2^EW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 731 



ring in this whole matter to the papal authority. All the long 

 series of attempts made in the supposed interest of the Church to 

 mystify these transactions haye at last failed. The world knows 

 now that Galileo was subjected certainly to indigmty, to impris- 

 onment, and to threats equiyalent to torture, and was at last 

 forced to pronounce publicly and on his knees his recantation, 



as follows: ^ . . -, 



" I Galileo being in my seyentieth year, being a prisoner and 

 on my knees, and before your Eminences, haying before my eyes 

 the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, 

 and detest the error and the heresy of the moyement of the 



earth " * 



He was yanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face 

 of all coming ages, to perjure himself. To complete his dishonor, 

 he was obliged to swear that he would denounce to the Inquisition 

 any other man of science whom he should discoyer to be support- 

 ing the " heresy of the motion of the earth." 



Many haye wondered at this abjuration, and on account ot it 

 haye denied to Galileo the title of martyr. But let such gam- 

 sayers consider the circumstances. Here was an old man-one 

 who had reached the allotted threescore years and ten, broken 

 with disappointments, worn out with labors and cares, dragged 

 from Florence to Rome, with the threat from the Pope himself 

 that if he delayed he should be " brought in chains " ; sick m body 

 and mind, giyen over to his oppressors by the grand duke who 

 ought to have protected him, and on his arrival in Rome threat- 

 ened with torture. What the Inquisition was he knew well. He 

 could remember but as yesterday the burning of Giordano Bruno 

 in that same city for scientific and philosophic heresy; he could 

 remember, too, that only eight years before this very time De 

 Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, having been seized by the In- 

 quisition for scientific and other heresies, had died in a dungeon, 

 and that his body and his writings had been publicly burned. 



To the end of his life, nay, after his life was ended, the perse- 

 cution of Galileo was continued. He was kept in exile from his 

 family from his friends, from his noble employments, and held 

 ri"-idly'to his promise not to speak of his theory. When, m the 

 midst of intense bodily sufferings from disease, and mental suffer- 

 ino-s from calamities in his family, he besought some little liberty, 

 he^was met with threats of committal to a dungeon. When at 



* For various utterances of Tope Urban against the Copernican theory at this period, 

 see extracts from the original documents given by Gebler. For punishment of those who 

 had shown some favor to Galileo, see various citations, and especially those from the 

 Vatican manuscript, Gebler, p. 216. As to the text of the abjuration, see L'Epmo.s; also 

 Polacco, Aniicopcrnicus, etc., Venice, 1644; and for a discussion regardmg its publication, 

 see Favaro, Miscellanea Galileana, p. 804. 



