126 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



pleins d'estime pour Galilee, mais qui voulaient prevenir les- 

 facheuses consequences de sa doctrine. 



Selon que Tune ou 1'autre de ces influences domina dans les 

 conseils, on tint une conduite difierente : tantots6vere et rigoureuse r 

 tantot douce et indulgente. Mais il n'y eut point la, comme on 

 le pretend encore, de lutte entre la science et le Catholicisme : la 

 question fut debattue entre la science et 1'Aristotelisme.* 



It was not till the year 1757 that any authorita- 

 tive step was taken to relax the prohibitions imposed 

 by the Index on the works advocating the Copernican 

 system. This was more than a century after the 

 condemnation of Galileo, seventy years after the 

 publication of the " Principia," and thirty years 

 after the discovery of the aberration of light. Even 

 Dr. Ward allows that it might have been more 

 prudent to remove the prohibitions some forty or 

 fifty years sooner than was actually the case. No- 

 one, he observes, supposes the Church to be infallible 

 in mere matters of prudence, and I think that in 

 making this statement, which, I presume, every 

 theologian would at once endorse, he half admits 

 the principle for which I contend ; for if the Roman 

 authorities could err in point of prudence in leaving 

 the censure so long in force, might they not en> 

 I mean, of course, as to the prudent administration 

 of discipline in inflicting those censures at all, or 

 at any rate in applying them so rigorously in practice 

 as was done in the instance of Galileo ? 



* Quoted from an article in the " Kevue des Questions His- 

 toriques," 1867, " Galilee, son Proces, sa Condemnation, d'apres 

 des documents in edits," by M. Henri de 1'Epinois. 



