Professor Berti offers as an explanation of the absence of the three signatures, that the Congregation in the name of which the sentence was passed consisted of ten members, but that at the last sitting seven only were present, so that seven only could sign, and adds, as it appears to us unwarrantably, “that it by no means follows that the three absentees were of a contrary opinion.”[402] Pieralisi does not find the matter so simple, and devotes seven large pages to account for the absence of the three prelates from the Congregation. “Cardinal Borgia,” he says, “was on very bad terms with Urban VIII., because he had addressed the Pope in a loud voice in a consistory, and the Pope had imperiously told him to be quiet and to go away.”[403] But it has been proved that even after this scene the cardinal appeared at the consistories up to 12th February, 1635, although there were complaints that he took walks in Rome instead of attending the sittings of the Propaganda and the Holy Office. But it is not likely that this cardinal, whose name stands at the head of the sentence, would have absented himself from the final sitting without some good reason. Pieralisi thinks that he was more friendly to Galileo than the other cardinals, an opinion for which there is no evidence and which proves nothing. Even Pieralisi confesses that he can find no reason for the absence of Cardinal Zacchia, but assigns the following motive for that of Cardinal Francesco Barberini: “He probably wished to uphold the right enjoyed by the cardinal nephews, and afterwards by the secretaries of state, of sometimes abstaining from voting in order to reserve to themselves greater freedom in the treatment of public, private, and political affairs.” The insufficiency of this explanation is too obvious to need comment. Pieralisi himself comes to the conclusion that these dignitaries did not wish to append their signatures to the famous sentence, which is much the same thing as the conjecture that they did not agree to it. In accordance with this sentence, certainly not passed unanimously by the members of the Holy Tribunal, which forms one of the foulest blots in the melancholy annals of the Inquisition, Galileo was compelled immediately after hearing it to make the following degrading recantation, humbly kneeling, before the whole assembly:—