GALILEO 



before my eyes the Holy and Sacred Evangels, which 

 I touch with my own hands, do swear that I have 

 always believed, that I believe now, and with God's 

 help I will believe in the future, all that which is 

 held, preached and taught by the Holy Catholic 

 Church, Roman and Apostolic. I have been judged as 

 being vehemently suspected of heresy, for havingmain- 

 tained and believed that the sun was the centre of the 

 world and immovable, and that the earth was not the 

 centre, and that it moved. Therefore, wishing to 

 efface from the minds of your Eminence and from all 

 Catholic Christianity this vehement suspicion con- 

 ceived justly against me, it is with a sincere heart 

 and with faith not feigned that I abjure, curse and 

 detest the above-named errors and heresies and all 

 other errors generally." 



Galileo was not of the stuff that martyrs are made 

 from. No doubt it would have been nobler in him 

 to have remained steadfast to his convictions and to 

 his knowledge of their truth ; but he realized at last 

 the danger that he was in, and that he would only 

 destroy himself by attempting to resist the power of 

 Rome. It was only seventeen years before his first 

 citation to Rome that Giordano Bruno had perished 

 at the stake by order of the same tribunal. It was 

 thirty-three years before his own abjuration that Bruno, 

 adhering to the same heresies, refused to recant, and 



103 



