Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/372

 the work seemed to be protected by the ecclesiastical imprimatur. We confess that we went to Rome with but little hope of finding external evidence for or against the genuineness of the document. It had been long in Professor Berti's hands, and he had defended it with learned dialectics, while the controversy would have been closed by adducing material evidence. It seemed to us, therefore, sufficient inducement to undertake a journey to Rome, if it should enable us to confirm, on external grounds, that the document was not a falsification, even though its genuineness might not be capable of demonstration.

Contrary to all our expectations, after a repeated, careful, and we may say, entirely objective examination, we must pronounce that the suspicion of a later origin is not tenable.

Now for the reasons. The note of 26th February begins on the same page as that of the 25th, and they are in precisely the same ink and handwriting. As, however, in case of a forgery, the perpetrator would not have been so unskilful as to add a note in different ink and writing under another sixteen years old, but would have written both on another sheet, and carefully incorporated them with the Acts, we had to find out whether it was possible that the pages on which the notes are found (folios 378 vo. and 379 ro.), could have been afterwards added to the Acts. This was found to be impossible. It is excluded by two circumstances.

1. Folios 378 vo. and 379 ro. are second pages to existing documents; and folio 378 belongs to 377, on which is written the famous opinion of the Qualifiers of the Holy Office on the two propositions of Galileo, taken from the work on the Solar Spots. Folio 379 again belongs to folio 357, which is a page of the protocol of the examination of Caccini.

2. In this collection of the Acts of the trial, all the paper on which the documents of the Holy Office were written at Rome, bears the same watermark,—a dove in