We now proceed to the examination of the documents contained in this famous volume. They differ in historical value, for they are not all as Professor Berti says,[639] original documents, but often copies, and more or less cursory annotations. Those only can be considered original documents which have autograph signatures; as all the letters in the MS. with one exception,[640] the protocol of the examination of Caccini, and the protocols of the examinations of Galileo; those of the depositions of Ximenes and Attavanti are copies sent by the Inquisitor at Florence to the Holy Office, and there is therefore no question of their authenticity. The rest of the MS. consists mainly of annotations on the decrees relating to the trial, decrees and mandates of the Pope and Holy Congregation, or notices of their execution. _But the original Acts corresponding with these annotations are not comprised in the Vatican MS._ Moreover, a careful examination of the Vatican Acts with Gherardi’s Documents shows, that especially after the conclusion of the trial till Galileo’s death, many papal decrees were issued of which there is no mention in the Vatican MS. So far as this, therefore, it must be looked upon as an incomplete source. But on the other hand, there is no doubt that the Acts of the trial itself lie before us altogether. Dr. Emil Wohlwill, of Hamburg, has recently expressed the suspicion that a short time before the MS. was removed from the Archives of the Holy Office to France, the Acts of the trial underwent alterations with a special purpose, in the expectation that the Archives would be robbed, and that after the return of the volume in 1846, through Mgr. Marino Marini, Prefect of the Papal Archives, these alterations were completed![641] Wohlwill takes all the preliminary report—the origin of which is clear, and in accordance with the rules of the Inquisition—for a forgery intended to influence “readers outside the Vatican.” He also thinks that the opinion of the qualifier of the Holy Office at the head of the Acts is a later addition. The object of this no one can make out, and Dr. Wohlwill himself can give no satisfactory reason for it. As he had only Epinois’s first edition of the Vatican MS. (1867), and Berti’s imperfect publication in his hands, he often draws incorrect conclusions. It is hardly necessary to say that Dr. Wohlwill’s bold conjectures turn out to be phantoms on an actual examination of the papers, and this will certainly be confirmed by Epinois, Berti, Pieralisi, and all who have seen them. This is not the place to refute Wohlwill’s suspicions, as we have done so elsewhere.[642] It only remains for us to give the material evidence which indisputably proves that the annotation of 26th February neither is nor can be a later falsification.