Evening news : optics, astronomy, and journalism in early modern Europe

315 Pages·2014·3.12 MB·English

by  Reeves

Evening News
MATERIALTEXTS
SeriesEditors
RogerChartier LeahPrice
JosephFarrell PeterStallybrass
AnthonyGrafton MichaelF.Suarez,S.J.
Acompletelistofbooksintheseries
isavailablefromthepublisher.
E V E N I N G
N E W S
Optics, Astronomy,
and Journalism
in Early Modern Europe
EILEEN REEVES
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright(cid:2)2014UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedfor
purposesofrevieworscholarlycitation,noneofthisbook
maybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithout
writtenpermissionfromthepublisher.
Publishedby
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Reeves,EileenAdair.
Eveningnews:optics,astronomy,andjournalisminearly
modernEurope/EileenReeves—1sted.
p. cm.—(Materialtexts)
ISBN978-0-8122-4574-5(hardcover:alk.paper)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Journalism—Europe—History—17thcentury.
2.Newspaperpublishing—Effectoftechnologicalinnovations
on—Europe—History—17thcentury.3.Optics—Social
aspects—Europe—History—17thcentury.
4.Astronomy—Socialaspects—Europe—History—17th
century.5.Europe—Intellectuallife—17thcentury.I.Title.
II.Series:Materialtexts.
pn5110.r44 2014
070.9'032 2013036502
contents
Introduction 1
Chapter1.JesuitsontheMoon 29
Chapter2.MediciStarsandtheMediciRegency 57
Chapter3.GalileoGazzettante 101
Chapter4.CamerasThatDon’tLie 135
Chapter5.CamerasThatDo 165
Chapter6.RapidTransport 206
Conclusion 231
Notes 235
Bibliography 273
Index 303
Acknowledgments 307
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Introduction
Evening News concerns journalism’s entanglement with astronomy and
optics in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Part of this story, of
course,involvesthe emergenceof newtechnologiesofcommunicationand
vision, but it is not merelythe triumphal tale of the successful diffusion of
scientific news in the popular and learned press. My concern is as much
with what was distorted in those transmissions of information as it is with
the more obvious successes of the medium. Thus while a series of ready-
made comparisons between the telescope and the newssheet or newsletter
exists—both,forinstance,hadantecedentselsewherebutemergedasviable
commercialcommoditiesfromtheDutchRepublic,andbothpurportedto
offer miniaturized views of remote regions, but less of local value—this
work will concentrate above all on the productive shortcomings of those
twoconduitsofinformation.1
While Galileo Galilei figures as an important protagonist of this narra-
tive, EveningNewsisnotspecificallydevotedtothedevelopmentofjournal-
ism in Tuscany, where he lived as the grand duke’s mathematician and
philosopher subsequent to his 1610 discovery of the ‘‘Medici Stars’’ or Jupi-
ter’s satellites. Printed serial news came relatively late to Florence: sometime
between1636and1641,twodifferentfirms,seeminglyrivals,receivedpermis-
sion to produce and sell brief pamphlets reporting the latest events in and
beyondItaly.2BothbusinessesmaintainedaGalileianconnectionofsortsby
usingtheMedici Stars asasometime printer’smarkonthebooks theypub-
lished, this discreet image suggesting Florentine loyalty to the astronomer
bothbeforeandafterhisabjurationandcondemnationin1633.3Matterswere
otherwise, however, in the case of their gazettes; generally originating and
composed elsewhere, thenews reflected little inthe way of aFlorentine per-
spective, apart from the costly burden of reporting on Medici ceremonies.
Whileitisdifficult,therefore,todrawarobustconnectionbetweenGalileo’s
activitiesandtheparticularsofFlorentinejournalism,itisthecasethatearly
2 introduction
moderndiscussionsofnewsofteninvolvedgratuitousgesturestotheastrono-
mer, and that texts concerning the heavens, conversely, are occasionally in-
formed by reportage of earthly events. This book investigates the logic of
theseallusions.
Direct Your Curiosity to Heavenly Things
The apparent confluence of optics, astronomy, and journalism in the early
seventeenth century was familiar before the actual emergence of either the
Dutch telescope in September 1608 or the publication of the first periodical
