Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/137

Rh certificate of the seventeenth by Galileo's physicians pronounced him unfit to travel. The certificate was not believed in Rome, and Niccolini reported on the thirtieth that it was intended to send a physician from Rome with a commissioner who would, if he were fit to travel, bring him to Rome in chains.

On January 11, 1633, the Grand Duke wrote to Galileo advising him to set out, offering him one of the Court litters to travel in, and the hospitality of the ambassador's palace in Rome. On the twentieth of January Galileo left Florence on his last journey to Rome, arriving there, after a tedious quarantine, on February 13. Galileo, though technically a prisoner, was permitted to reside at the ambassador's palace. He writes to the Tuscan secretary of state that his treatment indicates 'mild and kindly treatment very different from the threatening words, chains and dungeons.' He was allowed to drive out, the shades of the carriage being half-drawn. His letters show that he was full of hope. It was now more than four months since he had been cited to appear, and in this time he must have considered what form the charges were to take and what defense he should make. Niccolini's despatch of February 27, 1633, says:

The main difficulty consists in this—that these gentlemen maintain that in 1616 he [Galileo] was ordered neither to discuss the question [the Copernican opinion] nor to converse about it. He says, on the contrary, that these were not the terms of the injunction which were that that doctrine was not to be held or defended. He considers that he has the means of justifying himself, because it does not at all appear from his book that he does hold or defend the doctrine nor that he regards it as a settled question, as he merely adduces the reasons, hinc hinde. The other points appear to be of less importance and easier to get over.

From this despatch of Galileo's friend it appears that his defense was settled upon. The certificate of Cardinal Bellarmine was to be submitted to his judges; and it was to be proved from his book that he had obeyed the orders of the cardinal. Nothing was left undone by Niccolini, Castelli, or by the Grand Duke, to forward Galileo's interests. The Duke wrote letters of recommendation to the ten cardinals who made up the Holy Office, and some of the cardinals read the Dialogues and discussed them with Castelli. On April 12 Galileo was cited to appear at the Palace of the Inquisition. He acknowledged the Dialogues to be his own work. He was then asked to recount the proceedings of 1616 and replied that Cardinal Bellarmine had then told him 'that the aforesaid opinion of Copernicus might be held as a conjecture, as it had been held by Copernicus, and his eminence was aware that, like Copernicus, I only held that opinion as a conjecture,' which is evident from a letter (dated April 12, 1615) from the cardinal to Foscarini, in which he says: "It