Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/73

 loath to believe that the Church authorities were really hostile to him. Delays were granted him till the Pope in December finally ordered him to be in Rome within a month. The Florentine Inquisitor replied that Galileo was in bed so sick that three doctors had certified that he could not travel except at serious risk to his life. This certificate declared that he suffered from an intermittent pulse, from enfeebled vital faculties, from frequent dizziness, from melancholia, weakness of the stomach, insomnia, shooting pains and serious hernia. The answer the Pope made to this was to order the Inquisitor to send at Galileo's expense a commissary and a doctor out to his villa to see if he were feigning illness; if he were, he was to be sent bound and in chains to Rome at once; if were really too ill to travel, then he was to be sent in chains as soon as he was convalescent and could travel safely. Galileo did not delay after that any longer than he could help, and set out for Rome in January in a litter supplied by the Tuscan Grand Duke. The journey was prolonged by quarantine, but upon his arrival (February 13, 1633), he was welcomed into the palace of Niccolini, the warm-hearted ambassador of the Grand Duke.

Four times was the old man summoned into the presence of the Holy Office, though never when the Pope was presiding. In his first examination held on the 12th of April, he told how he thought he had obeyed the decree of 1616 as his Dialogo did not defend the Copernican doctrine but rather confuted it, and that in his desire to do the right, he had personally submitted the book while in manuscript to the censorship of the Master of the Sacred Palace, and had accepted all the changes he and the Florentine Inquisitor had required. He had not mentioned the affair of 1616 because he thought that order did not apply to this book in which he proved the lack of validity and of conclusiveness of the Copernican arguments. With remarkable, in fact unique, consideration, the Holy Office then assigned Galileo to a suite of rooms within the prisons of the Holy Office, allowed him to have his servant with him and to have his meals sent in by the ambassador. On the 30th after his examination, they even assigned

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