Maria Celeste

Galileo Galilei (father)

Sister Maria Celeste (16 August 1600 – 2 April 1634), born Virginia Gamba, was the daughter of the famous Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and Marina Gamba. She was the eldest of three siblings, with a sister Livia and a brother Vincenzio. All three children were born out of wedlock, and their father considered his daughters Virginia and Livia to be unmarriageable. He placed them in the San Matteo convent shortly after Virginia's thirteenth birthday. Virginia chose a new name, Maria Celeste, in honor of the virgin Mary, and her father's love of astronomy.

Although Maria Celeste was confined inside the walls of the convent at San Matteo for the remainder of her life, she was a constant source of support for both her father, whose books began a controversy in the Catholic Church, and the convent. Maria Celeste served as San Matteo's apothecary, and also kept the convent afloat through the influence of her father. She sent him herbal cures for his various maladies while additionally seeing to the convent's finances and occasionally staging plays from inside the convent's cloistered walls. There is evidence she prepared the manuscripts for some of Galileo's books.

The Catholic Inquisition tried Galileo for heresy in 1633. He was forced to recant his view that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, and he was confined to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Soon after Galileo returned to Arcetri in disgrace, Maria Celeste contracted dysentery, and she died on April 2, 1634. She was 33 years old.

After Galileo's death, 124 letters from Maria Celeste were discovered among his papers. These were the remainder of a vast correspondence between the two. It is not known what happened to Galileo's responses to Maria Celeste, and it is likely that they were destroyed by church authorities.

Of Maria Celeste, Galileo once wrote, " a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me."

The International Astronomical Union has named the impact crater Maria Celeste on the planet Venus after her. All but a few of the geographical features of Venus are named for historical and mythological women.

The book Galileo's Daughter (hardcover, ISBN 0-8027-1343-2, paperback, ISBN 0-14-028055-3) describes her life and that of her father. She appears as a character in the play Life of Galileo, which is fictionalized and does not give an accurate portrayal of her life.