4 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This were gratuitously to transform an obscure, an irresponsible per- 

 sonage into an humanitarian philosopher who is ages ahead of the 

 thought of his time and who purposely destroys a sorrowful page of 

 history. The most probable account of what took place would be this : 

 According to all the treatises on inquisitorial law, the commissary was 

 authorized not to inflict torture on aged men, or on persons suffering 

 from disease, who might die under the punishment. The advanced 

 age of Galileo, and his infirmities, aggravated as they were by so much 

 mental suffering, naturally placed him in the category of culprits who 

 were not subjected to torture. If he was spared that dreadful inflic- 

 tion, Berti gives all the credit to the humanity of the father commis- 

 sary ; he even appears to think that, but for the kindly intervention 

 of Father Macolano, the sovereign pontiff and the Congregation of 

 the Holy Office would have given over Galileo to the executioner. 



Let us be more fair. It would be a libel on Urban VIII. to rep- 

 resent him as thirsting for the blood and pleased with the sufferings 

 of his old friend. The pontifical decree of June 16th has this important 

 proviso regarding the employment of torture, that it should not be 

 used unless the accused could endure it. When he expressed himself 

 thus, the sovereign pontiff was perfectly well aware that Galileo 

 could not stand such a trial, and he consented beforehand, without 

 needing to be entreated by the commissary, to the omission of the 

 torture. What, indeed, would have been the use of such extreme 

 rigor? Urban did not desire the death of the culprit; he wanted to 

 make certain that Galileo would never more speak or write about the 

 question of the earth's motion ; and it was in order to so strike him 

 with terror as to insure his silence that of all the agonies of the trial 

 he saved him only from the last the only one that would have been 

 of no use. The pope was not so cruel as Berti thinks, but neither did 

 he give any sign of that compassion and indulgence toward the ac- 

 cused with which he is too often credited. This point is worth repeat- 

 ing, inasmuch as it'is the clearest result of Berti's publication: the va- 

 rious phases of the trial of Galileo w r ere not arranged with a view to 

 theatrical effect, and to make an outward show of great severity, so 

 as to intimidate the adherents of Galileo's doctrine, while, behind the 

 scenes, the culprit was treated with kindness. The threat of torture, 

 the abjuration, the sequestration, were realities, and not, as has been 

 supposed, simply monitions addressed to overbold men of science. At 

 first, the court of Rome did not concern itself so much about impress- 

 ing the imagination of the public as about striking Galileo. Here 

 was a rebellious subject who had once before been treated with the 

 greatest lenience, but who repaid the indulgence of the Holy Office 

 with the transparent irony of his "Dialogues;" who had set snares 

 for the person appointed to examine his manuscript ; who, at his first 

 interrogatory, had made sport of his judges, nay, perhaps of the 

 sovereign pontiff himself: he must now be reduced to silence for 



