Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/295

 The concluding sentence of the last examination of Galileo being on the one hand in exact agreement with the decree of 16th June, and on the other being a precise and definite statement, is a strong proof of the correctness of the opinion long defended by calm and impartial historians, like Albèri, Reumont, Biot, Cantor, Bouix, Troussart, Reusch, and even the passionate opponent of Rome, Prof. Chasles, that Galileo's feeble frame was never subjected to the horrors of torture. Wohlwill also acknowledges the force of this concluding sentence—if it be genuine. He thinks these words are a falsification in the present century, while originally Galileo's last answer was followed by the necessary decree for proceeding to torture, and then by the protocol about the proceedings in the torture chamber. Dr. Scartazzini goes even further than Wohlwill, and maintains that not only the concluding sentence, but the whole protocol of the examination of 21st June, as now found in the Vatican MS., is a later falsified insertion. We shall see why he thinks so by and by.

We may remark in passing, from our own experience, that it is always venturesome to affirm that there are falsifications in a MS. without even having seen it, to say nothing of having examined it. Thus, for instance, a glance at the original shows on material grounds that there can be no suspicion of falsification or later insertion in the protocol of 21st June. Both pages on which it is written, fols. 452, 453, are second pages to fols. 413 and 414, on which the protocol of Galileo's trial of 12th April begins. A later