22 GALILEO GALILEI. 



Galileo was summoned to appear at Rome, to 

 answer to that terror of past centuries, the charge 

 of heresy. His friends urged that he was old .and 

 feeble, and that he would die on the journey, but 

 Urban's commands were peremptory. 



Galileo was deeply depressed by the summons, 

 and wrote a friend : " This vexes me so much that 

 it makes me curse the time devoted to these 

 studies, in which I strove and hoped to deviate 

 somewhat from the beaten track generally pursued 

 by learned men. I not only repent having given 

 the world a portion of my writings, but feel in- 

 clined to suppress those still in hand, and to give 

 them to the flames, and thus satisfy the longing 

 desire of my enemies, to whom my ideas are so 

 inconvenient." 



On January 20, 1633, the decrepit old man set out 

 in a litter for Home, arriving on February 13. On 

 April 12, he was brought before the Inquisition, 

 and briefly examined and then remanded to prison, 

 though treated with great leniency. The anxiety 

 and deprivation from outdoor exercise brought on 

 illness, and he was confined to his bed till led a 

 second time before the Inquisition, April 30. 



Weak, aged, in fear of torture, he made the mel- 

 ancholy confession that his "error had been one 

 of vainglorious ambition, and pure ignorance and 

 inadvertence." Pure ignorance! from the man 

 who had studied for fifty years all that the world 

 knew of science ! But he recalled how men had 

 died at the stake for offending the church. The 



