352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



after a further imprisonment of two years, tried, excommunicated, and delivered 

 over to the secular authorities, to be punished ' as mercifully as possible and 

 without the shedding of his blood,' the abominable formula for burning a man 

 alive. He had collected all the observations that had been made respecting the 

 new star in Cassiopeia, 1572; he had taught that space is infinite, and that 

 it is filled with self-luminous and opaque worlds many of them inhabited — 

 this being his capital offense.* He believed that the world is animated by an 

 intelligent soul, the cause of forms but not of matter ; that it lives in all things, 

 even such as seem not to live; that everything is ready to become organized; 

 that matter is the mother of forms and then their grave; that matter and 

 the soul of the world together constitute God. His ideas were therefore pan- 

 theistic, ' Est Deus in nobis.' In his Cena delle Cenere he insists that the 

 Scripture was not intended to teach science, but morals only. The severity 

 with which he was treated was provoked by his asseverations that he was 

 struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor belief. This was 

 the aim of his work entitled ' The Triumphant Beast.' He was burned at Rome, 

 February 16, 1600. 



In 1612 Galileo writes to Kepler that epicycles and eccentrics are 

 not chimerical ; ' not only are there many motions in eccentrics and 

 epicycles, but there are no other motions.' This, written three years 

 after Kepler had sent him his Theory of Mars containing the proof of 

 elliptic motion, shows that Galileo had not yet appreciated Kepler's 

 revolutionary discoveries. It is doubtful if he ever did so. He makes 

 no effective use of them in his arguments in favor of the Copernican 

 doctrines. 



In the meantime busy enemies were stirring up trouble. The letter 

 to Castelli gave great offense. The Bishop of Fiesole became enraged 

 at Copernicus and was much surprised to learn that he had been dead 

 for eighty years. A Dominican friar, P. Caccini, preached a violent 

 sermon against Galileo (1614) on the text Viri Galilcei quid statis 

 aspicientes in cesium ? Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up 

 into Heaven ? Castelli was advised by the archbishop of Pisa, ' for his 

 welfare,' ' if he wished to escape ruin/ to abandon the Copernican opin- 

 ion, because that opinion, besides being an absurdity, was perilous, scan- 

 dalous, rash, heretical and contrary to scripture. 



Another Dominican friar, Lorini, addressed to Cardinal Mellini, 

 president of the Congregation of the Index, a denunciation of ' the 

 Galileists,' who hold the doctrine of Copernicus. The congregation 

 accordingly (February, 1619) opened a secret inquiry. A copy of 

 Galileo's letter to Castelli was examined by the consultator of the Holy 



* One of them ; his pantheistic ideas were, perhaps, his worst heresies in 

 the eyes of his judges. His doctrine that space is infinite filled the pious 

 Kepler, as well as Bruno's Roman judges, with ' horror.' Bruno's works were 

 full of opinions that were abhorrent to all religious people of his time. He 

 was inclined to pronounce in favor of polygamy, and he advocated a species of 

 socialism. Religion he made essentially synonymous with intellectual culture, 

 neglecting moral discipline and spiritual feeling. 



