often during the time he remained in Florence. Galileo even keptMilton several days at Arcetri, during which the astronomer acquaintedMilton with his ‘‘precious writings.’’ In short, Milton becomes one of Galileo’strusted friends, indeed, one of Galileo’s intimates. Relating other remarkableexperiences he enjoyed after he departed from Florence, Milton recounts hisfinal visits with Galileo on the eve of his return to England. These visitsbecome the occasion by which Milton is made aware of the problems withGalileo’s eyesight. The astronomer, it appears, is not totally blind, but hiseyesight is definitely failing. ‘‘The too great intensity with which he [Galileo]had studied the stars . . . had so tired his eyesight that he had to give up thisstudy.’’ His eyes were so weak ‘‘that he could no longer see the sky.’’ WhenMilton visited him, Galileo was ‘‘busy putting his papers in order’’ because‘‘he foresaw that after his death, if these papers remained in the hands of hisenemies, they would run the risk of being destroyed.’’ So ‘‘he took steps toprevent that catastrophe.’’ While Milton was with Galileo, he shared withMilton ‘‘an infinity of notes which he had extracted from a manuscript . . . onthe paradoxes of mechanics, a manuscript located in the Vatican’’ (LR 2:74–

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Brotherhood of the Illuminati ∏∞

77). Should we, like Robert Langdon, perform a search of the secret archivesof the Vatican, we would no doubt find that this manuscript discloses to us theencoded quatrain through which we might discover the location of the anti-matter. The point is that the accounts that emerge as a result of Milton’s claimin Areopagitica tend to align Milton as a young man and Galileo as an oldman in the pursuit of some secret knowledge, some ‘‘truths’’ that had to bekept from the prying eyes of the inquisitorial ‘‘enemies,’’ who would havesurely sought the undoing of both visitor and host had their relationshipcome to light. If fictive, such accounts become the means through which theterrible presentiment of blindness, struggle, and adversity is embodied in thealignment between poet and astronomer.

Likewise implicit in this alignment is the emphasis upon codes or codeddiscourse. A sense of this dimension is present in the Imaginary Conversa-tions (1824–29) of Walter Savage Landor (1755–1864), a poet of considerableimport, as well as of immense learning.≤∂ Projecting himself and his outlookinto circumstances of his own devising, he provided occasions through whichprominent men of letters and statesmen might have their say. In the process,he opened a space through which his own dramatic sensibility found aptexpression. Ranging over the centuries, the figures who populate this theatri-cal space include such notables as Hume, Rousseau, Scaliger, Montaigne,Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, Newton, and even Landor himself. In keepingwith this enterprise, Landor fashioned a drama that involves Galileo, Milton,and a Dominican guard whose duty is to watch over Galileo after the sentenceof the Inquisition had been handed down. The drama opens with the youngMilton approaching the Dominican guard and demanding to gain an audiencewith the great astronomer:

Milton. Friend! let me pass.Dominican. Whither? To whom?Milton. Into the prison; to Galileo Galilei. (384)

To this, the Dominican guard protests that, where Galileo is being held, thereare no prisons, only confinements of sorts for those guilty of ‘‘heretical pra-vity’’ and ‘‘other less atrocious crimes.’’ Not to be taken in by such rhetoric,Milton stands his ground and demands (on divine authority) that the gatesthat confine the great astronomer be opened at once. Responding to thedemand, the Dominican guard can only admire the young man who con-fronts him. To himself the guard exclaims: ‘‘What sweetness! what authority!what a form! what an attitude! what a voice!’’ after which he acknowledgesthat his ‘‘sight staggers; the walls shake; he must be—do angels ever comehither?’’ (384). Aside from other possible parallels, one thinks of Comus’sresponse to the Lady in Milton’s masque: ‘‘She fables not, I feel that I do fear /

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Her words set off by som superior power’’ (A Mask, 800–801). It is with this‘‘superior power’’ that Milton enters Galileo’s confines.

Upon seeing the famous astronomer, Milton immediately becomesaware of Galileo’s blindness. The astronomer, sensing that his visitor is aperson of utmost rectitude, invites Milton to ‘‘speak freely.’’ Despite the senseof openness that distinguishes their conversation, they make a point to oc-clude what they say in coded language in order not to be understood by theDominican guard. To that end, they converse in Latin (translated here for thecomprehension of the reader of the text), and, as an additional precautionarymeasure, they couple the Latin with coded discourse. Galileo begins: ‘‘We liveamong priests and princes and empoisoners. Your dog, by his growling, seemsto be taking up the quarrel against them.’’ From this point forward, most of theconversation appears to be about animals. So, Milton responds, ‘‘We think andfeel alike in many things. I have observed that the horses and dogs of everycountry bear a resemblance in character to the men. We English have awonderful variety of both creatures.’’ In keeping with this coded language,Galileo exclaims, ‘‘Do let us get among the dogs’’ (385–88). Combined withthe Latin, the coded discourse about horses and dogs suggests that whatemerges is a conspiratorial, or, at least, secret relationship between the pris-oner and his guest, one sensitive to the ravages of the Inquisition, whosetortures Milton discovers in the very ‘‘scars and lacerations’’ that Galileo hassustained upon his body (389)—a Landorian touch to be sure, but one thatintensifies the conspiratorial dimensions of the encounter still further. Thisrather bracing conversation provides additional insight into the dark world offantasy and intrigue that arose in response to Milton’s claim in Areopagitica tohave ‘‘visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisner to the Inquisition.’’ Itsuggests the extent to which that claim engendered an afterlife of its own, onecentered not only in the biographical accounts but also in the pseudepigraphalrenderings that assume the form of testimony and dialogic interchange.

