Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/135

Rh signal mark of favor. A letter, drawn up by Galileo, was despatched by the Grand Duke to the angry Pope. On September 4, 1632, the Pope said to the Tuscan ambassador, Niccolini—Galileo's faithful friend: ‘Your Galileo has ventured to meddle with things that he ought not, and with the most important and dangerous subjects.’ He added that Galileo's book had been printed by a ruse. As to the objections to the book ‘Galileo knows well enough what the objections are. . . because we have talked to him about them, and he has heard them all from us.’ The Pope had acted, he said ‘with the greatest consideration for Galileo,’ and added that his own conduct towards Galileo had been far better than Galileo's to him, for Galileo had deceived him. The Pope was firmly convinced that religion had been imperiled.

The special commission reported after about a month that Galileo has transgressed orders in deviating from hypothetical treatment of the Copernican opinion and by decidedly maintaining it he has erroneously ascribed the phenomena of the tides to the stability of the sun and the motion of the earth, which do not exist; he has been deceitfully silent about the command laid upon him by the Holy Office in 1616, to relinquish the Copernican doctrine ‘nor henceforth to hold, teach or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, etc.,’ ‘which injunction Galileo acquiesced in and promised to obey.’ Furthermore, Galileo printed the imprimatur of Rome on the title page of the Dialogues without authority; he put the saving clause of the book in the mouth of a simpleton, etc. (A full account of this report is given in Gebler's ‘Galileo,’ English edition, pp. 172-3. It is only incidentally of importance to us here.)

On the fifteenth of September, 1632, the Pope notified Niccolini that Galileo's affair was to be transferred to the inquisition. This was astounding news to the ambassador, who had all along believed that no proceedings would be taken against the astronomer and that the very worst to be feared was perhaps a command to alter certain phrases of the book. In the interview the Pope said ‘Galileo was still his friend’—but that the Copernican opinion had been condemned sixteen years previously. At a meeting of the Congregation of the Holy Office held on September 23, it was pronounced that Galileo had disobeyed the command of February 26, 1616, and had concealed the prohibition then received by him from the censor at the time he applied for the imprimatur for his book; the inquisitor at Florence was, on the same day, by command of the Pope, directed to summon Galileo to appear before the commissary-general of the Holy Office in Room, ‘as soon as possible, in the course of the month of October.’ On October 1, Galileo, in writing, acknowledged the receipt of the summons and promised to present himself during October, as directed.