88 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



his " History of the Inductive Sciences," suggests 

 that it was "uttered as a playful epigram in the 

 ear of a Cardinal's secretary, with a full knowledge 

 that it would be immediately repeated to his master." 

 This writer is eminently fair, though naturally he 

 writes from a Protestant point of view ; but he takes 

 the extraordinary line of maintaining what I think 

 no one who knows all the facts could possibly 

 suppose, namely, that the whole thing was a kind 

 of solemn farce, and that the Inquisitors did not 

 believe Galileo's abjuration to be sincere, or even 

 wish it to be so ; thus he says : " though we may 

 acquit the Popes and Cardinals of Galileo's time 

 of stupidity and perverseness in rejecting manifest 

 scientific truths, I do not see how we can acquit 

 them of dissimulation and duplicity." That is, he 

 thinks the process was a piece of decorous solemnity, 

 adopted to hoodwink the ecclesiastical public. I do 

 not think it necessary to discuss so improbable a 

 theory. And the story of " E pur si muove," as 

 also that of bodily torture or any personal cruelty 

 being inflicted on Galileo, may, I venture to think, 

 be dismissed into the realm of fable. 



The Pope, without delay, commuted the sentence 

 of imprisonment to one of seclusion in the Palace 

 of the Tuscan Ambassador, on the Monte Pincio, 

 after which Galileo was allowed to retire to Sienna, 

 to the Palace of the Archbishop of that place, 

 Piccolomini, one of his warmest friends, from whom 

 he received every possible attention. Indeed, the 



