Martin Horký

Martin Horký (1578 – 1670s) was a Czech astronomer, astrologer, pamphleteer and traveler. He was notable for his early – and ultimately incorrect – criticism of Galileo Galilei's identification of the lunar mountains and Galilean moons of Jupiter. A pamphlet published by Horký, the Brevissima Peregrinatio contra Nuncium sidereum, is the first published work against a telescopic discovery.

Horký was born in Lochovice in the Kingdom of Bohemia, to a family with a Protestant background. He travelled around Europe in pursuit of medical training, eventually moving from his native Bohemia to Germany, France and then on to Bologna in Italy; Horký became a vocal supporter of Italian academic culture, and of the Bolognese republican government. A medical student, copyist, and amateur philosopher, Horký quickly became active in the academic scene of northern Italy in the early 17th century. He also maintained some contacts in Bohemia and considered himself a follower of Johannes Kepler, the leading astronomer at the imperial court in Prague. In 1609, he was among a group of notables invited to observe objects through Galileo's new telescope at the astronomer's home in Padua. The telescope was a new invention, having been invented in the Netherlands the previous year; the novelty of the invention, coupled with a huge demand for the devices, led to the frenzied development of new telescopes. Many different craftsmen were rapidly building their own, and by 1609 Galileo was proving to be among the most successful.

In 1610, the year of the publication of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (translatable to "Starry Messenger"), Horký was employed as a secretary and copyist to Giovanni Antonio Magini, an influential professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna. Magini, already a rival of Galileo, expressed skepticism of the claims Galileo put forward in Sidereus, and these doubts were shared by Horký. Specifically, Galileo's claims of observing lunar mountains and four satellites of Jupiter were met with intense skepticism.

In April 1610, Horký was present at a meeting of astronomers and philosophers at the Palazzo Caprara Montpensier, in which Galileo presented evidence of his identification of the satellites of Jupiter and invited the assembled notables to use his telescope. Horký reported that both Magini and Massimo Caprara were unable to see evidence of Jupiter's satellites, and ascribed Galileo's findings to distortions or tricks of the glass. In personal correspondence with Kepler, Horký would go on to claim that Galileo had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the failed test, implied he had contracted the "French Disease" (syphilis), and that the Paduan professor was motivated by greed and personal glory to discover new astronomical bodies.

Throughout Bologna [Galileo] has a terrible reputation: he is losing his hair; all of his skin is devastated by the 'French disease'; his skull is ruined and his mind delirious; his optic nerves have been destroyed because he has observed the minutes and seconds around Jupiter with too much curiosity and presumptuousness. He has lost his sight, hearing, taste, and touch; his hands suffer from chiragra as he has illicitly pilfered the treasure of philosophers and mathematicians; his heart suffers from palpitations because he has passed the celestial fable off to everyone; since he can no longer convince scholars and illustrious persons, his intestines have issued an unnatural tumor; and since he has wandered hither and yon, his feet show signs of gout. Blessed is the physician who can restore the sick "Nuncius" to health.

— Martin Horký, in a letter to Johannes Kepler

His aggressive criticism of Galileo continued, and by May 1610 Horký had drafted a pamphlet criticizing Galileo's practices. His views were akin to those of his employer, Magini, but the latter quickly began to distance himself from the project, seeing it as too overtly aggressive towards a fellow professor of philosophy. Horký would later try to mockingly rebut Magini's hesitance to criticize a fellow professor, stating "a fox does not bite another fox, nor does a dog bark at another dog."

Initially discouraged from publishing the pamphlet by Magini, Horký persisted; eager to publish his work quickly, he travelled outside of Bolognese jurisdiction to avoid the publishing rules enforced by the Roman Inquisition and thus be able to go to print faster. In June 1610, he travelled to Modena and printed 500 copies of his pamphlet at his own expense, intent on sending his work to various European academics. His circumventing of Magini's authority led to a major falling out between the two; Magini fired Horký from his secretarial role and had him evicted. As a leading professor of the University of Bologna, Magini wielded political influence over the Bolognese city council, which was enriched by contributions from wealthy students and patrons of the college; using this influence, he convinced the city to seize Horký's possessions, but Horký fled the city before he could be arrested. Magini would later issue apologies to Galileo and other astronomers, noting that while he continued to professionally refute Galileo's discoveries, he had not been involved in Horký's pamphlet and declared the affair a "cock-up of that german of mine". The incident, however, left some of Magini's former prestige as an astronomer diminished, especially as Galileo's observations continued to gain wider acceptance.