Guiccardini must have been greatly misinformed to send reports so incorrect to his court. As we have seen, on 19th February the Qualifiers of the Holy Office were summoned to pronounce an opinion on the Copernican doctrines, and as the result Galileo was summoned seven days later to appear before Bellarmine, who informed him of the decree, and admonished him to renounce the prohibited doctrine. But all this seems to have escaped the acuteness of the Tuscan ambassador. He supposes that the catastrophe had been brought about by a fit of papal anger! On 4th March he only knows what was known the next day to all the world—by the decree of the Congregation of the Index—that the writings of Copernicus and other authors on the subject of the double motion were to be partly condemned, partly corrected, and partly prohibited. Guiccardini in this despatch represented, on the one hand, the difficulties into which the imprudent astronomer “might” bring himself by his vehemence, and on the other the embarrassment in which those who took his part would be placed; he reminded the Grand Duke of the attitude which his house had at all times assumed in the past towards such attacks on the Church of God, and of the services it had rendered to the Inquisition, adding that he “could not approve that we should expose ourselves to such annoyances and dangers without very good reason, and a different prospect from that of great damage.” The most potent argument, however, which he saved for the close of his long epistle of 4th March, as the climax, was the endeavour to inspire Cosmo II. with the fear that his brother, Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, who was just coming to Rome, would compromise himself by his relations with Galileo. From Galileo’s correspondence with Picchena, we learn in contradiction to this despatch what it was that induced him to linger at Rome after the issue of the decree of 5th March. He did not wish to return to Florence under the impressions produced by the alarming reports of Guiccardini and the rumours spread by many of his opponents. It is evident that he was aware of what was said of him from a passage in a letter to Picchena of 6th March. After expressing a fear that somebody not friendly to him might represent his affairs to the Tuscan Secretary of State and others in a false light, he entreats Picchena to maintain, until his return, the good opinion of him which his sincerity deserves. He is convinced that the arrival of Cardinal de’ Medici will relieve him from the need of uttering one word of self-justification, as he will hear at once what an excellent reputation he enjoyed at the Court of Rome. He then goes on, as if directly refuting Guiccardini’s accusations:—