news in this same decade. To choose a celebrated example from antiquity,
when in his Moralia Plutarch addressed that most common of human fail-
ings, curiosity, he figured the soul of the inquisitive man as an insalubrious
camera obscura best remedied with the occasional shaft of light or fresh
breeze,andhepresentedastronomicalresearchas‘‘agreatspectacle,’’andthe
onlyrespectableformofnewsmongering.4‘‘Applyyourcuriositytothesun,’’
heurgedhisreaders,‘‘wheredoesitsetandwhencedoesitrise?Inquireinto
the changes in the moon, as you would into those of a human being. . . .
These are secrets of Nature, yet Nature is not vexed with those who find
themout.’’5
While Plutarch conveniently ignored the fact that the periodicity of the
sun’s apparent movement or of the moon’s phases made the secrets that
characterizedthem,oncediscovered,predictableandthereforewhollyinade-
quateassubstitutesfornews,hisadvicewouldhaveenjoyedarenewedhear-
ing in the early seventeenth century, when interest either in the very basic
question of the sun’s stasis or movement or in the more refined one of the
lunarlightpeaked,andwhenbothissueswerepartofthedebateoverCoper-
nicanism. Plutarch’s pious observation that he who relied least on sensory
informationwasofteninvolvedinthegreatestuseoftheundistractedmind,
andhisapprovalofthespirit,ifnottheparticulars,ofanalarmingtaleabout
Democritus—‘‘thathedeliberatelydestroyedhissightbyfixinghiseyesona
red-hotmirror...sothathiseyesmightnotrepeatedlysummonhisintellect
outside and disturb it’’6—would also have met with real understanding in
the early days of sunspot study. There, the roles of the senses and of optical
instruments came under great scrutiny, and those who indulged in direct
observation of the unfamiliar solar phenomena suffered irreversible damage
totheireyesight.
Introduction 3
For many early modern readers, the abstemious regime of astronomical
studyproposedbyPlutarchwouldhavehardlyservedasasurrogatefornews,
and they would have much preferred an important forerunner of and com-
panion to the newsletter, the almanac. Though it dates to antiquity, the
almanac flourished in the print revolution of the late fifteenth century, and
because it offered specific sorts of information about the near future—when
solar and lunar eclipses would occur, when weather patterns were expected
tochange,whenmajorreligiousholidaysandfeastdaysweretobecelebrated,
and when bloodletting, baths, and haircuts were best undertaken—it was
presumablyofimmediateuseinmanyaspectsofcivilanddomesticlife.7The
predictivevalueofbothalmanacsandnewscollections,theircumulativeabil-
itytoshowlong-termtrends,iswhattheEnglishstatesmanDudleyCarleton
emphasized in 1616, perhaps somewhat self-consciously, when he reminded
hisfriendJohnChamberlaintosavewhatothersprofessedtouseasfishwrap:
Sinceyoucanbecontentwiththegazettasyoushallhavethemby
everymessengerandyouneednotsendthemback,thoughIwill
desireyoutokeepthem,inthatImake(andsohavedonealong
time)acollectionofthemassomedoofalmanacstoknowthe
certaintyoftheweather,yetnotwithsogreatdiligenceastheduke
ofUrbino,whohaththeminprocessoftimefromgreatantiquity.8
Butthesingleprognosticationsofthealmanac,ratherthanthepictureit
presentedovertime,hadalreadyacquiredapronouncedpoliticalandconfes-
sional character, a trait shared with early newswriting, and one at odds with
theRomanCatholicChurch’semphasisonfreewillanditshostilitytoastro-
logical determinism. Matteo Franzesi, a Florentine who served as a secretary
intheRomanCuriainthelate1530sand1540s,explicitlyconnectedprognos-
tication with the thirst for news: ‘‘Let he who guesses / On the basis of
conjectures and discussions / Astrologize,’’ he advised his readers in a light-
heartedpoemontheemergentcraze.9
While Franzesi’s ‘‘On News’’ appeared in 1555 alongside other poems
devoted to trivial objects—carrots, toothpicks, sausage—the situation of
newsreadersandnewswritersgiventoforetellingfutureeventssoonappeared
moreserious.ApapalbullissuedbyPiusVinmid-March1572,lessthantwo
weeks before his death, was directed against all ‘‘those who write, dictate,
keep,transmit,andfailtodestroylibelouspamphletsandthosethingscalled
‘newsletters’’’andwarnedagainsttheshort-termpredictions,notnecessarily