failing authority of Aristotle they called in the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture! This dragging of the Bible into what had previously been a purely scientific controversy, a proceeding which proved so fatal to Galileo, must not however, as has been done by several authors, be attributed solely to party considerations or even personal motives. This is absolutely false. Greatly as these factors were concerned in it, it must be admitted that at first they were only incidentally mixed up with it. The multitude of the learned, who still adhered entirely to the old system of the universe, and regarded the theories of Copernicus (not yet based on ocular demonstration) as mere fantasies, were really aghast at the telescopic discoveries of Galileo which threatened to overturn all their previous beliefs. The learned, and still more the semi-learned, world of Italy felt the ground tremble beneath their feet; and it seemed to them as if the foundations of all physics, mathematics, philosophy, and religion, were, with the authority of Aristotle, which had reigned for two thousand years, being borne to the grave. This did not present itself to them as progress but as sacrilege. A young fanatic, the monk Sizy (the same who seven years later was broken on the wheel for political crimes at Paris), was the first to transfer what had been a purely scientific discussion to the slippery arena of theology. At the beginning of 1611 he published at Venice a work called “Dianoja Astronomica”[76] in answer to the “Sidereus Nuncius,” in which he asserted that the existence of the moons of Jupiter was incompatible with the doctrines of Holy Scripture. He appropriately dedicated his book to that semi-prince of the blood, John de’ Medici, who was known to be the mortal enemy of Galileo. The author, as we learn from his own work, was one of those contemptible men who carefully abstained from even looking through a telescope, although firmly convinced that the wonders announced by Galileo were not to be seen. Galileo did not vouchsafe to defend himself from this monkish attack any more than from Horky’s libel the year before. He contented himself with writing on the back of the title page of the copy still preserved in the National Library at Florence the following lines from Ariosto:— “Soggiunse il duca: Non sarebbe onesto Che io volessi la battaglia torre, Di quel che m’ offerisco manifesto, Quando ti piaccia, innanci agli occhi torre.”[77]