July 13, 1876] 



NATURE 



227 



on this decisive point as representing an undoubted 

 historical fact. As Galileo's advocacy of Copemicanism 

 was indisputable, the gratuitous admission of the second 

 premiss of the Court necessarily also involved its con- 

 clusion, viz., that it had a right to punish the philosopher 

 for his transgression of its command. Such accordingly 

 was the practically unanimous verdict of historians. 



Up to 1867 no portions of the proceedings in the case, 

 except the sentence and form of recantation, had been 

 made public in a trustworthy shape ; but in that year M. 

 de I'Epinois was permitted by the Roman authorities to 

 publish in extenso the greater part of the original trial- 

 record preserved in the archives of the Inquisition, A 

 mass of fresh evidence thus became generally accessible, 

 and was further increased by the publication in 1870, by 

 Prof. Gherardi, of a second set of original documents 

 bearing on the trial. It now became possible to check 

 the statements of the tribunal by reference to the docu- 

 ments which it employed, and to the defence and deposi- 

 tions of the accused. This was done by Dr. Emil 

 Wohlwill, of Hamburg, who, in a pamphlet published in 

 1870, showed that such a comparison led straight to the 

 conclusion that the personal injunction asserted and 

 relied on by the Inquisition had never been actually 

 delivered to Galileo. Wohlwill supports this position by 

 a mass of corroborative testimony extracted, with singular 

 acuteness and ability, from Galileo's works and letters, 

 and thus renders his case perfectly irresistible. These 

 new results, striking and interesting as they obviously 

 are, have attracted but little notice on the Continent, and 

 an account of them given by me in a Friday evening 

 lecture at the Royal Institution ^ constitutes, I believe, 

 the only public attention they have received in this 

 country. 



Ai the charge advanced against Galileo v/as, after all, 

 only formal and technical, his exoneration from it will 

 hardly be considered as affecting in any considerable 

 degree the estimate hitherto formed of his conduct in the 

 matter, except indeed by those persons who consider 

 unhesitating obedience to the will of a Roman Congrega- 

 tion as the duty of every right-thinking man. Unfor- 

 tunately too, the nature of his answers under examination 

 must influence opinion more considerably in an unfavour- 

 rable direction. Not only did Galileo deny on oath having 

 ever held the Copernican doctrine ; he actually offered to 

 write another Dialogue in refutation of the arguments 

 in favour of the condemned tenet to be found in his former 

 work, and protested his belief in the old Ptolemaic hypo- 

 thesis as " most true and indubitable." Much allowance 

 ought unquestionably to be made for an infirm and terror- 

 stricken old man, but, even so, there remains an amount 

 of really gratuitous insincerity on which it is painful to 

 dwell, though it would be disingenuous to pass it over in 

 silence. 



As to the course pursued by the condemning tribunal, 

 there can be little or no doubt that it deliberately lent 

 itself to perhaps the most nefarious practice of which a 

 judicial body can be guilty, namely, the admission of 

 evidence known both to be false and to have been fabri- 

 cated for the express purpose of securing a conviction 

 which could not be compassed by fair means. The theo- 

 logical antagonists of the Holy Office have, no doubt, over 



» On May 8, 1874. 



and over again charged it with atrocities of this and 

 of every other description, but I know of no instance save 

 the present in which it has been convicted of such an 

 enormity out of the mouth of its own records. 



Thus much of introduction appeared indispensable in 

 order to define the point of view from which the volume 

 in hand is written, Herr von Gebler regards the con- 

 clusions of Wohlwill as so firmly established, that his 

 duty as an historian is no longer to discuss or defend 

 them, but to weave them, together with the pre- 

 viously known facts of the case into a succinct narrative 

 arranged in the order of time. Even to summarise the 

 contents of his volume would be to attempt a fresh Life of 

 Galileo. All that can be done here is to draw attention 

 to a few of the salient incidents as they are presented in 

 Von Gebler's pages. 



It would seem that it was the Jesuits who, from 

 beginning to end, were responsible for the persecution of 

 the philosopher ; and, most unfortunately for him, he 

 quitted the service of the only State in Italy which could 

 have enabled him to defy their machinations at the very 

 time when its protection began to be urgently needed. 

 Oppressed by the amount of lecturing and teaching in- 

 cumbent upon him as Professor at Padua, and anxious, as 

 it would seem, to illustrate in his own person the benefits 

 to be derived from the " endowment of original research," 

 Galileo applied for, and after some negotiation obtained, 

 the post of first Mathematician about the person of the 

 Grand Duke of Tuscany, which he hoped would secure 

 him uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of investi- 

 gation and discovery. Von Gebler comments as follows 

 on this calamitous step : — 



" In spite of all the great advantages which this new post 

 brought him, Galileo made a thoroughly bad exchange 

 when he quitted the free territory of the Venetian re- 

 public in order to commit himself to the doubtful protec- 

 tion of a sovereign who, though personally very well 

 disposed towards him, was young, vacillating, and, more- 

 over, completely under the control of Rome. It was 

 essentially the first step in the course which led Galileo 

 towards his doom. Complete freedom of teaching existed 

 actually in the Venetian Republic ; nominally only in 

 Tuscany. In Venice politics and science appeared 

 guaranteed against Jesuit intrigues, for when Paul V. 

 bad thought fit to lay the uncompliant Republic under an 

 Interdict (April 13, 1606), the Fathers of the Society of 

 Jesus had to submit to immediate and permanent expul- 

 sion from its territory. In Tuscany, on the other hand, 

 where the Order was thoroughly at home, its mighty 

 influence lay heavy on all that touched its interests, and 

 especially therefore on politics and science. Had Galileo 

 never forsaken the fresh healthy air of the Free State, in 

 order to breathe a close Rome- infected Court atmosphere, 

 he would, there is every reason to believe, have escaped 

 the subsequent persecutions of Rome, inasmuch as that 

 same republic which, but shortly before, had not allowed 

 itself to be intimidated by the papal cxcommunicaticn 

 pronounced against its Doge, its Senate, and its entire 

 Government, would assuredly not have delivered up one 

 of its University professors to the vengeance of the 

 Roman Inquisition." 



The period of private controversy during which the 

 question at issue between the old and the new astronomy 

 was forced, against the wish of Galileo, from a scientific 

 to a theological mode of discussion, is very fully described 

 by our author, who gives many amusing instances of the 



