GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO GALILEI. 



125 



The pope, is is said, did not immediately get 

 a copy of the new-published " Dialogues," which 

 had been printed in Florence by a stroke of 

 something like Machiavellic diplomacy, after the 

 Roman censorship had been coaxed or cajoled 

 into an imprimatur. It may be doubted whether 

 he immediately found time to read them. But 

 he saw at once, cr was made to see by those 

 round him, an affront to his authority in the at- 

 tempt, in any shape, at any further discussion of 

 a subject on which he considered Galileo, by his 

 promise to Bellarmine, as having, in a manner, 

 been bound over to keep the peace. His indig- 

 nation, says M. Berti, was aroused so strongly 

 that " the book and its author would both have 

 been brought without delay before the Holy Office, 

 if the intercession of the Grand-duke of Tuscany, 

 and the urgent representations of his ' Orator ' 

 at Rome, had not prevailed with Urban to nomi- 

 nate, in the first instance, a special commission to 

 examine and report on the book before taking 

 further proceedings." But le diable rty perdait 

 ricn. The commission, of course carefully packed, 

 made a report soon after to his Holiness, in which 

 it accumulated all the matters of charge that 

 could be brought against Galileo, as well for the 

 act of publication of the obnoxious " Dialogues," 

 as for the manner in which the questions broached 

 therein were handled. On receiving this report, i 

 Urban lost no time in ordering the Inquisition of 

 Florence to intimate his Holiness's command to 

 Galileo to appear in person not later than the 

 month of October (the rescript was issued in 

 September) before the commissary-general of 

 the Holy Office in Rome. 



This imperious summons struck Galileo with 

 consternation, and was highly displeasing to the 

 young Grand-duke Ferdinand, who had just suc- 

 ceeded Galileo's old patron Cosmo. The Vene- 

 tian Republic would have opposed a firm front 

 to Rome on such a demand ; but Ferdinand was 

 young and irresolute, and the duchess and dow- 

 ager-duchess had been thoroughly indoctrinated 

 by their spiritual directors against all " vain 

 knowledge and false philosophy." Galileo's in- 

 firm health had furnished excuse for delay in 

 obeying the papal mandate ; but that mandate 

 was repeated in still more peremptory terms, 

 and finally the pope sent orders to the Inquisitor 

 of Florence that, so soon as Galileo's physical 

 condition permitted, he was to be brought in 

 irons to Rome. Ferdinand wrote to him from 

 Pisa on the 11th of January, 1633, that it had 

 become necessary for him to obey the papal sum- 

 mons, but that he would place at his disposal one 



of the grand-ducal litters and a trustworthy guide, 

 and would allow him to take up his residence at 

 the Tuscan embassy in Rome. No Italian prince 

 of that period, says Herr Gebler, would have 

 acted otherwise. No one of them would have 

 had the courage or independence to meet with a 

 veto the pope's demand for the extradition of an 

 eminent subject. Venice alone would have acted 

 on the axiom laid down by Paul Sarpi on the 

 sovereign power of the state, and would have 

 asserted that power against all sacerdotal preten- 

 sions to set that of the Church over it, and to 

 execute ecclesiastical justice on the subject of an 

 independent dominion. 



There was a sad contrast between Galileo's 

 first and last visit to Rome — the first a triumph, 

 the last a torture, moral if not physical. There 

 was a sad contrast, within a much briefer period, 

 between the countenance turned toward him by 

 Urban on his accession, and that of the same 

 pontiff so soon averted in implacable wrath on 

 the first umbrage given by the philosopher to the 

 pontiff's pride of power and of wisdom more than 

 human. 



The truth appears to be that Urban VIII., in 

 the persistent animosity he showed against Gali- 

 leo (while professing all the while to retain friendly 

 sentiments toward him), was a good deal moved 

 as well by the instigations of intolerant council- 

 ors as by the consciousness of having gone too 

 far previously in the direction of tolerance. He 

 had lavished his most ostentatious patronage on 

 the Florentine philosopher. He had expressed 

 his opinion that the Copernican system could not 

 be condemned as heretical, but only as rash. 

 And now he found the representative man of that 

 rash system again rushing with redoubled rash- 

 ness into print, substantially, though not avow- 

 edly, as its apologist. 



In the mean time, those who had the pope's 

 ear had persuaded him that its propagation was 

 in a high degree perilous to the Church. Urban 

 VIII., like a priestly Louis XIV., was ready at 

 any moment to exclaim, "Vltglise e'est moi!" 

 Ranke states that, " if it was proposed to him to 

 take counsel of the college, he replied that he 

 understood more than all the cardinals put to- 

 gether." ' He had, however, precluded himself 

 from proceeding by direct means against Galileo 

 as an offender against the laws of the Church. 

 He had himself conceded that the Copernican 

 system could not be condemned as heretical. The 

 very work, which and whose author he had now 

 resolved to crush, had received the imprimatur 

 1 " History of the Popea," vol. ii., p. 556. 



