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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



dictated was likely to be viewed by the new pon- 

 tiff in any other light than that of " contempt of 

 court" — and of himself as the supreme head of 

 that court — to which, and to whom, were to be 

 submitted with implicit deference all matters 

 bearing on its sovereign spiritual authority, 

 whether directly or indirectly. Pope Urban had 

 said to Cardinal Hohenzoller — who repeated to 

 Galileo — that the Church had not condemned 

 this system (the Copernican system), and that it 

 should not be condemned as heretical, but only 

 as rash ; and he added that " there was no fear 

 of any one undertaking to prove that it must ne- 

 cessarily be true." 



In half a dozen audiences, which his Holiness 

 had vouchsafed to grant Galileo, this very subject 

 of the Copernican system had been discussed be- 

 tween them with perfect freedom ; and it was 

 natural to infer, from the pope's expressions to 

 Hohenzoller, that he would be disposed to toler- 

 ate the like freedom of discussion in print, pro- 

 vided it were pushed to no positive or decisive 

 conclusion. Upon that hint Galileo wrote and 

 printed. Papal vengeance pursued him to the 

 last hour of his life. 



If Galileo misunderstood his patron, it is only 

 charitable to believe that Urban understood no 

 better his protege, soon to become his victim. 

 How, indeed, should they have understood each 

 other ? The personal characters and aims were 

 as widely different as the personal positions of 

 the two men, who came thus suddenly and unex- 

 pectedly in collision. Galileo was solely intent 

 on extending the empire of science — Urban on 

 asserting the authority and enlarging the estates 

 of the Church. While the former sought worldly 

 means so far only as they were indispensable to 

 obtain leisure for his researches, the latter mainly 

 (that we may not say solely) made use of his spirit- 

 ual power and prestige to promote the temporal 

 aggrandizement of his see and his family, which 

 had indeed become the all but exclusive object 

 of the popes for two centuries. 



It has been supposed that Urban took per- 

 sonal offense at the imagined application to him- 

 self of the name of Simplicio, which Galileo had 

 given to the Ptolemaic champion in his dialogues 

 on " The Two Principal Systems of the World." 

 The other two interlocutors bore real names — 

 those of the Florentine Salviati and the Venetian 

 Sangredo, friends of Galileo, the former of whom 

 personates the true (i. e., Copernican) philosopher 

 in the discussion, and the latter intervenes as an 

 umpire between the combatants. The pope had, 

 indeed, sycophants enough about him, capable 



of suggesting the injurious idea that the third 

 Ptolemaic interlocutor was meant for himself. 

 But he would have well deserved tha name of 

 Simplicio, if he could really have believed this 

 when he found leisure, which was probably not 

 at first, to read the " Dialogues." What was, how- 

 ever, true, and scarcely less calculated to exasper- 

 ate his imperious Holiness, was that Galileo had 

 put — and could not help putting — into the mouth 

 of Simplicio arguments which Urban had held to 

 himself in apology for the old astronomy. Gali- 

 leo had, however, carefully guarded against seem- 

 ing to give those arguments as Simplicio's, but 

 made him cite them as those of " a man of great 

 learning and of high eminence." Personal of- 

 fense there was none in such a citation ; but of- 

 fense to papal infallibility, and to the rules of 

 good courtiership, there ceitainly was, in the fact 

 that, instead of accepting Urban's arguments as 

 unanswerable, Galileo made his Salviati answer 

 them. Hinc illce irce. Urban VIII. was no stiff 

 Aristotelian. A pope who had " forced the songs 

 and apothegms of the Old and the New Testa- 

 ment into Horatian metres, the song of praise of 

 the aged Simeon into Sapphic strophes," 1 cer- 

 tainly was not chargeable with taking grave 

 matters in too solemn earnest. And, it must be 

 added, such matters, whether theological or phil- 

 osophical, were those which formed the smallest 

 portion of his mental concerns, either before or 

 after his elevation to the papal chair. He was, 

 while rising to power, above all an accomplished 

 courtier and diplomatist : when he had reached its 

 summit, he was the most imperious and unscrupu- 

 lous of priestly princes. What was true he had lit- 

 tle or no leisure to investigate ; what was expedient 

 he regarded solely from a secular point of view. 

 Maffeo Barberini's stepping-stone to papal sov- 

 ereignty had been through the court of France ; 

 his policy as pope was framed on the model of 

 Richelieu's, and was no less cynically indifferent 

 to Catholic interests than that of his great master. 

 It is impossible to credit him with any other 

 species or semblance of zeal for the Church than 

 that which consisted in flaunting her banners and 

 parading her cause, while fighting his own battles. 

 " His favorite notion," says Ranke, 4 " was that the 

 States of the Church must be secured by fortifi- 

 cations and become formidable by their own 

 arms." This was the man whom Galileo had 

 hoped to interest in scientific star-gazing, and to 

 find open to conviction on points he had ODce 

 determined, not by thought, but by will. 



' Ranke's " History of the Popes," vol. ii., p. 558. • 

 2 Ibid., p. 554. 



