In his book the great discoverer had said nothing explicitly on the subject of the Copernican theory; but in lectures and conversations he had freely avowed his belief in it; and the implications of the published treatise were clear to all thinkers. [257] And though, when he visited Rome in 1611, he was well received by Pope Paul V, and his discoveries were favourably reported of by the four scientific experts nominated at the request of Cardinal Bellarmin to examine them, [258] it only needed that the Biblical cry should be raised to change the situation. The Church still contained men individually open to new scientific ideas; but she was then more than ever dominated by the forces of tradition; and as soon as those forces had been practically evoked his prosecution was bound to follow. The cry of "religion in danger" silenced the saner men at Rome. The fashion in which Galileo's sidereal discoveries were met is indeed typical of the whole history of freethought. The clergy pointed to the story of Joshua stopping the sun and moon; the average layman scouted the new theory as plain folly; and typical schoolmen insisted that "the heavens are unchangeable," and that there was no authority in Aristotle for the new assertions. With such minds the man of science had to argue, and in deference to such he had at length to affect to doubt his own demonstrations. [259] The Catholic Reaction had finally created as bitter a spirit of hostility to free science in the Church as existed among the Protestants; and in Italy even those who saw the moons of Jupiter through his telescope dared not avow what they had seen. [260] It was therefore an unfortunate step on Galileo's part to go from Padua, which was under the rule of Venice, then anti-papal, [261] to Tuscany, on the invitation of the Grand Duke. When in 1613 he published his treatise on the solar spots, definitely upholding Copernicus against Jesuits and Aristotelians, trouble became inevitable; and his letter [262] to his pupil, Father Castelli, professor of mathematics at Pisa, discussing the Biblical argument with which they had both been met, at once evoked an explosion when circulated by Castelli. New trouble arose when Galileo in 1615 wrote his apology in the form of a letter to his patroness the Dowager Grand Duchess Cristina of Tuscany, extracts from which became current. An outcry of ignorant Dominican monks [263] sufficed to set at work the machinery of the Index, [264] the first result of which (1616) was to put on the list of condemned books the great treatise of Copernicus, published seventy-three years before. Galileo personally escaped for the present through the friendly intervention of the Pope, Paul V, on the appeal of his patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, apparently on the ground that he had not publicly taught the Copernican theory. It would seem as if some of the heads of the Church were at heart Copernicans; [265] but they were in any case obliged to disown a doctrine felt by