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 than with Urban, "for reasons which it is not necessary to discuss here."

Neither Galileo himself, nor Magalotti, nor his other friends, ever thought of any personal danger to him; Niccolini and the Grand Duke might perhaps have been more sharp-sighted, but they were bound to silence. The threads, however, of this great intrigue can only be disentangled by the later historian, who has watched the progress of the whole melancholy drama. Two facts are perfectly obvious to the attentive observer: the first, that at Rome, with the Pope at their head, they were determined to bring Galileo to trial before the Inquisition; and the second, that they did not yet clearly see how it was to be done with some shadow of justice. To find this out was the real purpose of the appointment of the special congregation, which Urban had boasted of as a signal act of forbearance towards Galileo. All the objections to the book were subjects rather for accusation against the censors who had sanctioned it than against the author, who had submitted it to them, altered it, and again submitted the alterations. The responsibility for the publication really rested not with the author, but with those who had sanctioned it. The Pope's accusation, however, that Galileo had coaxed them to give the permission by fair speeches, was too indefinite to institute a trial upon, and neither did the irregular quotation of the imprimatur of the Master of the Palace, nor the typographical difference between the preface and the rest of the book offer sufficient ground for a legal prosecution. In this difficult case, therefore, it required all the Romish craft and legal sophistry at command, to find a pretext for bringing Galileo to trial before the Inquisition, which should, at any rate according to Romish principles, justify it in the eyes of the world.

The preliminary commission appointed by Urban VIII. was to perform this by no means easy task in brilliant style. It was certainly very much lightened by a discovery in the acts of the trial of Galileo in 1616, which was evidently a surprise to them—the note of 26th February, 1616.