596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that time, were included among those implicitly condemned as 

 " affirming the motion of the earth." 



The condemnations were inscribed upon the Index ; and, finally, 

 the papacy committed itself as a judge and teacher to the world 

 hy prefixing to the Index the usual papal bull giving its moni- 

 tions the most solemn papal sanction. To teach or even read the 

 works denounced or passages condemned was to risk persecution 

 in this world and damnation in the next. Science had apparently 

 lost the decisive battle. 



For a time after this judgment Galileo remained in Rome, 

 apparently hoping to find some way out of this difficulty ; but he 

 soon discovered the hollowness of the protestations made to him 

 by ecclesiastics, and, being recalled to Florence, remained in his 

 hermitage near the city in silence, working steadily, indeed, but 

 not publishing anything save by private letters to friends in vari- 

 ous parts of Europe. 



But at last a better vista seemed to open before him. Cardinal 

 Barberini, who had seemed liberal and friendly, became pope 

 under the name of Urban VIII. Galileo at this conceived new 

 hopes, and allowed his continued allegiance to the Copernican 

 systei to be known. New troubles ensued. Galileo was induced 

 to visit Rome again, and Pope Urban tried to cajole him mto 

 silence, personally taking the trouble to show him his errors by 

 argument. Other opponents were less considerate, for works 

 appeared attacking his ideas-works all the more unmanly, smce 

 their authors knew that Galileo was restrained by force from 

 defending himself. Then, too, as if to accumulate proofs of the 

 unfitness of the Church to take charge of advanced mstruction, 

 his salary as a professor at the University of Pisa was taken 

 from him, and sapping and mining began. Just as the Arch- 

 bishop of Pisa some years before had tried to betray him with 

 honeyed words to the Inquisition, so now Father Grassi tried it, 

 and, after various attempts to draw him out by flattery, suddenly 

 denounced his scientific ideas as "leading to a denial of the real 

 presence in the eucharist." 



For the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was 

 at last wheeled into place. It may be seen on all the scientific 

 battle-fields. It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631 

 Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to 

 bear upon Galileo with this declaration : " The opinion of the 

 earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most 

 pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is 

 thrice sacred ; argument against the immortality of the soul, the 

 existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner 

 than an argument to prove that the earth moves." 



From the other end of Europe came a powerful echo. From 



