Empires: The Medici, Godfathers of the Renaissance

The most brilliant scientist of his age, Galileo dropped cannon balls off the tower of Pisa and proved a key concept of gravity. Amazingly, Galileo determined that the Earth orbited the Sun, not the other way around as taught by those narrow-minded Catholics. To publicize his breakthrough, Galileo wrote The Dialogues. For challenging church dogma, wedded to the Ptolemaic view of an Earth-centered universe, the pope, a silent glowering figure, ordered Galileo before the Inquisition where people are tortured. Later groveling before the evil pope, Galileo renounced his correct view and was confined to house arrest where he died shortly thereafter.

What a story! But why tell a falsehood when the truth is more enlightening?

Forget that this is a documentary on the Medici but never finishes the tale of their dissolute decline. The long discourse on Galileo is riddled with errors so serious it drags this presentation into the category of fiction. Following are some of PBS's intentional distortions. First, they do not mention Copernicus, a Catholic priest who first claimed that the Earth circles the sun in De Revolutionibus two decades before Galileo was born. Although brilliant, Galileo's conceit and self-righteousness marred his historical accomplishments. He was a liar who wrested from the Venetians a huge stipend for supplying his invention of the telescope before being revealed as a charlatan since the telescope was an invention of others passed off as his own. For this deceit, he was ridiculed in a play by Bertolt Brecht.

The problem with Copernicus' theory (passed off by PBS as Galileo's discovery) is fundamental: the Earth does not circle the sun. The proof is simple enough: Copernicus' theory failed to predict future eclipses as well as the Ptolemaic theory - it was off by weeks where the latter theory missed by days.

An infantile Galileo refused to supply Kepler with a telescope - leading Albert Einstein to condemn Galileo hundreds of years later: "It has always hurt me to think that Galilei did not acknowledge the work of Kepler. That, alas, is vanity." Galileo's jealousy forced Kepler to toil a decade longer to discover that planets orbited in an ellipse, not a circle as Galileo believed. In another burst of foolishness, Galileo denounced Kepler's theory that the moon caused the tides. Again, Galileo was wrong.

Galileo waged a campaign to teach Copernicus' theory as absolute truth and damn all other theories. Contrary to PBS's claim, many in the Catholic Church embraced Copernicus' theory; for example, Cardinal Bellarmine, Master of Controversial Questions at the Roman College, wrote in an April 4, 1615 letter that he was intrigued by the Copernican theory but requested it be taught as theory rather than absolute truth, barring proof. Galileo scoffed that he could provide proof but he did not want to waste his time.

Scientist Timothy Ferris, who admires Galileo but recognizes his childishness, writes: "This was pure sophistry. Galileo did not, in fact, have definitive proof of the Copernican theory. In Rome, Galileo ridiculed the anti-Copernicans at every opportunity, and promised that he would finally reveal his irrefutable proof of the Copernican theory. This turned out to be his erroneous account of the tides - Kepler's more nearly correct theory having, as usual, been ignored by Galileo."

When his great friend and admirer Maffeo Barberini was elected pope in 1623 as Urban VIII, the pope showered Galileo with gifts and declarations of "fatherly love." This is the same pope who PBS depicts as a silent, glowering evil presence. In response to the pope's support, Galileo wrote The Dialogues, exposing his critics as buffoons; Galileo inserted a belief of the pope's in the mouth of an idiot named "Simplicio" (simpleton). The pope, through the simpleton, uttered Kepler's correct belief (denounced by Galileo) that the moon affects the tides. Angered, the pope banned the book. Growing increasingly irrational, Galileo denounced his friend the pope and fled to the pope's enemies, placing the pope in danger of assassination by pro-Spanish factions. To quiet him the pope placed Galileo before the inquisition but ensured no harm would come to a former friend who nearly caused his assassination. Galileo spent his final 8 years under house arrest.

Despite PBS's artfully filmed shots of Galileo dropping balls from atop the tower of Pisa, he never practiced this experiment. Although Galileo was a devout Catholic (he ordered his daughter to a convent against her wishes), he imposed dangerously on his friend the pope. PBS twists history to claim that the church was suppressing the fact that the Earth orbits the sun when in reality many in the church believed but couldn't prove it since the mathematics were incorrect. PBS presents the pope as a narrow-minded torturer rather than a learned man disappointed that his friend Galileo was halting the advancement of science and placing his life in danger. Had Galileo triumphed, science would have been wounded because he wanted to squelch all theories, including the elliptical theory posited by Kepler, who used another man's telescope to determine the truth of Earth's orbit.

I recommend the same: use another media's teachings to determine the truth and shun this shameful piece of propaganda.

First, the positives: the cinematography is stunning, the narration clear and factually accurate (although the narrator's voice is, to me, somewhat jarring), and the pacing of the story is superb. Additionally, great care was obviously taken to cast actors who actually resemble the historical figures, and keeping them silent only adds to the realism.

Sadly, this review does not end here, and I must point out the film's significant flaws. The characters are one-dimensional - we see only Cosimo the enlightened ruler, Giovanni the power-hungry, and Savonarola the fanatic, while all these men were more complicated (and therefore more interesting) than they are presented. Also, while the spoken words are factual, some of the images they accompany are not: we see a Florentine skyline containing buildings not yet built, we see a peasant girl sitting on stairs reading Luther's theses in the Latin... if I can catch these inaccuracies, one wonders how many a serious scholar would notice!

Other pet peeves include the immediate passing from the reign of Cosimo the Elder to Lorenzo the Magnificent, with nary a mention of Piero (Lorenzo's father, who ruled the city for five years), and the perpetual recycling of footage to pad out the segments; it is not hard to imagine art students devising a drinking game around this film... take a shot when the artisan mixes the blue paint.

In short, The Medici is a beautiful and interesting documentary, recommended to students of history and lovers of the arts alike, but it is no substitute for serious scholarship. Three and one-half stars.