Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/359

Rh renewed old friendships; he had formed new ones; he was esteemed and regarded by the Pope and the most influential of the Cardinals. His enemies in Florence were utterly silenced. His accuser, Caccini, had made the humblest apologies. The Grand Duke and most of the court were his admiring friends. He had every freedom for research if only he would leave the interpretation of scripture to theological experts. ‘Write freely, but keep outside the sacristy’ his friends advised. Why did he remain in Rome? To convert the Congregation of the Index to Copernicanism? This would have been a triumph for science, and a personal triumph as well. The Roman Curia had absolutely no interest in science as such. They were determined that religion should not suffer. Galileo's brilliant lectures were not conceived in the spirit that convinces. He silenced opposition by sarcasm. A second crisis in Galileo's affairs dates from this period (February, March, 1615).

Before this date momentous action had been taken by the Inquisition. On February 19 the Qualificators of the Holy Office had been summoned to give their opinion on two propositions based on Galileo's treatise on the Solar Spots:

I. That the sun is the center of the world and immovable from its place.

II. That the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but moves, and also with a diurnal motion.

The Qualificators were to give their opinion as theological and philosophical experts, and gave it four days afterwards. The astronomer Riccioli declares that the opinions of astronomical experts were also obtained and that the judgment of the Holy Office was based upon them (Delambre: Histoire de l'Astronomie Moderne, i., 680). There is no reason to doubt the assertion. It is exceedingly important as showing that the Inquisition took the best expert advice known to them before action. This significant fact is not mentioned in any of the Warfare-of-Science books, nor even by so careful an historian as Gebler.

The scientific value of the expert astronomical opinion was, of course, exactly nil. It was given, probably, by Aristotelians, personally inimical to Galileo, and fully committed to the Ptolemaic system. It was, equally of course, adverse to Galileo. They may well have