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Galileo’s summertime illness of 1623 is the first of his infirmities to be documented in the surviving letters from his daughter. Although these offer no good clue, unfortunately, to the specific nature of Galileo’s disorder, they demonstrate clearly Suor Maria Celeste’s familiarity with his indifferent health, and how it preoccupied her. She hung on word of him, which arrived now from the steward, now from her uncle Benedetto Landucci. The first week of Galileo’s stay in Florence she prepared him a treat of marzipan shaped like little fish, and the second week, hearing he could hardly eat a bite of anything, she found four fresh plums to tempt his appetite. After he returned to Bellosguardo in September, she willingly helped him with his correspondence.
Galileo’s affliction compromised his handwriting, so that his extant papers include many documents penned in a small, cramped hand, with the lines on a steep slant up or down the page, as though their author were working lying down. (Galileo’s followers used his changeable penmanship as a clue to help establish chronological order among the welter of his undated papers, relying also on ink color, for he purchased different types in different cities, and any special characteristics of paper, such as the distinguishing rhinoceros watermark from the end of his Paduan period.)
Although Suor Maria Celeste often sacrificed neatness for speed in her own writing, she readily lent her stylish script to Galileo, as well as to the mother abbess, for whom she did not merely copy letters from drafts but composed them from scratch.
To begin, she enlarged the first letter of the first paragraph’s first word, as in an illuminated manuscript, and festooned the capital with loops and tails, turning her pen to vary the width of her strokes from a hair’s breadth to a broad ribbon. As her sentences flowed along to the right, she bent all the lowercase ds back over themselves in the opposite direction, hiding each small d circle beneath a huge canopy that might shade an entire word. Where the tip of a tall right-tilting letter met the top of a left-slanting d, she joined them in a pointed arch. Occasionally she decorated the heads of pages and the ends of paragraphs with flourishes, inserted extra ripples of squiggles into salutations and sign-offs, and on her envelopes she drew, more than wrote, the neighborhood— Bellosguardo—or city name—Rome, Florence, Siena—that sufficed for an address.
“Here is the copied letter, Sire,” Suor Maria Celeste complied with Galileo’s request on September 30, “along with the wish that it meet with your approval, so that at other times I may again be able to help you by my work, seeing as it gives me such great pleasure and happiness to busy myself in your service.”
She soon found another way to assist him, by sewing a set of table linens her father could use on his trip to Rome—for carrying food or spreading over tables at inns along the way—even though the press of her convent duties left her little if any free time. In addition to praying the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours), the major daily occupation of the cloistered nuns, the Poor Clares at San Matteo worked long hours to sustain their ever-struggling economy. They grew a few fruits and vegetables to feed themselves, did all their own cleaning and cooking, and also produced articles for outside sale, such as fine embroidered handkerchiefs, lace, herbal medicines, and bread in the summertime, when it was too hot for anyone else to bake. The rough brown habits they wore, with black linen veil and knotted cord belt, never showed the dirt of their menial labors.
Maria Celeste’s letter of August 31, 1623
Suor Maria Celeste, muscially talented like most members of her family, also directed the choir from time to time and taught the novices how to sing Gregorian chant. In her capacity as the convent’s apothecary, she assisted the visiting doctor, fabricated remedies in pill or tonic form, and nursed the sick nuns in the infirmary, where Suor Arcangela often occupied a bed. Although Suor Maria Celeste, who spoke for both of them in her letters, never directly accused Suor Arcangela of malingering, she sometimes alluded to a hysterical component in her sister’s complaints. The younger daughter’s moodiness and taciturnity may have characterized her nature from childhood. Or the traits may have developed in reaction to cloistered life, which had been her father’s choice and not her own.
The arduous existence of the Poor Clares was described baldly by a contemporary of Suor Maria Celeste’s and Suor Arcangela’s— Maria Domitilla Galluzzi, who entered the house of the Clarisses in Pavia in 1616, and later wrote her own interpretation of the Rule of Saint Clare.
