114 HISTORY OF SCIENCE. . 



the testimony of Scriptural texts, which may, under their words, couch 

 senses seemingly contrary thereto." 



The Inquisition at Rome now set its agents to work to collect evi- 

 dence against Galileo, and the Archbishop of Pisa did not disdain to 

 resort to the meanest cunning in his endeavour to induce Castelli to 

 place in his hands the original manuscript of Galileo's letter, a scheme 

 which was frustrated by Galileo's express prohibition to his friend 

 against giving up the document to the wily ecclesiastic. In the year 

 1615 Galileo again went to Rome, where he was lodged in the palace 

 belonging to the ambassador at the Papal Court of his patron the 

 Duke of Tuscany. It was rumoured at the time, that this visit was 

 not a spontaneous one on the part of the philosopher, that he was, in 

 reality, cited to appear to answer before the Inquisition the charge of 

 heresy. Some documents, which have been published only within the 

 last few years, make it clear that such was the fact. The Inquisition 

 appointed certain theologians of their own body to consider the point at 

 issue. As they solemnly condemned the doctrine of the earth's motion, 

 Galileo was ordered to renounce his opinions, and was forbidden 

 to teach or defend these opinions in any way whatever. Galileo, under 

 threats of imprisonment, promised compliance with these orders. All 

 these proceedings were conducted in privacy, and no visible restraint 

 was placed upon the personal liberty of our philosopher. Immediately 

 afterwards the Church committed itself to the grand mistake of publicly 

 pronouncing as false and heretical all writings asserting that the earth 

 moves, the doctrine of its possessing any motion, diurnal or annual, 

 being declared by authority entirely contrary to Holy Scripture. Thus 

 the theory which Copernicus had unfolded in his great work dedicated 

 to Pope Paul III., after having been permitted for more than seventy 

 years to remain for discussion in the hands of philosophers, to defend 

 or attack it as they pleased, was now invested with more importance 

 by the attitude the Church assumed. 



The feelings with which Galileo quitted Rome may be imagined, 

 nor was he able entirely to conceal his opinion of the mental enlight- 

 enment of the ecclesiastics, if we may judge by some sentences prefixed 

 to a treatise on a Theory of the Tides which he inscribed to the Arch- 

 duke Leopold; for the expressions of abject submission to the priestly 

 decrees have really the force of the keenest irony. " This theory," he 

 says, "occurred to me when in Rome, whilst the theologians were 

 debating on the prohibition of Copernicus's book, and of the opinion 

 it maintains concerning the motion of the earth which I at that time 

 believed. But those gentlemen have been pleased to suspend the 

 book, and to declare the opinion false and repugnant to the Holy 

 Scriptures. Now, as I know very well, it becomes me to obey and 

 believe in the decisions of my superiors, which proceed from more 

 profound knowledge than the weakness of my intellect can attain to, 

 this theory I send you I beg your Highness to regard as a fiction and 



