The discrepancy between this record and that of 25th February is obvious: that says that the Pope had ordered that Cardinal Bellarmine should admonish Galileo to renounce the opinions of Copernicus, and only _in case he should refuse_, was the Commissary to issue the order to him to abstain from teaching, defending, or discussing those opinions. Here in the report of the 26th we read, that “immediately after” the admonition of the cardinal, the Commissary issued this stringent order, and with the significant modification, “nor to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever.” In this report of the proceedings it is not expressly stated whether Galileo at first refused or not, but, according to the wording of the report, it is almost impossible that he could have done so, since it represents that the Cardinal’s admonition was followed immediately by the _absolute_ prohibition from the Commissary. But such a mode of procedure was by no means in accordance with the papal ordinance, and would rather have been an arbitrary deviation from it. Until within the last ten years, in all the works, great or small, which treat of Galileo’s trial, we find this absolute prohibition which he was said to have received related as an established historical fact. It was the sole legal ground on which the indictment was based against Galileo sixteen years later, and he was condemned and sentenced by his judges by an ostentatious appeal to it. Up to 1850 not a single document had been seen by any of the authors who wrote so confidently of the stringent prohibition of 1616, which confirmed its historical truth. And yet it could but exist among the inaccessible archives relating to the trial of Galileo, since the Inquisitors relied upon it in 1633, and it was the pole and axis of the famous trial. And what the world had accepted in good faith on the somewhat doubtful veracity of the Inquisition was at length, apparently confirmed by the testimony of Mgr. Marino Marini, prefect of the Vatican Archives. In that year he published at Rome a book entitled, “Galileo e l’Inquisizione, Memorie storico-critiche,” which, as the author stated, was founded upon the original documents of the trial. It actually contained many “extracts” from the original protocols; and founded upon documentary materials accessible only to the author, it was encircled with the convenient halo of inviolability. And for nearly twenty years no serious objection was raised to it. Many historians did shake their heads and say that the work of the right reverend gentleman was as much like a glorification of the Inquisition as one egg to another, and some were not much impressed by the author’s high-flown assertion that “the entire publication of the documents would only redound to the glory of the Inquisition,”[140] but drily remarked that it was really a great pity that Mgr. Marini had allowed so splendid an opportunity to slip of performing a great service alike to history