“Show her how we dress in vile clothing,” Maria Domitilla counseled any nun introducing a candidate for admission to the sisters’ way of life, “always go barefoot, get up in the middle of the night, sleep on hard boards, fast continually, and eat crass, poor, and lenten food, and spend the major part of the day reciting the Divine Office and in long mental prayers, and how all of our recreation, pleasure, and happiness is to serve, love, and give pleasure to the beloved Lord, attempting to imitate his holy virtues, to mortify and villify ourselves, to suffer contempt, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and other inconveniences for his love.”
Although the Council of Trent had specifically denounced the once common practice of forcing young women to take the veil, the percentage of patrician girls entering convents in Florence actually rose through the remainder of the sixteenth century and continued to increase on into the seventeenth. Whether or not Galileo’s daughters walked willingly into San Matteo, Suor Maria Celeste found her place there. The same cannot be said with certainty of Suor Arcangela. If she ever wrote a letter to her father, it has not been preserved.
On top of all her appointed tasks, Suor Maria Celeste voluntarily took up the sort of domestic work she would have performed for her father and brother had she lived in their home on Bellosguardo. Despite her distance, she insinuated herself between the two of them, always placating her father while pleading Vincenzio’s point of view in matters large or small.
“Vincenzio stands in dire want of new collars,” she informed Galileo in an undated letter, even though he may not think so, as it suits him to have his used ones bleached as the need arises; but we are struggling to accommodate him in this practice, since the collars are truly old, and therefore I would like to make him four new ones with lace trim and matching cuffs; however, since I have neither the time nor the money to do this all by myself, I should like for you to make up what I lack, Sire, by sending me a braccio of fine cambric and at least 18 or 20 lire to buy the lace, which my lady Ortensa makes for me very beautifully; and because the collars worn nowadays tend to be large, they require a good deal of trimming for properly finishing them; moreover, seeing as Vincenzio has been so obedient to you, Sire, in always wearing his cuffs, I maintain, for that reason, he deserves to have handsome ones; and therefore do not be astonished that I ask for this much money.
The wide white collars Suor Maria Celeste sewed, washed, and bleached for her father and brother frame Galileo’s face in every formal portrait painted of him. At home alone, however, tending his experiments or his grapevines, the shirtsleeved Galileo donned an old leather apron.
“I am ashamed that you see me in this clown’s habit,” he reportedly said to a group of distinguished visitors who arrived one afternoon to find him in his garden, in his work clothes. “I’ll go and dress myself as a philosopher.”
But he must have been jesting, for when the men asked Galileo why he didn’t hire someone to take over his manual labor, he replied: “No, no; I should lose the pleasure. If I thought it as much fun to have things done as it is to do them, I’d be glad to.”
This outdoor recreation tempered the concentration of Galileo’s scholarly work and kept him close to Nature. Though the time he spent in his kitchen garden, his orchard, and his vineyard restored his spirits, the hours took their toll on Galileo’s well-worn work garment, which he periodically sent to Suor Maria Celeste for repair.
MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND BELOVED LORD FATHER
I AM RETURNING the rest of your shirts that we have sewn, and the leather apron, too, mended as best I could. I am also sending back your letters, which are so beautifully written that they have only kindled my desire to see more examples of them. Now I am tending to the work on the linens, so that I hope you will be able to send me the trim for borders at the ends, and I remind you, Sire, that the trimmings needs to be wide, because the linens themselves are rather short.
I have just placed Suor Arcangela once more into the doctor’s hands, to see, with God’s help, if she can be relieved of her wearisome illness, which causes me no end of worry and work.
Salvadore [Galileo’s servant] tells me that you want to pay us a visit soon, Sire, which is precisely what we so desire; though I must remind you that you are obliged to keep the promise you made us, that is, to spend an entire evening here, and to be able to have dinner in the convent parlor, because we deliver the excommunication to the tablecloth and not the meals thereon.
