Feb. 14, 1878] 



NATURE 



299 



elaborately-equipped expeditions of learned societies have 

 failed to do. It would be a pity were Mr. Stanley's ex- 

 ceptional aptitude for the work of exploration allowed to 

 lie fallow. Even in the basin of the Congo much remains 

 to be done, and we doubt if any great results will follow 

 the Portuguese expedition which Mr. Stanley met at 

 Loanda. There is also South America, the centre of 

 which is now more unknown than Central Africa, and 

 which awaits a pioneer like Stanley to show the way to 

 the minute explorer and surveyor. It is stated that Mr 

 Gordon Bennett contemplates equipping a polar expe- 

 dition, so that we fear he thinks he has done enough for 

 Africa. But whether or not Mr. Stanley again enters the 

 field as an explorer, he has written his name in indehble 

 letters alongside that of Livingstone, on the heart of 

 Africa. 



WAS GALILEO TORTURED? 

 1st Galilei gefoltcrt warden? Eine kritische Studie. Von 



Emil Wohhvill, (Leipzig : Duncker and Humblot, 



1877.) 

 'T'HIS work treats with exhaustive thoroughness a 

 -»- question first raised about a century ago, as early, 

 in fact, as advancing political liberty rendered its public 

 discussion consistent with personal safety, and which has 

 occupied scientific biographers pretty continuously since 

 that time. The author's main object in reopening an issue, 

 which"the majority of recent authorities consider as settled 

 in the negative, is to bring into due prominence the bear- 

 ing on it of fresh evidence rendered accessible only within 

 the last ten years. Up to 1867, though it was known that 

 a detailed official record of Galileo's trial was preserved 

 in the archives of the Inquisition, only a few isolated and 

 questionable extracts from it had been made public. In 

 that year, however, M. Henri de I'Epinois, by permission 

 of the Papal authorities, published in extenso the most 

 important of the documents contained in the trial-record. 

 These, supplemented by still more recent corrections and 

 additions, which it is unnecessary to particularise here 

 supplied a body of new evidence bearing more or less 

 directly on the issue whether the Roman Inquisition, in its 

 treatment of the great astronomer, had recourse in any 

 degree to that test of physical endurance which formed a 

 recognised part of its procedure as of that of contem- 

 porary secular courts in cases like his. 



It was of course to be expected that in documents 

 drawn up exclusively for the use of the Inquisition itself 

 there would occur a number of technical expressions the 

 exact meaning of which would be far from obvious to a 

 readtr unacquainted with the details of procedure in the 

 holy office. This accordingly turns out to be the fact, 

 and interposes no slight obstacle to the interpretation of 

 the fresh evidence thus presented. Wohlwill, in order to 

 overcome it, has put himself through an elaborate course 

 of Inquisitional literature, studying minutely the fixed 

 technical forms for conducting suits in the holy office laid 

 down in manuals and instructions published for the guidance 

 of its own officials. It is obvious how firm is the foundation 

 thus to be secured in comparison with the precarious 

 guessing which would otherwise be inevitable. The tasks 

 both of preliminary inquiry and of subsequent application, 

 have been performed with the utmost diligence, accuracy, 

 and sagacity. 



It would be impossible, within the limits of this notice, 

 to enter upon the detailed arguments by which Wohlwill 

 supports his views. All that can here be done is to state 

 the chief results at which he arrives, together, where 

 feasible, with some indication of the line by which he has 

 travelled. 



The final sentence delivered by the Inquisition in 

 Galileo's case contains a statement that the court had 

 judged it necessary to proceed against him to "the 

 rigorous examination." ' Libri had, as early as 1841, 

 asserted, on the authority of various inquisitional manuals, 

 and in particular of one entitled " Sacro Arsenale della S. 

 Inquisizione," that '' esatne rit^oroso"'^ was exactly equi- 

 valent to " torture," and that this passage of the sentence 

 was absolutely decisive of the whole question. Wohlwill 

 shows, by a complete scrutiny of the " Sacro Arsenale," 

 that a "rigorous" examination in most cases meant one 

 conducted under torture, but that this expression some- 

 times denoted a less severe procedure. It appears that 

 where the course of the preliminary investigation led 

 the judges to suspect that the accused had not stated 

 the entire truth, three distinct and increasingly intense 

 .trials of fortitude and endurance were prescribed for 

 successive adoption. First the prisoner was brought 

 into the ordinary hall of audience and told briefly and 

 sternly that unless he could make up his mind to confess 

 the truth, recourse would be had to the torture. If this 

 produced no result, he was next carried into the torture- 

 chamber, where the use of the various instruments was 

 explained to him, or he was even seized by the attendants, 

 stripped of his clothes, and bound upon the rack, so that 

 nothing remained but to set its machinery in action. In 

 this situation he was again invited to save himself by 

 confession. If he still remained firm, the infliction of 

 the torture at once ensued. The two preliminary appeals 

 to terror were described as the " verbal scaring " {territio 

 verbalis), and the "real scaring" (/,?rr//z<7 realis),wh\\t 

 the words " rigorous examination" were reserved, strictly 

 speaking, for the final scene of actual agony. It is clear, 

 however, from passages of the " Sacro Arsenale," that in 

 certain cases confessions elicited by the second method 

 of proceeding were described as made under the rigorous 

 examination, though this laxity of expression is explicitly 

 stated not to extend to the first. The text of the sentence 

 against Galileo therefore implies, at the least, that he was 

 carried into the torture- chamber and submitted to some 

 form of the territio realis. 



The same authoritative document informs us what was 

 the general character of his replies under this ordeal. 

 He answered " in a catholic manner," i.e., denied that he 

 held the reputedly heretical doctrines attributed to him. 

 While stating this fact the Court were careful to insert a 

 saving clause that the answers so given were not to pre- 

 judice other points admitted by or proved against the 

 accused. The significance of this clause, which preceding 

 writers appear to have passed unnoticed, is, according to 

 Wohlwill, as follows : — So great was the regard professed 

 by the Inquisition for assertions steadfastly adhered to 

 under the torture, that in regard to whatever formed the 

 actual subject-matter of a rigorous examination, the an- 

 swers of the accused, if he thus stood by them, had to be 



' " Giiidicassimo csser necessario vcnir contro di te al rigoroso esame." 

 ^ Wohlwill has shown that Italian, and not, as has hitherto been assumed, 

 Latin, was the language in which the sentence was promulgated. 



