This essay deals with two seventeenth-century intellectuals, the Aristotelian philosopher at Padua, Cesare Cremonini, and the Jesuit controversist, Robert Bellarmine. In the years of the cosmological affair of 1616, both defended their cosmological conceptions by relying on the principle of authority. However, they embraced different sources of legitimation in matters of natural philosophy. While the Padua professor stick to (what he considered to be) the letter of Aristotle, basically a secular interpretation of his world conception, Cardinal and Inquisitor Bellarmine understood the cosmos against a theological background. In particular, Bellarmine subordinated natural philosophy to exegesis and the authority of the Scriptures, and this allowed him to depart from Aristotle to some extent (for instance on the fluidity and possibly the corruptibility of the heavens). Yet, the two thinkers also shared the criticism of the major astronomical novelty of their time, namely the planetary system of Copernicus and his followers. But their objections rested on different worldviews and authorities (Aristotle and the Scriptures, respectively). Cremonini also supported a vision of celestial animation which was received with much preoccupation by religious authorities as they feared that his views might revive forms of astral worshipping. This essay discusses the manner in which Cremonini and Bellarmine received geocentrism and cosmology in very different, even opposite, manners, especially concerning the relation between natural philosophy and theology, and the reconcilability of cosmology with the Scriptures.

In 2015, two new studies on the scientific and astronomical culture of seventeenth-century Italy appeared: one on the natural philosophy of Galileo Galilei’s follower, the ecclesiastic and philosopher, Giovanni Ciampoli—Federica Favino’s La filosofia naturale di Giovanni Ciampoli ( Giovanni Ciampoli’s Natural Philosophy ); the other on the anti-Copernican views of the Jesuit astronomer, Giovanni Battista Riccioli—Christopher M. Graney’s Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo . Both publications address themes of fundamental importance for a proper understanding of the rise of modern scientific culture. They deal with issues such as the reception of Copernicus and the impact of his astronomy on natural philosophy, scientific developments in Italy in the years following Galileo’s condemnation and the complex relations between natural scientists and Catholic institutions in a phase of intensified Inquisitorial control and censorship. They aim to open up new perspectives and disclose sources that have been so far neglected to the historians of science.