In January, 1632, the "Dialogues" appeared. Copies were sent to his
friends and disciples throughout Italy. The whole country applauded, and
at last Galileo seemed to have won the homage he had so long deserved.
But a storm was gathering. Enemies were at work prejudicing the mind of
Urban VIII., making him feel that Galileo had wrought evil to the
church. At once an order came from the Inquisition to secure every copy
in the booksellers' shops throughout Italy, and to forward all copies to
Rome.
In October of the same year of publication, Galileo was summoned to
appear at Rome, to answer to that terror of past centuries, the charge
of heresy. His friends urged that he was old and feeble, and that he
would die on the journey, but Urban's commands were peremptory.
Galileo was deeply depressed by the summons, and wrote a friend: "This
vexes me so much that it makes me curse the time devoted to these
studies, in which I strove and hoped to deviate somewhat from the beaten
track generally pursued by learned men. I not only repent having given
the world a portion of my writings, but feel inclined to suppress those
still in hand, and to give them to the flames, and thus satisfy the
longing desire of my enemies, to whom my ideas are so inconvenient."
On January 20, 1633, the decrepit old man set out in a litter for Rome,
arriving on February 13. On April 12, he was brought before the
Inquisition, and briefly examined and then remanded to prison, though
treated with great leniency. The anxiety and deprivation from outdoor
exercise brought on illness, and he was confined to his bed till led a
second time before the Inquisition, April 30.
Weak, aged, in fear of torture, he made the melancholy confession that
his "error had been one of vainglorious ambition, and pure ignorance and
inadvertence." Pure ignorance! from the man who had studied for fifty
years all that the world knew of science! But he recalled how men had
died at the stake for offending the church. The world is not full of
men and women who can suffer death for their convictions, however much
we may admire such courage. On May 10, he was summoned a third time
before the Inquisition, and told that he had eight days in which to
write his defence. In touching language he stated how the book had been
examined and re examined by the authorities, so that there might be
nothing heterodox in it; and then he urged them to consider his age and
feeble health.
A fourth time he came before the Holy Congregation, June 21, and was
asked whether he held that the sun is the centre of the solar system,
and that the earth is not the centre, and that it moves. He replied, "I
do not hold, and have not held this opinion of Copernicus since the
command was intimated to me that I must abandon it; for the rest, I am
here in your hands,--do with me what you please."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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