594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing the attacking party. They are poisoned weapons. They 

 pierce the hearts of loving women ; they alienate dear children ; 

 they injure man after life is ended, for they leave poisoned 

 wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best — fears for his 

 eternal salvation, dread of the divine wrath upon him. Of course, 

 in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing 

 good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted ; 

 indeed, they not infrequently injure the assailants more than the 

 assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo ; they were then in 

 all their sharpness and venom.* Yet worse even than these 

 weapons was the attack by the Archbishop of Pisa. 



This man, whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame 

 from Galileo's deduction of a great natural law from the swing- 

 ing lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble 

 mold of Borromeo and F^nelon and Cheverus. He was, sadly 

 enough for the Church and humanity, simply a zealot and in- 

 triguer : he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astron- 

 omer. 



Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written 

 to his friend Castelli and to the Grand Duchess Christine two 

 letters to show that his discoveries might be reconciled to Script- 

 ure. On a hint from the Inquisition at Rome, the archbishop 

 sought to get hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that 

 Galileo had uttered heretical views of theology and of Scripture, 

 and thus to bring him into the clutch of the Inquisition. The 

 archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to let him see the original 

 letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli declines ; the arch- 

 bishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing constantly and 

 bitterly to the Inquisition against Galileo, professes to Castelli 

 the greatest admiration of Galileo's genius and a sincere de- 

 sire to know more of his discoveries. This not succeeding, 

 the archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open 

 attack. 



The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be 

 amusing were it not so fraught with evil. There were intrigues 

 and counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying ; 

 and, in the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass 

 of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, strove two popes, 

 Paul V and Urban VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this 

 crisis of the Church, at the tomb of the prince of the apostles, on 

 the eve of the greatest errors in church policy the world has 

 known, in all the intrigues and deliberations of these consecrated 



* For curious exemplification of the way in which these weapons have been hurled, see 

 lists of persons charged with " infidelity " and " atheism," in Le Dictionnaire des Ath^es, 

 Paris, An. viii ; also Lecky, History of Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 50. For the case of Des- 

 cartes, see Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, pp. 103, 110. 



