BOOKS:Galileo's Daughter

Monastery where Galileo's Daughter

Lived.

Sister Maria Celeste was a cloistered nun, but an unusual nun in the sense that she was able to have a powerful influence over on one of the greatest scientists of her time. How so? She wrote letters and many of them. The eminent scientist read them carefully absorbing each line and using them as a bulwark for his inspiration. Little known for hundreds of years, many know Sister Celeste today through Dava Sobel’s 1999 book, “Galileo’s Daughter.” Galileo named her after the heavens__Celeste, from which we derive the English word celestial. She was the illegitimate. As such he had her cloistered in a convent at age 13 in 1600. Sobel recounts a fascinating story based on 124 surviving letters. Sobel weaves the letters throughout her book, however at face value the letters show little material that would influence the course of Galileo’s famous inventions and discoveries. The letters were written to provide moral and emotional support and show the extent of societal and political pressures that Galileo underwent during his lifetime and how his daughter supported him. A fascinating bit of information that Sobel reveals is the medicines Sister Celeste made for her sickly father. The book is detailed enough on this matter that the treatments could be copied and made today. She truly was a loving daughter and the letters show that devotion. What emerges is a picture of a devoted daughter trying to maintain her father’s physical and a spiritual well being as he undergoes a trial concerning his greatest scientific discovery__that the earth circles the sun. Is the book anti-catholic? Remarkably Sobel is able to tread this fine line without making the book seem overtly anti-Catholic. The book is as much about Galileo as it is about his daughter and Sobel does a good balancing act at weaving the two lives together. Those thinking the book is solely about Sister Celeste will be disappointed. One thing is missing though: the letters Galileo wrote in reply to his daughter, they were likely burned by her convent. “Galileo’s Daughter’s,” provides a unique and fascinating angle on a familiar story. Recommended.