To situate Galileo in the context of his times, Sobel concentrates on the family man. Both of his daughters were nuns, and the eldest, Maria Celeste, was his closest confidante. This is all the more remarkable because Galileo had shipped both sisters off to a convent when they were teenagers. This was customary for illegitimate females. And they were illegitimate because scholars like Galileo were not expected to marry (he never did). No one knows how Galileo’s youngest daughter felt about all this, since she was not much of a letter writer. But Sister Maria Celeste was not only a devout nun but a devoted daughter all her life. Galileo described her as a “woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness and most tenderly attached to me.”
She was also a wonderful letter writer. Her father’s half of their correspondence does not survive. But from Maria Celeste’s caring, inquisitive, chatty letters–which Sobel inserts throughout her narrative–we learn that he took an intimate interest not only in her life but in the life of her convent as well. In response, she gave him truly saintlike loyalty. In the bargain, she was witty. Of her younger sister she wrote, “Arcangela’s nature being very different from mine and rather eccentric, it pays for me to acquiesce to her in many things, in order to be able to live in the kind of peace and unity befitting the intense love we bear each other.” Counterbalancing Galileo’s story with Maria Celeste’s, Sobel tells not just their story but the story of their times. Due in bookstores next week, “Galileo’s Daughter” is innovative history and a wonderfully told tale.
