34 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



commenced to expound publicly his view of the earth, the 

 planets, and the fixed stars. While at this time his discover- 

 ies in the heavens were generally recognised, as good tele- 

 scopes came into existence, a new opposition was awakened 

 by his plain statements concerning the conclusions which he 

 drew from these discoveries. An earth revolving on its axis 

 was a horror not merely to all sympathisers with Aristotle, 

 but in particular to the powers of the Church. The better 

 the reasons brought forward by Galileo in favour of rotation 

 and against all objections, the greater the bitterness of his 

 opponents. Jesuits and Pope began to fear for their mastery, 

 when doctrines were spread which contradicted their own. 

 On the 25th February, 161 5, the Roman Inquisition began to 

 busy itself with Galileo, and for a period of almost thirty 

 years which followed until his death they never ceased to pay 

 attention to him, and, indeed, persecuted him with increasing 

 severity. For twenty years Galileo remained full of hope 

 that he would succeed in convincing learned Jesuits, Car- 

 dinals, and even the Pope of the accuracy of his views. He 

 did not realise that his opponents had neither the desire nor 

 the power to follow him seriously, and that the proceedings of 

 the Inquisition had nothing whatever to do with the forma- 

 tion of a judgment depending upon the greatest obtainable 

 knowledge of reality, but merely started from a fixed inten- 

 tion of maintaining the opinion of the Church. Hence in 

 1 61 6 Galileo's writings were forbidden, and he was warned 

 to give up his erroneous opinions under threat of imprison- 

 ment. He submitted. 



Later developments showed that his submission was just 

 as purely apparent as the investigation of his opinions by his 

 judges. Galileo behaved to the end towards the power of the 

 Church differently than did Giordano Bruno, who, sixteen 

 years before, had turned away with horror, even at the 

 stake, from a Church which opposed the recognition of 

 truth; he refused the cross held to him at the last by way of 



