Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/414

398 whole thing was denounced as impossible and impious. It was argued that the Bible clearly showed by all applicable types, that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of the Tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia.

In a letter to his friend Renieri, Galileo gives a sketch of the dealings of the Inquisition with him. He says: "The Father Commissary, Lancio, was zealous to have me make amends for the scandal I had caused in sustaining the idea of the movement of the earth. To all my mathematical and other reasons he responded nothing but the words of Scripture, Terra autem in ceternuni stat."

It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua; by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they cannot be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of heaven to the other."

The Dominican father, Caccini, preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun was the first of a series of sharper weapons, for before Caccini finishes he insists that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies."

For the final assault, the park of heavy artillery was at last wheeled into place. You see it on all the scientific battle-fields. It consists of general denunciation, and Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to bear well on Galileo with this declaration: that the opinion of the earth's motion is, of all heresies, the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; that the immobility of the earth is thrice sacred; that argument against the immortality of the soul, the Creator, the incarnation, etc., should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves.

In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them to the doubters through his telescope. They either declared it impious to look, or, if they did see them, denounced them as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that "to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them."