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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of his own censors of the press at Rome. The 

 only course open to him was to employ his Ames 

 dummies of the Inquisition to say and do for him 

 all that he deemed necessary to be said and done 

 to intimidate Galileo and his Copernican sectaries 

 into submission and silence. Accordingly, as we 

 have seen, he summoned Galileo to appear be- 

 fore the Holy Office, but took care not to affix 

 his papal signature to any of their proceedings, 

 though he presided in person at several of their 

 sittings. No wonder if, among the ten men se- 

 lected to do this dirty work for him, three — 

 among them the pope's nephew, Francesco Bar- 

 berini — withheld their signatures from the sen- 

 tence. That sentence, as a specimen of the sup- 

 prcssio vcri and mggeslio fahi, is perhaps un- 

 paralleled even in Roinan ecclesiastical Latin. It 

 is given in extenso at page 143 of M. Berti's 

 Appendix, and sums up as follows : 



" Dicimus, pronuneiamus, judicamus et decla- 

 ramus, te Galiheum supradictum, ob ea quae de- 

 ducta sunt in processu scripture, et quse tu con- 

 fessus es ut supra, te ipsum reddidisse hnic Sancto 

 Officio vehernenter suspectum de hceresi, hoc est quod 

 credideris et tenueris doctrinam fclsam et contra- 

 riam Sacris ac Divinis Scripturis, Solem videlicet 

 esse centrum orbis terra?, et eum non moveri ab 

 Oricnte ad Oceidentem, et Terrain moveri, nee esse 

 centrum Mundi, et posse teneri ac defendi tanquam 

 probabilem opinionem aliquam, postquam declarata 

 ac definita fuerit contraria Sacrce Scriptvrce; et 

 consequenter te incurrisse omnes censuras et poenas 

 a Sacris Canonibus et aliis Constitutionibus gene- 

 ralibus et particularibus contra hujusmodi delin- 

 quentes statutas et promulgatas." ' 



It is characteristic of inquisitorial justice in 

 all ages, that " vehement suspicion of heresy " is 

 here regarded as equivalent to proof of heresy ; 

 and that Galileo, having been stated to have come 

 under that suspicion, should be assumed to have 

 " incurred all the censures and punishments ap- 

 pointed and proclaimed against such delinquents." 



1 " We say, pronounce, judge, and declare yon, Gal- 

 ileo aforesaid, because of the facts brought out in the 

 written proceedings, and which you have confessed, 

 as above, to have rendered yourself to this IToly Office 

 vehemently suspect of heresy ; that is, that you have be- 

 lieved and maintained the doctrine, false and contrary 

 to the Holy and Divine Scriptures, that the sun is the 

 centre of the world, and that it does not move from 

 the east to the west; and that the earth moves, that it is 

 not the centre of the world ; and that it may be held 

 and defended, as a probable opinion, after it had been 

 declared and defined to be contrary to Holy Scripture : 

 and, consequently, that you have incurred all the cen- 

 sures and penalties made and promulgated against 

 such offenders by the sacred canons and by other con- 

 stitutions both general and particular." 



Without dwelling on that assumption — by whom, 

 may we ask, had the Copernican theory " been de- 

 clared and denned to be contrary to Holy Script- 

 ure ? " By the pope, speaking ex cathedra for the 

 Church universal ? No such thing ; but by the 

 Congregation of the Inquisition — a body incom- 

 petent to declare or define anything of the sort. 



It was Pope Urban throughout that urged the 

 Inquisition to exercise its utmost rigor against 

 Galileo. He was not more intent on seizing with 

 the secular arms of horse, foot, and artillery, the 

 territories of his neighbors to enrich his nephews, 

 than on stretching his spiritual authority to the 

 utmost to frighten or coerce a defenseless philos- 

 opher into restoring the sun's motion and arrest- 

 ing the earth's — so far as words could do it. 

 Much has been said, with something less than jus- 

 tice, about the abjectness of Galileo's abjuration. 

 His Roman Catholic biographer M. Henri Mar- 

 tin, handles the matter, in our judgment more 

 equitably. We make no apology for rather a 

 long extract : 



" The submissive language and attitude of Gal- 

 ileo before the Inquisition were enjoined upon him 

 by his feeble protector, the Grand-duke of Tusca- 

 ny, and were likewise counseled by all his friends, 

 of whom we have letters. Niccolini, the friendly 

 Tuscan embassador at Rome, relates in his corre- 

 spondence with his court the prolonged and deep 

 dejection in which Galileo was plunged, after re- 

 luctantly giving his promise to comply with these 

 counsels. We may add that, in the submissive 

 attitude he assumed throughout his trial, he con- 

 formed also to the counsels of the Venetian Fra 

 Micanzio, the friend and successor of Fra Paolo 

 Sarpi. Such was the pliability of the firmest char- 

 acters in Italy of the seventeenth century. 



" Far from imagining with Sir Brewster that the 

 danger for Galileo lay in submission, we must not 

 suppose that he yielded to a vain fear. He knew 

 how two condemned heretics had been treated at 

 Rome, the one only thirty-two years, the other 

 only eight years, before his trial. He must have 

 had in recollection Giordano Bruno, burned alive 

 at Rome under Clement VIII. in 1600, and Marco 

 Antonio de Dominis, who died in imprisonment 

 before trial in the castle of St. Angelo, but was 

 condemed after death, and whose exhumed body 

 was burned with his writings at Rome under Ur- 

 ban VHL, in 1624. Galileo was no heretic like 

 Bruno, an ex-Dominican monk, who had openly 

 renounced Catholicism at Geneva, and had pub- 

 licly taught not only the system of Copernicus 

 and the plurality of worlds inhabited by men, but 

 the doctrine of metempsychosis and a sort of pan- 

 theism. Galileo was not a relapsed heretic like the 

 learned mathematician and physical philosopher 

 Dominis, ex- Archbishop of Spalatro, and afterward 



