The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

He was occupied now with problems in hydrostatics and on other matters unconnected with astronomy: a large piece of work which I must pass over. Most interesting and acute it is, however.

In 1623, when the old Pope died, there was elected to the papal throne, as Urban VIII, Cardinal Barberino, a man of very considerable enlightenment, and a personal friend of Galileo's, so that both he and his daughters rejoice greatly, and hope that things will come all right, and the forbidding edict be withdrawn.

The year after this election he manages to make another journey to Rome to compliment his friend on his elevation to the pontifical chair. He had many talks with Urban, and made himself very agreeable.

Encouraged, doubtless, by marks of approbation, and reposing too much confidence in the individual good-will of the Pope, without heeding the crowd of half-declared enemies who were seeking to undermine his reputation, he set about, after his return to Florence, his greatest literary and most popular work, Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems. This purports to be a series of four conversations between three characters. Salviati, a Copernican philosopher; Sagredo, a wit and scholar, not specially learned, but keen and critical, and who lightens the talk with chaff; Simplicio, an Aristotelian philosopher, who propounds the stock absurdities which served instead of arguments to the majority of men.

The Aristotelians were furious, and represented to the Pope that he himself was the character intended by Simplicio, the philosopher whose opinions get alternately refuted and ridiculed by the other two, till he is reduced to an abject state of impotence.

The infirm old man was instantly summoned to Rome. His friends pleaded his age—he was now seventy—his ill-health, the time of year, the state of the roads, the quarantine existing on account of the plague. It was all of no avail; to Rome he must go, and on February 14th he arrived.

His daughter at Arcetri was in despair; and anxiety and fastings and penances self-inflicted on his account dangerously reduced her health.

At Rome he was not imprisoned, but he was told to keep indoors and show himself as little as possible. He was allowed, however, to stay at the house of the Tuscan ambassador instead of in jail.

By April he was removed to the chambers of the Inquisition and examined several times. Here, however, the anxiety was too much, and his health began to give way seriously; so, before long, he was allowed to return to the ambassador's house; and, after application had been made, was allowed to drive in the public garden in a half-closed carriage. Thus in every way the Inquisition dealt with him as leniently as they could. He was now their prisoner, and they might have cast him into their dungeons, as many another had been cast. By whatever they were influenced—perhaps the Pope's old friendship, perhaps his advanced age and infirmities—he was not so cruelly used.

Still, they had their rules; he must be made to recant and abjure his heresy; and, if necessary, torture must be applied. This he knew well enough, and his daughter knew it, and her distress may be imagined. Moreover, it is not as if they had really been heretics, as if they hated or despised the Church of Rome. On the contrary, they loved and honored the Church. They were sincere and devout worshippers, and only on a few scientific matters did Galileo presume to differ from his ecclesiastical superiors: his disagreement with them occasioned him real sorrow; and his dearest hope was that they could be brought to his way of thinking and embrace the truth.

This condition of things could not go on. From February to June the suspense lasted. On June 20th he was summoned again, and told he would be wanted all next day for a rigorous examination. Early in the morning of the 21st he repaired thither, and the doors were shut. Out of those chambers of horror he did not reappear till the 24th. What went on all those three days no one knows. He himself was bound to secrecy. No outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several eminent scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be indisputable—geometrically certain, one says—and they confirm it by the hernia from which he afterward suffered, this being a well-known and frequent consequence.

Other equally learned commentators, however, deny that the last stage was reached. For there are five stages all laid down in the rules of the Inquisition, and steadily adhered to in a rigorous examination, at each stage an opportunity being given for recantation, every utterance, groan, or sigh being strictly recorded. The recantation so given has to be confirmed a day or two later, under pain of a precisely similar ordeal.

The five stages are: (1) The official threat in the court; (2) the taking to the door of the torture-chamber and renewing the official threat; (3) the taking inside and showing the instruments; (4) undressing and binding upon the rack; (5) territio realis. Through how many of these ghastly acts Galileo passed I do not know. I hope and believe not the last.

There are those who lament that he did not hold out, and accept the crown of martyrdom thus offered to him. Had he done so we know his fate—a few years' languishing in the dungeons, and then the flames. Whatever he ought to have done, he did not hold out—he gave way. At one stage or another of the dread ordeal he said: "I am in your hands. I will say whatever you wish." Then was he removed to a cell while his special form of perjury was drawn up.