Although this dramatic scene is not mentioned as worthy of credit by any modern historian,[424] it is different with the hair shirt in which Galileo is said to have performed the humiliating act. Libri, Cousin, Parchappe, and very recently Louis Combes,[425] all gravely relate that the philosopher had to recant “en chemise.” The official document, although it goes very much into detail as to the way in which the oath was performed, says nothing of the shirt, and these authors should have said nothing either. The doubtful source in which this fable originated is an anonymous and very confused note on a MS. in, the Magliabechiana Library at Florence, where among other nonsense we find: “the poor man (Galileo), appeared clad in a ragged shirt, so that it was really pitiable.”[426] We agree with Epinois,[427] that history requires more authentic testimony than that of an anonymous note. But upon what testimony, then, do a large number of authors speak with much pathos of the imprisonment which Galileo had to undergo? No sort of documents are referred to as evidence of the story; this is quite intelligible, for none exist. Or is the rhetorical phrase, “Galileus nunc in vinculis detinetur,”[428] contained in a letter of May, 1633, from Rome, from Holstein to Peiresc, to be taken as evidence that Galileo was really languishing in the prisons of the Inquisition? One glance at the truest historical source for the famous trial,—the official despatches of Niccolini to Cioli, from 15th August, 1632, to 3rd December, 1633, from which we have so freely quoted,—would have convinced any one that Galileo spent altogether only twenty-two days (12-30th April, and afterwards 21-24th June, 1633) in the buildings of the Holy Office; and even then, not in a prison cell with grated windows, but in the handsome and commodious apartment of an official of the Inquisition. But such writers do not seem to have been in the habit of studying authorities; thus, for example, in the “Histoire des Hérésies,” by P. Domenico Bernini, and in the “Grande Dictionnaire Bibliographique” of Moreri, we find it stated that Galileo was imprisoned five or six years at Rome! Monteula, in his “Histoire des Mathematiques,” and Sir David Brewster, in his “Martyrs of Science,” reduce the period, perhaps from pity for the poor “martyr,” to one year; Delambre, however, felt no such compassion, and says in his “Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne,” that Galileo was condemned to an imprisonment which lasted “several years”! Such an error is the more surprising from the last celebrated author, as we know that trustworthy extracts from the original acts of the Vatican MS. were in his hands.[429] Even in a very recent work, Drager’s “Geschichte der Conflicte zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft,” Leipzig, 1875 (“History of the Conflicts between Religion and Science”), it is seriously stated that Galileo was detained three years in the prisons of the Inquisition!