GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 85 



impressed his judges with a belief in his candour and 

 sincerity, or from other reasons. However, the Pope, 

 on the 16th June, gave orders that he should be 

 questioned as to his intention; then, after he had 

 been threatened with torture (apparently without any 

 view of putting the threat into execution), and made 

 to pronounce an abjuration full and entire, that he 

 should be condemned to prison according to the 

 discretion of the Inquisition ; also that his treatise 

 should be prohibited, and himself forbidden to treat, 

 either by word or writing, on the subject of the Sun 

 and the Earth. 



Yet, with all this, the Pope, two days afterwards, 

 said to Niccolini, the Tuscan Ambassador, that it was 

 impossible not to prohibit this opinion (Copernicanism) 

 as it was contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and that 

 Galileo must remain a prisoner for some time for 

 having contravened the orders given him in 1616, 

 but that he (the Pope) would see if the condemnation 

 could be mitigated. 



It appears that he was thinking of sentencing him 

 to a temporary seclusion in the Monastery of Santa 

 Croce, at Florence. 



When, in pursuance of the Pope's order, Galileo 

 was questioned (21st June), he was asked how long 

 it was since he had held the opinion that the Sun, 

 and not the Earth, was the centre of the universe ; 

 to which he replied that long before the decree of 

 1616 he held that the two opinions could equally be 

 sustained ; but that since the decree, convinced as he 



