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Rh fortunately, experiment fully confirmed the verdict. Ominous head-shakings were seen among the suite of the deeply mortified inventor. They entered into alliance with the Peripatetic philosophers against their common enemy. There were cabals at court. Galileo, perceiving that his position at Pisa was untenable, voluntarily resigned his professorship before the three years had expired, and migrated for the second time home to Florence.

His situation was now worse than before, for about this time, 2nd July, 1591, his father died after a short illness, leaving his family in very narrow circumstances. In this distress the Marquis del Monte again appeared as a friend in need. Thanks to his warm recommendation to the Senate of the Republic of Venice, in the autumn of 1592 the professorship of mathematics at the University of Padua, which had become vacant, was bestowed on Galileo for six years. On 7th December, 1592, he entered on his office with a brilliant opening address, which won the greatest admiration, not only for its profound scientific knowledge, but for its entrancing eloquence. His lectures soon acquired further fame, and the number of his admirers and the audience who eagerly listened to his, in many respects, novel demonstrations, daily increased.

During his residence at Padua, Galileo displayed an extraordinary and versatile activity. He constructed various machines for the service of the republic, and wrote a number of excellent treatises, intended chiefly for his pupils. Among the larger works may be mentioned his writings on the laws of motion, on fortification, gnomonics (the making of sundials), mechanics, and on the celestial globe, which attained a wide circulation even in copies, and were some of them printed