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NATURE 



[Feb. 14, 1878 



accepted as true. It was therefore the interest of the 

 Court carefully to define the limits within which it pro- 

 posed to allow the accused this chance of escape. The 

 saving clause under consideration was devised for this 

 very purpose, so as to prevent answers made during the 

 rigorous examination from possessing the power of voiding 

 articles of charge or admission not explicitly included in 

 the questions of the interrogating official. Its actual 

 application was, of course, made at the opening of the 

 rigorous examination as a preliminary to the torture, and 

 the fact of the caveat being formally recited in the sub- 

 sequent sentence is held by Wohlwill to confirm his view 

 that Galileo was submitted at least to a territio realis in 

 the torture- chamber. 



After this examination of the evidence supplied by the 

 sentence, our author next shows, in opposition to a con- 

 siderable body of influential opinion, that there was 

 nothing in the circumstances of Galileo's case to negative 

 antecedently the application of torture, and no ascertained 

 subsequent fact inconsistent with its having been inflicted. 

 The absence of any reference to it in his few remaining 

 letters of later date than the trial is completely accounted 

 for by the oath of absolute silence imposed upon all who 

 appeared before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The fact 

 that Galileo was released from the custody of the Court 

 three days after his final examination, and ten days later 

 was able to take active exercise, shows only that severe 

 torture was not inflicted, but by no means excludes the 

 milder form {leggiera tortura), to which the Inquisitional 

 manuals distinctly refer. The advanced age of the 

 prisoner, who was at this time seventy, does, it is true^ 

 afford a certain degree of presumption in this direction, 

 inasmuch as Inquisitional authorities usually incline to 

 stop at the territio realis in the case of aged persons ; 

 they give, however, the alternative of applying " a kind of 

 torture suitable to old people," so that this indication is, 

 after all, far from conclusive. 



This clearing of the ground is followed by a detailed 

 investigation of the minutes of the trial contained in the 

 Vatican record, so far as they bear on the question at issue. 

 It thence appears that on June 16, 1633, Pope Urban 

 VIII. ordered the prisoner to be interrogated as to his 

 object in publishing his dialogues on the Ptolemaic and 

 Copernican systems, threatened with the torture, and, if 

 this failed to elicit a confession, condemned to abjuration 

 and imprisonment during the pleasure of the Congrega- 

 tion. On June 21 this examination accordingly took 

 place. Galileo was asked whether he held, or had held, 

 that the earth was in motion and the sun at rest. He 

 denied having done so since the decree of the Index on 

 March 5, 1616, and though pressed by his interrogator 

 with the contrary indications afforded by the dialogues 

 themselves and repeatedly urged to tell the truthTreely, 

 clung to the denial. On being told that if he persisted 

 further recourse would be had to the torture, he simply 

 reiterated his former statement with this addition : " I 

 am here in your hands, deal with me as you please." At 

 this point the report abruptly terminates with a few 

 words stating that nothing further could be done, followed 

 by the signature of Galileo in attestation of his own 

 deposition. Wohlwill points out that the threat of torture 

 here recorded as delivered in the ordinary hall of audience 

 cannot possibly count as a rigorous examination, since. 



according to the fixed language of the Inquisition, the 

 latter proceeding did not begin until the officials and the 

 accused had taken up their positions in the torture- 

 chamber. There is therefore a direct contradiction between 

 the sentence, which affirms that a rigorous examination 

 was held, and the official minutes, which relate nothing 

 capable of answering to that designation. It is the de- 

 liberately expressed opinion of the German investigator 

 that this contradiction points to a fraudulent tampering 

 with the trial-record, perpetrated at a time when it had 

 become advisable, in the interest of the Roman hierarchy, 

 to obliterate, as far as possible, the traces of a mode of 

 treatment adopted towards the great Italian astronomer 

 which, if once allowed to become notorious," would raise 

 a cry of indignation throughout Europe. In'support of 

 this view its author has arrayed a very strong body of 

 evidence, many particulars of which are of singular 

 cogency. It is indeed in this latter portion of his work, 

 where he examines the general claims of the Vatican 

 manuscript to be considered a complete authentic and 

 unaltered record of Galileo's trial, that Wohlwill does the 

 most meritorious service. An attempt to determine to 

 what precise stage of barbarity the Inquisition advanced 

 in its dealings with its illustrious prisoner is after all a 

 matter of secondary interest. On the other hand an 

 energetic effort to ascertain how far the only official 

 account we possess of perhaps the greatest event in the 

 whole history of science is genuine and trustworthy, must 

 be admitted to be an undertaking of signal importance. 

 Enough, and far more than enough, has been achieved in 

 this direction in the present work to excite the gravest 

 suspicions and fully to justify the warning which at its 

 close Wohlwill addresses to the Roman authorities, that 

 in the present condition of affairs only two courses remain 

 open to them ; either to appear as accomplices in atrocious 

 frauds, or to bring the whole truth to the light of day 

 Nothing less than a thorough examination of all the 

 remaining original records by competent and trustworthy 

 palcEOgraphers can possibly settle the issues now definitely 

 raised. Sedley Taylor 



The current number (January 16) of the Rivista 

 Eui'opea, which reached me after I had completed the 

 above notice, brings a review of Wohlwill's work by Dr. 

 Scartazzini, containing original matter due to his own 

 independent research. The Italian critic has made 

 strenuous use of the latest, and incomparably best, edition 

 of the Vatican manuscript, that by Herr v. Gebler, and 

 arrived at conclusions in regard to the falsification of its 

 text considerably more sweeping than those based by 

 Wohlwill on the less complete information accessible 

 prior to the appearance of v. Gebler's edition. As far as 

 the two writers cover the same ground they essentially 

 agree in their verdict ; the difference between them merely 

 being that the Italian theory is more extensive than its 

 German predecessor. It is gratifying to me to find the 

 eminent position among historical critics to which the 

 depth, clearness, and high originality of Wohlwill's 

 writings on this subject in my judgment entitle him, 

 claimed for him with equal confidence by Scartazzini. I 

 regret that the exceedingly technical nature of the new 

 arguments now advanced makes it impossible to give any 

 idea of them here. They aim at pointing out the exact 