That afterlife is discernible not only in the nineteenth century but in thetwentieth century as well. Artists and poets alike appropriated Milton’s al-leged encounter with Galileo into their works. A case in point is Alfred Noyes(1880–1958), the well-known British poet, novelist, scholar. A convert toCatholicism, Noyes was afflicted with partial blindness in his later years. Asan author, he was known not only for his lyric poetry but also for his efforts atproducing epic poetry as well. What resulted from these efforts was hisambitious blank verse trilogy celebrating the discoveries of science. TitledThe Torch Bearers, this trilogy was published in three volumes: Watchers ofthe Sky (1922), The Book of Earth (1925), and The Last Voyage (1930). Forour purposes, the first poem Watchers of the Sky is of immediate impor-

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Brotherhood of the Illuminati ∏≥

tance.≤∑ As Noyes comments in his prefatory note to the poem, this work‘‘began to take definite shape during what was to [him] an unforgettableexperience—the night [he] was privileged to spend on a summit of the SierraMadre Mountains, when the first trial was made of the new 100-inch tele-scope’’ (vi). The reference is to the solar observatory located at Mount Wil-son, California, a fitting place for Noyes to celebrate the wedding of scienceand poetry. So Noyes observes in his prefatory note that ‘‘poetry has its ownprecision of expression and, in modern times, it has been seeking more andmore for truth,’’ one in which the activities of the poet and the scientistrepresent a mutual endeavor (ix).

This belief in the ‘‘progress’’ of science and poetry underlies the outlooknot only of Watchers of the Sky but also of the trilogy as a whole. Beginningwith a prologue that recounts Noyes’s experience at the observatory, the epicdevotes its attention to those ‘‘watchers’’ (among them, Nicolaus Copernicus,Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, and Sir Isaac Newton) who trans-formed astronomy into a science that changed the prevailing views of theuniverse. The prologue engages in its unabashed celebration of the ‘‘ad-vances’’ of science (and, in particular, the science of astronomy) ever ‘‘SinceGalileo, famous, blind, and old, / Talked with [Milton], in that prison, of thesky’’ (2–3). Noyes shares his experience of ascending the mountain to theobservatory: ‘‘Over us, like some great cathedral dome, / The observatoryloomed against the sky’’ (7). What Noyes portrays is tantamount to a religiousexperience, a conversion of sorts, as the prologue culminates in a kind ofprayer that calls upon his ‘‘celestial guide’’ to bear him aloft into ‘‘the greatnew age’’ and ‘‘the great new realm,’’ prepared for those capable of under-standing the relationship between poetry and science (19).

Within this context Noyes delineates his version of Milton’s encounterwith Galileo (167–83). Assuming the form of letters among Galileo’s family,friends, and associates, this section is distinguished by a poignancy, an imme-diacy, and an intimacy that arise from first-person discourse. In the section asa whole, we first come to know Galileo through those whose accounts attestto their understanding of the man and his work. Having been presented inthe exchange of letters with the perspectives of such figures as Galileo’sdaughter Celeste, Christoph Scheiner, Benedetto Castelli, and even Galileohimself (lamenting his blindness, his imprisonment, and, most of all, the lossof Celeste, who has since died), we move to the final epistle in this section. Itis that of Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703), who, during the blind astronomer’sfinal years in Arcetri, became Galileo’s student, secretary, and assistant.≤∏

Writing to a friend in England, Viviani discloses the nature of his associationwith the great man:

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I was his last disciple, as you sayI went to him, at seventeen years of age,And offered him my hands and eyes to use.

From this vantage point, Viviani, grown old, looks back over his years withGalileo and recalls the momentous occasion (‘‘that day of days’’),

When, quietly as a messenger from heaven,Moving unseen, through his own purer realm,Among the shadows of our mortal world,A young man, with a strange light on his faceKnocked at the door of Galileo’s house.His name was Milton. (168)

Through the agency of Viviani, Noyes fully idealizes the encounter, which heconceives as a divine visitation of sorts by a ‘‘starry messenger’’ in the form ofJohn Milton. This event represents a turning point in the lives of both poetand astronomer. Destiny is at work in all of this, a divinity that shapes theends of this ‘‘monumental’’ drama.

Thus, led ‘‘by the hand of God’’ through Italy to Galileo’s prison door,Milton is ‘‘the one living soul on earth with power / To read the starry soul ofthis blind man.’’ Noyes depicts Milton as looking on Galileo, touching hishand, and, as if in anticipation of his own future blindness, foreseeing that thelines from Samson Agonistes—‘‘O, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, /Irrecoverably dark’’ (80–81)—best describe the situation here: ‘‘In afterdays,’’ Milton composed his drama, ‘‘but it pulsed within him then.’’ In ac-cord with this idealized portrayal, Galileo rises to his feet, and turning towardMilton, ‘‘those unseeing eyes / That had searched heaven and seen so manyworlds,’’ welcomes the young visitor with the declaration: ‘‘You have foundme.’’ It is all so rehearsed, so overdetermined, and so histrionic. Reflectingupon this visit, Viviani confirms how much it meant to his master, how, evenin ‘‘those last sad months’’ of Galileo’s life, the great astronomer would attestto the sense of peace the encounter brought to him and to the sense ofsatisfaction that he would experience in knowing that ‘‘In other lands, thetruth he had proclaimed / Was gathering power.’’ After an apologetic inter-lude defending the Catholic Church, Noyes has Viviani conclude his letterwith a paean to his master, to the poet who visited his master, and to thefuture of astronomy itself (181–83).

The foregoing accounts are interesting in the extent to which they inter-cede in the ‘‘silences’’ of Milton’s reference to Galileo in Areopagitica and, inplace of those silences, forge narratives of their own devising. Particularlyengaging in this respect is the uncompromising insistence upon the crucialissue of blindness, which Milton never mentions but which plays so heavily

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