Having duly weighed the confessions and excuses of their prisoner, and considered the general merits of the case, the inquisition came to an agreement upon the sentence which they were to pronounce, and appointed the 22d of June as the day on which it was to be delivered. Two days previous to this, Galileo was summoned to appear at the holy office; and on the morning of the 21st, he obeyed the summons. On the 22d of June he was clothed in a penitential dress, and conducted to the convent of Minerva, where the inquisition was assembled to give judgment. A long and elaborate sentence was pronounced, detailing the former proceedings of the inquisition, and specifying the offences which he had committed in teaching heretical doctrines, in violating his former pledges, and in obtaining by improper means a licence for the printing of his Dialogues. After an invocation of the name of our Saviour, and of the Holy Virgin, Galileo is declared to have brought himself under strong suspicions of heresy, and to have incurred all the censures and penalties which are enjoined against delinquents of this kind; but from all these consequences he is to be held absolved, provided that with a sincere heart, and a faith unfeigned, he abjures and curses the heresies he has cherished, as well as every other heresy against the Catholic church. In order that his offence might not go altogether unpunished, that he might be more cautious in future, and be a warning to others to abstain from similar delinquencies, it was also decreed that his Dialogues should be prohibited by public edict; that he himself should be condemned to the prison of the inquisition during their pleasure, and that during the next three years he should recite once a week the seven penitential psalms. The ceremony of Galileo's abjuration was one of exciting interest, and of awful formality. Clothed in the sackcloth of a repentant criminal, the venerable sage fell upon his knees before the assembled cardinals; and laying his hands upon the Holy Evangelists, he invoked the divine aid in abjuring and detesting, and vowing never again to teach, the doctrine of the earth's motion, and of the sun's stability. He pledged himself that he would never again, either in words or in writing, propagate such heresies; and he swore that he would fulfil and observe the penances which had been inflicted upon him.[29] At the conclusion of this ceremony, in which he recited his abjuration word for word, and then signed it, he was conveyed, in conformity with his sentence, to the prison of the inquisition.