14 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



appointed professor of mathematics at Pisa, the Grand 

 Duke of Tuscany having invited him there on the 

 recommendation of Cardinal del Monte. Here it was 

 that he first excited hostility by attacking the theories 

 of Aristotle on physical science, a thing not to be 

 done with impunity in that age. 



I have already alluded to the telescope constructed 

 by Galileo, and it is scarcely necessary to say that 

 such an instrument, however simple and rudimentary 

 in its construction, could not fail to reveal to an in- 

 telligent observer truths hitherto unknown. It was 

 discovered that the planet Jupiter had satellites, that 

 Saturn had a ring, that Venus passed through phases 

 like the moon, that there were spots on the Sun ; 

 this last discovery having been made about the same 

 time by the learned Jesuit, Father Scheiner, and by 

 Fabricius. It was not, I think, until the year 1610 

 that Galileo published his work called " Nuntius 

 Siderius," in which he recounted the results he had 

 obtained. This work seems to have provoked some 

 considerable opposition, but Galileo was supported by 

 the approbation of his patron, the Grand Duke of 

 Tuscany. In the following year, 1611, he went to 

 Kome, and here he was well received and treated with 

 distinction by prelates of high position, and even by 

 the Pope then reigning, Paul V. Moreover, when, in 

 the year 1612, he published another work, which he 

 called " Discorso sui Gallegianti," he met with general 

 approval, and no less a person than Cardinal Maffei 

 Barberini, who afterwards became Pope under the 



