Disputing the Animation of the Heavens in Rome around 1616, between Animism and Natural Exegesis

Giulio Cesare Lagalla's De coelo animato disputatio (Disputation on the Living Heavens; 1622), a defense of ensouled conceptions of the cosmos that emerged from within the Peripatetic ranks, has received little historiographical attention thus far, although it was originally debated in Rome around 1613, in a crucial period for the history of science, at least in Catholic contexts. Although it might appear as a peripheral work of Renaissance astronomy in comparison with the Copernican question and the Galileo Affair, the topic it addressed was of great importance in the cosmological and theological debates of the time. In this paper, we look at Lagalla's disputation in its cultural context, specifically the Roman Catholic, in which Jesuit scholars played a central role. We argue for its relevance as an intervention on the reconcilability of natural inquiry and scriptural exegesis. Tracing Lagalla's ideas to the Paduan Aristotelian context of his education, this paper shows that religious and philosophical debates of the time, beyond Galileo's case, were more fluid and richer than it is sometimes assumed, and that the “road to Newton” was nourished by a diversity of opinions surrounding celestial physics.