Notwithstanding all the care Galileo exercised in this apology[121] not to give any handle to his enemies, it contained far too many liberal and merely human principles not to do the author more harm than good in the eyes of the orthodox party, both on religious and scientific questions. His opponents saw this plainly enough, and agitated against him all the more vehemently at Rome. Ominous reports reached the astronomer, who was anxious enough before; but he could not any how learn anything definite about these attacks, only so much eked out, that something was brewing against him, and that it was intended to interdict the Copernican theory. Galileo thought he could best meet these intrigues by his personal appearance at Rome; he wanted to learn what the accusations against him were, and to show that there was nothing in them; he desired energetically to defend the new system, to aid truth in asserting her rights. So, early in December, 1615, provided with cordial letters of introduction from the Grand Duke, he set out for Rome.[122] Some older authors, and recently Henri Martin,[123] have repeated as a fact the report circulated at the time by Galileo’s enemies,[124] that this visit to Rome was by no means so voluntary as he thought fit to give out. Martin appeals in support of this view to a letter of Mgr. Querenghi to Cardinal Alexander d’Este, of 1st January, 1616,[125] in which he says that the philosopher had been _cited_ to appear at Rome, that he might explain how he made his doctrines, which entirely contradict Holy Scripture, agree with it. Martin also states that the Tuscan ambassador at Rome, in a despatch of 11th September, 1632, announced that a document had been discovered in the books of the Holy Office, which showed that Galileo had been summoned to Rome in 1616; and finally, this otherwise excellent biographer of Galileo adds some grounds of probability which, however, are not conclusive. Besides, these arguments, in the face of other facts, are not valid. Even if Galileo’s contemporary letters from Rome, in which he repeatedly expresses his satisfaction that he had come there,[126] are not relied upon, and are regarded merely as a consistent carrying out of the fiction, his statement on his trial of 12th April, 1633, bears clear witness that Martin is in error. Being asked if he came at that time to Rome of his own accord, or in consequence of a summons, he answered: “In the year 1616 I came to Rome of my own accord, without being summoned.”[127] It was impossible that he should then have persisted in the assumed fiction, for he could not have denied before the Inquisition a summons issued by itself seventeen years before, since it would certainly have been entered in their registers.[128] According to the statement of the Tuscan ambassador mentioned above, such a document had been discovered _one_ year previously in the protocols of the Holy Office. But in the face of the question put at the examination