Part 9 (1/2)

[Footnote 267: Doc. in Favaro: 74.]

[Footnote 268: Ibid: 75.]

[Footnote 269: Ibid: 76.]

[Footnote 270: Ibid: 80-81.]

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 ma.n.u.script to the censors.h.i.+p 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.[271] With remarkable, in fact unique, consideration, the Holy Office then a.s.signed 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 amba.s.sador. On the 30th after his examination, they even a.s.signed as his prison, the Amba.s.sador's palace, out of consideration for his age and ill-health.

[Footnote 271: Ibid: 80-81.]

In his second appearance (April 30), Galileo declared he had been thinking matters over after re-reading his book (which he had not read for three years), and freely confessed that there were several pa.s.sages which would mislead a reader unaware of his real intentions, into believing the worse arguments were the better, and he blamed these slips upon his vain ambition and delight in his own skill in debate.[272] He thereupon offered to write another ”day” or two more for the _Dialogo_ in which he would completely refute the two ”strong”

Copernican arguments based on the sun's spots and on the tides.[273]

Ten days later, at his third appearance, he presented a written statement of his defence in which he claimed that the phrase _vel quovis modo docere_ was wholly new to him, and that he had obeyed the order given him by Cardinal Bellarmin over the latter's own signature.

However he would make what amends he could and begged the Cardinals to ”consider his miserable bodily health and his incessant mental trouble for the past ten months, the discomforts of a long hard journey at the worst season, when 70 years old, together with the loss of the greater part of the year, and that therefore such suffering might be adequate punishment for his faults which they might condone to failing old age.

Also he commended to them his honor and reputation against the calumnies of his ill-wishers who seek to detract from his good name.”[274] To such a plight was the great man brought! But the end was not yet.

[Footnote 272: Doc. in Favaro: 83.]

[Footnote 273: Ibid: 84.]

[Footnote 274: Ibid: 85-87.]

Nearly a month later (June 16), by order of the Pope, Galileo was once again interrogated, this time under threat of torture.[275] Once again he declared the opinion of Ptolemy true and indubitable and said he did not hold and had not held this doctrine of Copernicus after he had been informed of the order to abandon it. ”As for the rest,” he added, ”I am in your hands, do with me as you please.” ”I am here to obey.”[276] Then by the order of the Pope, ensued Galileo's complete abjuration on his knees in the presence of the full Congregation, coupled with his promise to denounce other heretics (i.e., Copernicans).[277] In addition, because he was guilty of the heresy of having held and believed a doctrine declared and defined as contrary to the Scriptures, he was sentenced to ”formal imprisonment” at the will of the Congregation, and to repeat the seven penitential Psalms every week for three years.[278]

[Footnote 275: Ibid: 101.]

[Footnote 276: Doc. in Favaro: 101.]

[Footnote 277: Doc. in Favaro: 146.]

[Footnote 278: Ibid: 145.]

At Galileo's earnest request, his sentence was commuted almost at once, to imprisonment first in the archiepiscopal palace in Siena (from June 30-December 1), then in his own villa at Arcetri, outside Florence, though under strict orders not to receive visitors but to live in solitude.[279] In the spring his increasing illness occasioned another request for greater liberty in order to have the necessary visits from the doctor; but on March 23, 1634, this was denied him with a stern command from the Pope to refrain from further pet.i.tions lest the Sacred Congregation be compelled to recall him to their prisons in Rome.[280]

[Footnote 279: Ibid: 103, 129.]

[Footnote 280: Ibid: 134.]

The rule forbidding visitors seems not to have been rigidly enforced all the time, for Milton visited him, ”a prisoner of the Inquisition”

in 1638;[281] yet Father Castelli had to write to Rome for permission to visit him to learn his newly invented method of finding longitude at sea.[282] When in Florence on a very brief stay to see his doctor, Galileo had to have the especial consent of the Inquisitor in order to attend ma.s.s at Easter. He won approval from the Holy Congregation, however, by refusing to receive some gifts and letters brought him by some German merchants from the Low Countries.[283] He was then totally blind, but he dragged out his existence until January 8, 1642 (the year of Newton's birth), when he died. As the Pope objected to a public funeral for a man sentenced by the Holy Office, he was buried without even an epitaph.[284] The first inscription was made 31 years later, and in 1737, his remains were removed to Santa Croce after the Congregation had first been asked if such action would be un.o.bjectionable.[285]

[Footnote 281: Milton: _Areopagitica_: 35.]

[Footnote 282: Doc. in Favaro: 135.]

[Footnote 283: Ibid: 137.]