I enclose herewith a little composition, which, aside from expressing to you the extent of our need, will also give you the excuse to have a hearty laugh at the expense of my foolish writing; but because I have seen how good-naturedly you always encourage my meager intelligence, Sire, you have lent me the courage to attempt this essay. Indulge me then, Lord Father, and with your usual loving tenderness please help us. I thank you for the fish, and send you loving greetings along with Suor Arcangela. May our Lord grant you complete happiness.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 20TH DAY OF OCTOBER 1623.
Most affectionate daughter,
S.M.C. 
Suor Maria Celeste’s casual reference to excommunication poked private fun at a practice of the Poor Clares. The Rule of the order stated plainly that no visitors could enter the refectory where the nuns dined. The Convent of San Matteo, however, maintained a separate parlor where a sister’s family members might properly be received. They could bring their own food, too, and share it with her. Thus the dishes themselves, whether cooked in the convent or carried in by the guests, could be eaten with impunity, so long as everyone ate in his or her proper place. A black iron grate, or grille, separated the parlor from the nun’s quarters, and all exchanges passed through the lattice of its bars. Another grille pierced the wall near the altar in the adjacent Church of San Matteo, so that the voices of the nuns singing in their choir could reach the townspeople attending mass on the other side. Although the Poor Clares devoted their earthly lives to praying for all the souls of the world, they required the maintenance of a severed space for this work, where they lived hidden in God’s embrace.
These practices traced back to the early thirteenth century, when Francis of Assisi spurned splendid wealth to found his Order of Friars Minor on the principles of poverty, obedience, and devotion. The rich, privileged young Chiara Offreduccio, or Clare, joined him as his first female follower in the spring of 1212. Francis cut off her golden hair and sent her begging in the streets of Assisi. In time the two divided their labors so that Francis traveled widely preaching the Gospel, while Clare headed the contemplative second order of Franciscans, known as the Clarisses, or Poor Ladies— the Poor Clares. Clare sequestered herself for life in the convent Francis built her at San Damiano, where she slept on the floor and ate practically nothing. She also initiated the tradition of work in the convents, filling the hours between the daily offices with spinning and embroidery.
The Sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working should labor faithfully and devotedly after the hour of Terce at work which contributes to integrity and the common good . . . in such a way that, while idleness, the enemy of the soul, is banished, they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer and dedication to which all other temporal things should be subservient, [RULE OF SAINT CLARE, chapter VII]
By the time Suor Maria Celeste joined the order, the Rule of Saint Clare had relaxed on some issues and tightened on others, as dictated by Church policy and the individual interpretation of each convent’s mother abbess. Seventeenth-century parents, for example, paid dowries for their daughters to enter Clarisse convents in Italy—a requirement that might have horrified Francis and Clare. Poverty remained a central tenet of the Rule, rendering all Poor Clares dependent on alms. Suor Maria Celeste perforce appealed frequently to her father for financial help, though she found this duty embarrassing. It was one thing to request money to buy presents for Vincenzio and quite another to ask anything for herself. In the “little composition” she apologetically enclosed with her letter of October 20, she apparently meant to soften her current plea by making a comedy of the convent’s neediness. Unfortunately, the attachment has disappeared, so it is impossible to say whether it took the form of an essay or perhaps a dramatic action of the sort Galileo used to write—and liked to see performed, through the grille, when he visited San Matteo. The nuns also wrote plays, in keeping with convent traditions, for the Church authorities encouraged them to stage spiritual comedies and tragedies drawn from biblical themes as part of their education and recreation.
Saint Clare
Whatever Suor Maria Celeste’s request, Galileo never failed to fulfill it, precipitating a flood of appreciation in return. Suor Maria Celeste’s word for the loving indulgence that characterized her father’s attentiveness—amorevolezza—appears more than twenty times in her 124 surviving letters, thanking him for some recent act of thoughtfulness or generosity toward herself, her sister, or someone else in the convent. Thus, all the while that Galileo was inventing modern physics, teaching mathematics to princes, discovering new phenomena among the planets, publishing science books for the general public, and defending his bold theories against establishment enemies, he was also buying thread for Suor Luisa, choosing organ music for Mother Achillea, shipping gifts of food, and supplying his homegrown citrus fruits, wine, and rosemary leaves for the kitchen and apothecary at San Matteo.
