THE TRIAL OF GALILEO. 391 



a proposition condemned by the Church. " If he refuses to obey," 

 said the pontifical letter, "the Father Commissary, in the presence of 

 a notary and witnesses, shall enjoin him absolutely to abstain from 

 teaching that doctrine and that opinion, from upholding it or even 

 speaking of it; in case he does not comply, he shall be cast into jail." 

 Accordingly, on the 26th of February, 1616, Cardinal Bellarmin, in 

 the presence of the commissary-general of the Holy Office and two wit- 

 nesses, invited Galileo to renounce the two condemned propositions. 

 After Bellarmin, the commissary-general again intimated to him, on 

 behalf of the pope and the entire Congregation of the Holy Office, 

 the formal order no longer to uphold, teach, and defend this opinion, 

 whether by writing, by word of mouth, or in any manner whatso- 

 ever ; if he failed to comply, he was to be prosecuted by the Holy 

 Office. Galileo promised to obey. 1 On the 5th of March following, 

 the Congregation of the Index condemned the work of Copeimicus 

 until it should be corrected. 



From these authentic facts it results that a certain number of 

 modern historians are deceived themselves, or Avould deceive us, 

 when they insinuate that the Holy Office meant to condemn, not the 

 system of Copernicus, but Galileo's theological interpretations of it. 

 There was no question whatever about theological interpretations. 

 In neither Copernicus's book, nor in the letters on the sun-spots, is 

 there a word, a single phrase, in which the Holy Scriptures are 

 interpreted. If here and there in his correspondence Galileo, out of 

 respect to religion, endeavored to reconcile the data of science with 

 the text of the Bible, he never published these explanations. It was 

 not upon these private manuscript documents that he was tried, and 

 the only document that furnished a basis for the charge was a printed 

 work, purely scientific in character, and having nothing whatever to 

 do with theology. By no manner of argumentation can the fact be 

 negatived that a tribunal of theologians constituted itself a judge in 

 a question of science, and decided it as an authority decides. The 

 Holy Office did not forbid receiving and teaching the doctrine of 

 Copernicus, on the ground that it was not yet demonstrated, as some 

 of the apologists of the Holy See would have us believe ; they would 

 not permit it to be demonstrated ; they pronounced it in advance 

 to be "absurd, heretical, contrary to the text of the Scripture." Such 

 is the whole truth about Galileo's first trial, and Domenico Berti sets 



it forth with much dialectic vigor. 



II. 



Galileo once reduced to silence by the act of submission to which 

 he had subscribed, the object of the Inquisition was attained. No 



1 In a work entitled "Galileo Galilei und die Romische Curie" (Stuttgart, 1876), Heir 

 von Gebler disputes the authenticity of the document which states these facts. Berti 

 makes a victorious reply to him. 



