Galileo's Handwritten Notes Found in Ancient Astronomy Text

[GreatGazoo]

I am obsessed with lost libraries, provenance and marginalia. This is an outgrowth of my research into England in the late 1500s/early 1600s. We have found the exact books that were owned and written in by John Dee, Shakespeare, Walter Raleigh and others. Dee's library was famously looted but the books were of high value and soon resold and preserved. Shakespeare's Geneva Bible was discovered about 20 years ago and we see the exact verses he quoted in plays underlined and noted. Raleigh was under arrest in the Tower of London while he financed and oversaw the Jamestown settlement. Raleigh was an author who wrote history and drew on earlier works which he collected. The marginalia in these books gives us a better understanding of how these people thought and how they produced their accomplishments.

And now, just one month ago:

As Malara looked at the page scrawled with Psalm 145, he was immediately reminded of Galileo’s handwriting. Eyeing more of the book’s dense marginal notes, his suspicion grew. By 3 a.m. the following night, a sleepless Malara was convinced the notes were in the astronomer’s hand. “Forgive the awkward hour,” he wrote from his hotel room, dashing off an email to two of Italy’s leading Galileo scholars, “but I can’t believe my eyes!”
...
At first, the psalm—both a prayer and a poem exalting God’s greatness—had bemused Malara. This was the only early printing of The Almagest he had seen with a biblical reference, and it seemed contrary to both the modern stereotype of Galileo flouting religious authority and Malara’s own experience studying Galileo’s writings. But in another 16th century printing of The Almagest in Florence, he found a note by an unknown author claiming that “Galileo, before studying Ptolemy, offered a prayer to God.” That jibes with a 1673 letter written by the mathematician Alessandro Marchetti, who also said Galileo prayed each time he sat down with The Almagest.

https://www.science.org/content/article/galileo-s-handwritten-notes-found-ancient-astronomy-text

My most specialized research is on Henry Hudson and that led me to investigating how navigation technology spread across the world. China and the muslims were away ahead of the europeans. One of the first English textbooks was Dr John Dee's book on euclidian geometry, circa 1570. It was created as part of the English push to catch up to Spain by training hundreds of English boys in the ability to navigate. But that math would be useless if beliefs about the solar system were completely wrong. You cannot navigate on the open ocean and think that the Earth is the middle of the solar system. Higher knowledge was forbidden to Christians yet Spain dominates the Atlantic (?) while silencing Galileo. It is a twisted knot and discoveries like this one will help untwist it!

[erronis]

1. That's an incredible find (Galileo's handwriting). And your field of study sounds fascinating.

The spread of intellectual knowledge by the travelers - whether of the high seas or journeys across the mountains and plains of the world.

[GreatGazoo]

2. Historical research is like a infinite jigsaw puzzle

The more pieces you put in place, the more you want them all. You will never get them all but the big picture emerges anyway.

[GiqueCee]

3. I have always loved history...

... and science. When I was younger, I thought I might become an archeologist, but lo, I am but a humble laid-off Art Director. Ain't nobody hiring 78 year-old artists, so I'm gonna have to scramble to get free-lance work to make ends meet, and maybe hustle some painting commissions. It'll keep me out of the Bingo parlors.