“If I wanted to attempt to thank you with words, Sire, for these recent presents you sent us,” she wrote on October 29, 1623, the week after dispatching her “little composition,” “I could not imagine how to begin to fully express our indebtedness, and what is more, I believe that such a display of gratitude would not even please you, for, as kind and good as you are, you would prefer true thankfulness of the spirit from us over any demonstration of speeches or ceremonies. We will therefore serve you better if we apply what we do best, and by that I mean prayer, in seeking to recognize and make recompense for this and all the other innumerable, and even far greater gifts that we have received from you.”
Anxiously anticipating her father’s imminent departure for Rome, she feared that the separation would be a long one, and she dreaded being deprived of his attentions. As usual, she raised Vincenzio’s agenda: “I want to offer you a good word on behalf of our poor brother, although I may be speaking out of turn, yet I beseech you to forgive him his mistake this time, blaming his youth as the real cause for his commiting such a blunder, which, being his first, merits pardon: I therefore entreat you once again to take him with you to Rome, and there, where you will not lack for opportunities, you can give your son the guidance that your paternal duty and all your natural goodness and loving tenderness seek to provide him.”
Vincenzio, now seventeen, had turned out to be the sullen, thankless opposite of his industrious older sister. Attending college in Pisa, he squandered money and taxed the goodwill of Galileo’s dear friend Benedetto Castelli, to whose care he had been entrusted. None of Castelli’s letters clarify, however, what particular infraction of Vincenzio’s provoked the paternal anger on this occasion.
“For the future,” Galileo wrote in exasperation to Castelli of Vincenzio’s frequent financial demands during his student days, "he is to be content with 3 scudi a month for pocket money. With this he can buy plaster figures, pens, paper, or anything else he likes; and he may consider himself lucky to have as many scudi as I at his age had groats.”
Toward the end of November, after The Assayer appeared in print and won acclaim in Rome, Suor Maria Celeste requested a copy, among other favors from her father, on what she suspected to be the eve of his departure.
MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD FATHER
BETWEEN THE INFINITE LOVE I bear you, Sire, and my fear that this sudden cold, which ordinarily troubles you so much, may aggravate your current aches and indispositions, I find it impossible to remain without news of you: therefore I beg to hear how you are, Sire, and also when you think you will be setting off on your journey. I have hastened my work on the linens, and they are almost finished; but in applying the fringe, of which I am sending you a sample, I see I will not have enough for the last two cloths, as I need almost another four braccia. Please do everything you can to get this to me quickly, so I can send them all to you before you leave; as it is for the purpose of your upcoming trip that I have gone to such lengths to finish them.
Since I do not have a room where I can sleep through the night, Suor Diamanta, by her kindness, lets me stay in hers, depriving her own sister of that hospitality in order to take me in; but the room is terribly cold now, and with my head so infected, I cannot see how I will be able to stand it there, Sire, unless you help me by lending me one of your bed hangings, one of the white ones that you will not need to use now while you are away. I am most eager to know if you can do me this service. And another thing I ask of you, please, is to send me your book, the one that has just been published, so that I may read it, as I am longing to see what it says.
Here are some cakes I made a few days ago, hoping to give them to you when you came to bid us adieu. I see that this will not happen quite as soon as I feared, and so I want you to have them before they turn hard. Suor Arcangela continues still to purge herself, and she does not feel terribly well after having had the two cauteries on her thighs. I am still not very well either, but by now I am so accustomed to poor health that I hardly think about it, seeing how it pleases the Lord to keep testing me always with some little pain or other. I thank Him, and I pray that He grant you, Sire, the greatest possible well-being in all respects. And to close I send you loving greetings from me and from Suor Arcangela.
FROM SAN MATTEO, THE 21ST DAY OF NOVEMBER 1623.
Most affectionate daughter,
S. M. Coloste
If you have collars to be bleached, Sire, you may send them to us.
