Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/9



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It is the desire of every author, every prosecutor of research, that the products of his labours, the results of his studies, should be widely circulated. This desire arises, especially in the case of one who has devoted himself to research, not only from a certain egotism which clings to us all, but from the wish that the laborious researches of years, often believed to refute old and generally-received errors, should become the common property of as many as possible.

The author of the present work is no exception to these general rules; and it therefore gives him great pleasure, and fills him with gratitude, that you, Madam, should have taken the trouble to translate the small results of his studies into the language of Newton, and thus have rendered them more accessible to the English nation.

But little more than two years have elapsed since the book first appeared in Germany, but this period has been a most important one for researches into the literature relating to Galileo.

In the year 1869 Professor Domenico Berti obtained permission to inspect and turn to account the Acts of Galileo's Trial carefully preserved in the Vatican, and in 1876 he published a portion of these important documents, which