DISCOVERY 



235 



that if it were not for a text in Aristotle which says 

 the nerves have their orig-in in the heart I should be 

 forced to admit you were right.' " 



Unhappily, Galileo, or his disciples, failed to take 

 the advice of a Roman friend and keep outside the 

 .sacristv. All things are lawful, but all things are 

 not expedient, and a letter to Father Castelli, a 

 Benedictine mathematician in 1615, admirable in its 

 distinction between science and the Bible, which 

 passed in many copies from hand to hand, began the 

 trouble. The letter was denounced in February, 1615, 

 by a Dominican rival to Rome, and added theological 

 to mathematical odium. Moreover, another 

 Dominican friar, a month later, deposed on oath to 

 the Holy Office, that preaching against Copernicus 

 one day in the cathedral at Florence, on the text, 

 "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon," he had dis- 

 pleased certain petulant disciples of Galileo, known as 

 Galileisti. who went about promulgating heretical 

 ■doctrine. On November 13 a Spanish friar deposed 

 to the local Inquisitor that he too had heard the 

 dalileisti say the earth moved round the sun. 



On February 24, 1616, eleven Inquisitors met at 

 Rome and decided certain propositions on sun spots 

 -were absurd as philosophical propositions, against 

 theological truth, or at least errors in faith, and 

 Cardinal Bellarmine was charged to admonish the 

 said Galileo the mathematician to renounce the 

 •opinion that the earth moved round the sun, and 

 wholly to abstain from teaching or defending or 

 treating of it under pain of imprisonment. Galileo, 

 then at Rome, promised obedience, and was received 

 kindly and sympatheticallv bv Pope Paul \'., and 

 spent three-quarters of an hour strolling about with 

 the Holy Father, who assured him of his esteem and 

 confidence in his integrity. The year before. Cardinal 

 Bellarmine had written worldlv-wise advice to a 

 Carmelite Galileista, " You and Galileo would do well 

 to speak e.v siippositione and not absolutely. If you 

 say supposing the sun stands still and the earth 

 circles round it, the apparent motions of the heavenK- 

 bodies may be better explained than bv the theorv of 

 eccentrics, cycles, and epicycles, it is well said ; no 

 danger will be incurred. But if you assert that 

 actually the sun is the centre of the universe, that is 

 ■dangerous, and serves not only to irritate the 

 scholastic philosophers, but to injure the Holy 

 Catholic Faith." 



Ardent possessors of a new truth are seldom amen- 

 able to worldlv wisdom, and Galileo continued *o 

 explain phenomena on the Copernican theory. 



As late as 1630 Galileo counted on the publication 

 at Rome of the famous Dialogo sopra i due niassimi 

 Sistemi del Mondo, which had received the 

 Imprimatur, and in that year he had a long audience 

 with his friend. Cardinal Barberini, now Pope Urban 

 VIII., who enjoined him to preface the work with a 



statement that the subject was treated as an hypo- 

 thesis. Urban also advised him to end the Dialogue 

 with an argument which he himself regarded as con- 

 clusive against the Copernican theory. After long 

 and tiresome negotiations at Rome, the book was at 

 length published at Florence in 1632 — preface and 

 conclusion as enjoined. But — ^most assuredly the 

 interlocutor who defended the geocentric theory 

 might have done better. Worse than all, the con- 

 clusion, the clinching demonstration of the falsity of 

 the Copernican doctrine, was placed in the mouth of 

 .Simplicio (Simple), who throughout opposes the most 

 futile arguments which are triumphantly disposed of 

 in Galileo's caustic and facetious manner. Urban 

 was furious. He declared that the Dialogue was 

 more pernicious than the writings of Calvin or Luther. 

 Jesuits and theologians were in ecstasies. They 

 hounded on to the scent, and on September 23, 1632, 

 the congregation of the Holy Office cited Galileo 

 de Galileis, a Florentine, to Rome, and forbade the 

 sale of the book. 



Galileo opposed passive resistance, trusting to 

 Grand Ducal influence to change the venue of the trial 

 to Florence, and the local Inquisitor, whose duty it 

 was to send the defendant to Rome, had a most 

 unhappy time. On October 2 Galileo protested he 

 was prontissimo to go, and signed on the 9th a docu- 

 ment to that effect, witnessed by six ecclesiastics. 

 On November 20 he was ready to set forth, but 

 pleaded advanced age and sickness. A month's grace 

 was given. .A month passed and the Inquisitor 

 reports to Rome that Galileo de Galileis was in bed 

 though still prontissimo ; but times were troublous. 

 Three physicians testified that their patient sufl^ered 

 from an intermittent pulse, vertigo, hypochondriacal 

 melancholy, insomnia, pains wandering about his 

 bodv, severe hernia, and other troubles. -Any slight 

 external cause might imperil his life. .An angry 

 rescript from Rome followed. The Holy Office would 

 tolerate these subterfuges no longer. They were 

 sending a special medical commission to report, and 

 if the said Galileo were in a fit condition, he must be 

 brought to Rome, even if a prisoner in irons. 



On January 8 the Father Inquisitor read the 

 summons to the recalcitrant Galileo. This time he 

 was resolved to obev quarito prima ; he was pron- 

 tissimo to set forth, and, in fact, after a journey of 

 twenty-one days, did reach the Holy City. On the 

 morrow of his arrival the .Assessor of the Inquisition 

 took him for a carriage drive, and with much kind- 

 ness advised him as to his future conduct. It was an 

 indication, he wrote, that the treatment in store for 

 him was to be molto mansueto e henigno — very 

 different from comminations of ropes, chains, and 

 dungeons. During his examination he was received 

 at the Holy Office with dimostraciotti amorevoli. 

 assigned comfortable quarters with his body servant 



