610 Galileo, and the Copcmican Sj/siem. [June, 



publicly supported in the Vatican gardens without meeting with any opposition ; 

 and that when it was laid before the public, it was under the patronage of the 

 sovereign pontiff: so that never was there any philosophical opinion %vhich 

 received such great marks of approbation from the popes and the court of Rome, 

 as the Copornican system. But here is another fact still more surprising. In 

 the year ]G16, the controversy between the Roman Inquisition and Galileo had 

 conunenced, and he was forbidden to maintain the Copernican system. In the 

 following year 1617. Giannantonio Magini, an eminent astronomer of that period, 

 ebbe fama di un de' viig/iuri ash-onomi, chc (dlor vwcsscro, (Tirahuschi), died at 

 Bologna, and this pontifical university had to elect a new professor of astro- 

 nomy. Now upon whom did the choice fail, but upon the most determined sup- 

 porter, or rather the ingenious perfecter of the Copernican system ; upon the 

 celel)rated John Kepler, who for twenty years — since the first astronomical 

 work which he published was in l.')96 — had openly declared in favour of Coper- 

 nicus. To him, in a letter written by Giannantonio Roffeno, a scholar of Magini, 

 and dated March 1, 1617, {Kepler', Epist. p. 642, Ep. 413), the chair of astro- 

 nomy was offered, in the name of this illustrious university, and if many reasons 

 which are adduced by Kepler in his reply {Ibid. Ejnst. 414), for not accepting 

 this honour had not interfered, the second author, if such a phrase may be used, 

 of the Copernican system would have been seated in the first of the pontifical 

 universities one year after Galileo had been forbidden to support that identical 

 system. These facts, which clearly establish what was stated at the conmience- 

 ment of this paper, naturally lead us to investigate the cause why that which 

 was not only permitted, but even ap|)roved of in Cusa, Copernicus, Ziegler, 

 Calcagnini, Widmanstadius, should be censured, punished, and condemned in 

 Galileo. To this subject we shall now proceed, and it will perhaps appear that, 

 if Galileo had been more temperate in supporting his opinion, and if various 

 other circumstances had not concurred to render him an object of suspicion and 

 hatred to the Roman tribunals, he would not have been subjected to the 

 troubles which the Copernican system brought upon him ; and that this would 

 have received the same favour with which at other times it had been honoured, 

 or at least liave been treated with the same consideration that it was not long 

 after the condemnation of Galileo. 



That Galileo, for having supported the Copernican system, was sunmioned 

 before the tribunal of the Roman inquisition ; that he was for some time kept a 

 prisoner; that he was condemned, and the opinion which lie taught proscribed as 

 heretical — a proscription not reversed at the time of the publication of Newton's 

 Princi|)ia, by Le Seur and Jaquier, since they thought it right to insert the follow- 

 ing declaration : " Newtonus in hoc tertio libro telluris motae hypothesini a^sumit. 

 Autoris propositlones aliter explicari non poterant, nisi eadem quoquefacta hypo- 

 thesi. Hinc alienam coacti sunms gerere personam. Cceterum latis u sununis pon- 

 tificibus contra telluris motuni decretis nos obsequi profitemur" — are transactions 

 which cannot be doubted. But the preceding and concomitant circumstances 

 are not equall}' known, and from these alone it can be ascertained whether or 

 not Galileo was in some degree to blame, and what motives led this tribunal to 

 pronounce so rigorous a sentence. The first time that Galileo was brouglit to 

 Rome was in 1611, but in that journey he seems to have taken no steps con- 

 cerning the Copernican system ; although he had maintained publiclj', to the 

 great astonishment of all his hearers, some of the opinions for which he is now 

 so celebrated, in the university of Pisa, to which he had been appointed mathe- 

 matical professor in 1589, and where he went to reside in 1592. The satellites 

 of Jupiter which he had discovered in 1610, and called the Medicean planets — 

 although the merit of this discovery a year earlier is claimed by Simon Marius, 

 astronomer to the elector of Brandenburgh — a fact which, from the circumstance 

 of its not being communicated to the world till 1614, is extremely doubtful 

 {Bailli/, Histoiie de I'As/ronomie Moderne, torn. ii. p. 102, <S:c.) — constituted at 

 that time the [)rincipal subject of his discourses with the philosophers and ma- 

 thematicians of Rome. He himself writes to Vinta, secretary to the Grand 

 Duke of Tuscany (F«Ziro«8. Letlerc Inedilc d'Uomhti I/hmtri, tom. i. p. 32.), that 



