3 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



doctrine implied the confirmation of the system of Copernicus and 

 the demonstration of the earth's motion, which were no longer re- 

 served for mathematicians only, but made intelligible to all by a 

 series of experiments. Here was an innovation calculated to alarm 

 the theologians. A system that might be regarded as inoffensive so 

 long as it was only a mathematical hypothesis, useful to men of science 

 in their researches, became a very different thing on being transformed 

 into a physical truth accessible to the senses and pregnant with conse- 

 quences touching the plurality of worlds and the aim of creation. 

 Hence the apparent triumph of Galileo hid from view perils the mag- 

 nitude of which at first eluded his penetrating mind. While he was 

 giving himself up, with perhaps over-much confidence, to the pleasure 

 of success, and was yielding too easily to his habitual temptation to 

 answer objections with sarcasm, the ecclesiastical authority quietly 

 set ou foot an inquiry into the orthodoxy of his opinions. Cardinal 

 Bellarmin, probably in the name of his colleagues of the Inquisition, 

 asked of the members of the Roman College (without mentioning 

 Galileo's name) what was to be thought of the astronomical observa- 

 tions that had recently been promulgated by a distinguished mathe- 

 matician. 



This is the first symptom that we have been able to discover of the 

 intervention of theology in the examination of Galileo's scientific opin- 

 ions. The response of the Roman College was favorable to him ; but, 

 from that moment forward, the alarm was sounded, and the Inquisition 

 never lost sight of him. Though the sovereign pontiff, to whom he was 

 presented by the Tuscan embassador, received him with great cour- 

 tesy, not allowing him to utter even a word on bended knees,' yet the 

 Holy Office, even before he had quitted Rome, inquired of the tribunal 

 at Padua whether, in the action brought against Cesare Cremonini for 

 certain philosophical indiscretions, there might not be something to 

 compromise Galileo. A direct personal attack, inspired by an over- 

 weening zeal, quickly followed these early suspicions. On his return 

 to Florence, Galileo took up his labors afresh in the pleasant solitudes 

 of the Belvedere, placed at his service by the kind hospitality of the 

 grand-duke ; there he received his friends and pupils, who, on depart- 

 ing from these conversaziones, propagated his doctrines. At this a 

 Dominican friar, Thomas Caccini, took umbrage, and, in a sermon 

 delivered at Santa Maria Nuova on the miracle of Joshua, he suddenly 

 exclaimed, " Viri Galilcei, quid statis aspicientes in ccelum ? " The 

 friar doubtless had heard of a conversation held at the court in pres- 

 ence of the grand-duchess dowager Christine of Lorraine, and the 

 Archduchess Madeleine of Austria, in the course of which Father Cas- 

 telli, a pupil of Galileo, had endeavored to prove, to the great satis- 

 faction of his hearers, that one might believe in the earth's motion 

 without questioning the authenticity of Joshua's miracle. Upon this 

 subject Galileo addressed to his pupil a famous letter, in which he 



