And then June 22, in the forenoon, in the large hall of the Dominican Convent of St. Maria sopra la Minerva, in the presence of cardinals and prelates, he heard his sentence. "The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from its place is absurd, and false philosophically, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. "The proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically; and theologically considered, at least, erroneous in faith.... Invoking, therefore, the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His most glorious mother and ever Virgin Mary ... we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in process, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself, in the judgment of this Holy Office, vehemently suspected of heresy,--namely, of having believed and held the doctrine, which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures,--that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, and that the earth moves and is not the centre of the world.... We condemn you to the formal prison of this Holy Office during our pleasure, and, by way of salutary penance, we enjoin that for three years to come you repeat once a week the seven Penitential Psalms." Galileo was also required to "abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies." And then the white-haired man of seventy, humbly kneeling before the whole assembly, made the pitiful abjuration of his belief. "I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and, generally, all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church." Pitiful spectacle of intolerance! If we of this nineteenth century have learned to tolerate and treat with respect the beliefs of others though widely divergent from our own, perhaps this wretched drama was not acted in vain. It has been said that Galileo exclaimed as he rose from his feet, "_E pur si muove_," "It moves, for all that," but this would have been well nigh an impossibility, in the midst of men who would instantly have taken him to a dungeon, and the story is no longer believed. On July 9, poor Galileo was allowed to leave Rome for Siena, where he stayed five months in the house of the archbishop, and then became a prisoner in his own house at Arcetri, with strict injunctions that he was "not to entertain friends, nor to allow the assemblage of many at a time." He wrote sadly to Maria Celeste, "My name is erased from the book of the living." Tender words came back, saying that it seemed "a thousand years" since she had seen him, and that she would recite the seven penitential psalms for him, "to save you the trouble of remembering it."