Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/43

Rh GALILEO is immovable in the centre of the world, and that the earth has a diurnal motion of rotation—the ﬁrst as “ absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, because expressly con- trary to Holy Scripture,” and the second as “open to the same censure in philosophy, and at least erroneous as to faith.” Two days later Galileo was, by command of the pope (Paul V.), summoned to the palace of Cardinal Bellarmine, and there officially admonished not tlienceforward to “ hold, teach, or defend ” the condemned doctrine. This injunction he promised to obey. On the 5th of March the Coiigr1,li‘egp- tion of the Index issued a decree reiterating, wit t e omission of the word “heretical,” the censure of the theo- logians, suspending, -usque corrigatur, the great work of Copernicus, De Iievolutioiiibzzs orb-i-um ca=lestiu.m, and ab- solutely prohibiting a treatise by a Carinelitc monk named Foscarini, which treated the same subject from a theological point of view. At the same time it was given to be under- stood that the new theory of the solar system might be held at /z_z/Inf/z«=sz', and the trivial verbal alterations introduced into the Polish astroiioiner’s book in 1620, when the work of revision was completed by Cardinal Gaetaiii, confirmed this interpretation. This edict, it is essential to observe, of which the responsibility rests with a disciplinary con- gregation in no sense representing the church, was never conﬁrmed by the pope, and was virtually repealed in 1757 under Benedict XIV. Galileo returned to Florence three months later, not ill- pleased, as his letters testify, with the result of his visit to -tome. He brought with him, for the refutation of caluiiniious reports circulated by his enemies, a written certiﬁcate from Cardinal Bellarmine, to the effect that no abjuration had been required of or penance imposed upon him. During a prolonged audience, he had received from the pope assurances of private esteem and personal protec- tion ; and he trusted to his dialectical ingenuity to ﬁnd the means of presenting his scientiﬁc convictions under the transparent veil of an hypothesis. Although a sincere C-.itholic, he seems to have laid but little stress oil the secret admonition of the Holy Office, which his sanguine tei11pera- ment encouraged him gradually to dismiss from his mind. He preserved no written memorandum of its terms, and it was represented to him, according to his own deposition in 1633, solely by Cardinal 13ellarmine’s certiﬁcate, in which, for obvious reasons, it was glossed over rather than ex- pressly recorded. For seven years, however, during which he led a life of studious retirement in the Villa Segni at Bellosguardo, near Florence, he maintained ai1 almost un- broken silence. At the end of that time he appeared in public with his ;S'aggiato7'e, a poleinical treatise written in reply to the Libra Astronomica. of Padre Grassi (under the pseudonym of Lotario Sarsi), the Jesuit astronomer of the Collegio Romano. The subject in debate was the nature of comets, the conspicuous appearance of three of which bodies in the year 1618 furnished the occasion of the controversy. G-alilco’s views, although erroneous, since he held comets to be mere atmospheric emanatior.-s reﬂecting sunlight after the evanescent fashion of a halo or a rainbow, were expressed with such triumphant vigour, and embel- lislied with such telling sarcasms, that his opponent did not venture upon a reply. The Sag_r/iatore was printed at Rome in October 1623, by the Academy of the Lincei, of which Galileo was a member, with a dedication to the new pope, Urban VIII, aml notwitlistaiiding some passages containing a covert defence of Copernican opinions, was received with acclamation by the ecclesiastical, no less than by the scien- tiﬁc authorities. Everything seemed now to promise a close of unbroken prosperity to Galileo’s career. Maffeo Barberini, his warmest friend and admirer in the Sacred College, was, by the election of August 8, 1623, seated on the pontiﬁcal throne; and the marked distinction with 33 which he was received on his visit of congratulation to Rome in 1624 encouraged him to hope for the realization of his utmost wishes. He received every mark of private favour. The pope admitted him to six long audiences in the course of two months, wrote ai1 enthusiastic letter to the grand-duke praising the great astronomer, not only for his distinguished learning, but also for his exemplary piety, and granted a pension to his son Vincenzo, which was after- wards transferred to himself, and paid, with some irregu-. larities, to the end of his life. But on the subject of the decree of 1616, the revocation of which Galileo had hoped to obtain through his personal inﬂuence, he found him in- exorable. Nevertheless, the sanguine philosopher trusted, not without reason, that it would at least be interpreted in a liberal spirit, and his friends encouraged his imprudent conﬁdence by eagerly retailing to him every papal utterance which it was possible to construe in a favourable sense. To Cardinal Ilohenzollern Urban was reported to have said that the theory of the eartli’s motion had not been and could not be condemned as heretical, but only as rash ; and in 1630 the learned Dominican monk Campanella wrote to Galileo that the pope had expressed to him in conversation his disapproval of the prohibitory decree. Thus, in the full anticipation of added renown, and without any inisgiving as to ulterior consequences, Galileo set himself, on his re- turn to Florence, to complete his famous but ill-starred work, the Dialogo dei due Jlfassimi Sistemi del Jlondo. Finished in 1630, it was not until January 1632 that it emerged from the presses of Landini at Florence. The book was orginally intended to appear in Rome, but unexpected obstacles interposed. The Lyncean Academy collapsed with the death of Prince Federigo Cesi, its founder and presi- dent; an outbreak of plague impeded communication between the various Italian cities; and the z'mp7'imatzu' was ﬁnally extorted, rather than accorded, under the pres- sure of private friendship and powerful interest. A tumult of applause from every part of Europe followed its publica- tion; and it would be difﬁcult to ﬁnd in any language a book in which animation and elegance of style are so hap- pily combined with strength and clearness of scientiﬁc ex- position. Three interlocutors, named respectively Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio, take part in the four dialogues of which the work is composed. The first-named ex- poiinds the views of the author ; the second is an eager and intelligent listener; the third represents a well-meaning but obtuse Peripatetic, whom the others treat at times with undisguised contempt. Salviati and Sagredo took their names from two of Galileo’s early friends, the formeralearned Florentine, the latter a distinguished Venetian gentleman ; Simplicio ostensibly derived his from the Cilician com- mentator of Aristotle, but the choice was doubtless insti- gated by a sarcastic regard to the double meaning of the word. There were not wanting those who insiniiated that Galileo intended to depict the pope himself in the guise of the sinipleton of the party; this charge, however, was not only preposterous in itself, but wholly unsupported by intrinsic evidence, and Urban was far too sagacious to give any permanent credit to it. It was at once evident that the whole tenor of this re- markable Work was in ﬂagrant contradiction with the edict passed sixteen years before its publication, as well as with the ai1tlior’s personal pledge of conformity to it. The ironical submission with which it opened, and the assumed iudetermination with which it closed, were hardly intended to mask the vigorous assertion of Copernican principles which formed its substance. It is a singular circumstapce, however, that the argument upon which Galileo mainly relied as furnishing a physical demonstration of the truth of the new theory rested on a misconception. The ebb and ﬂow of the tides, he asserted, were a visible effegt of the terres- "-‘ 5