But Galileo’s course was no less flecked with light and shade than were the sun and moon he studied. The envy of rivals soon spread false reports about him, and the professors at Pisa refused to accept the results of his studies. Then one of the latter stirred the religious scruples of the Dowager Grand Duchess by telling her that Galileo’s conclusion that the earth had a double motion must be wrong, since it was opposed to the statements of the Bible. Galileo heard of this, and wrote a letter in reply, in which he said that in studying the laws of nature men must start with what they could prove by experiments instead of relying wholly on the Scriptures. This was enough to set the machinery of his enemies in motion. Galileo’s teachings were pointed out as dangerous to the teachings of the Church, and the officers of the Inquisition began to consider how they might best deal with him. Certain of his writings were declared false and prohibited, and he was admonished that he must follow certain lines in his teachings. He went to Rome himself, and saw the Pope again, but found that his friends were fewer and his enemies growing more powerful. The theory of Copernicus that the earth and planets are in constant motion was the very foundation of Galileo’s scientific studies, and yet the order of the Church now forbade him to use this theory. He went back to Florence out of health and despondent. His old students were falling away from him through fear of the Pope’s displeasure, and he was left much alone. But his thirst for knowledge would not let him rest. He took up his residence in the fine old Torre del Gallo, which looks down on Florence and the river Arno, and went on with his work. He wrote out the results of his discoveries, and made a microscope from a model he had seen. Soon he had greatly improved upon his model, and had an instrument, which, as he said, “magnifies things as much as 50,000 times, so that one sees a fly as large as a hen.” He sent copies to some friends, and shortly his microscopes were as much in demand as his telescopes had been. In 1632 he published what he called “The Dialogues of Galileo Galilei.” This divided the world of Italy into two camps, the one those who believed in Aristotle and the old learning, the other those who followed Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. The Jesuits took up the gage he had thrown down, and Galileo found the Church of Rome arrayed against him. The sale of his book was forbidden, a commission was appointed to bring charges against him, and he was ordered to go to Rome for trial. The commission reported that Galileo had disobeyed the Church’s orders by maintaining that the earth moves and that the sun is stationary, that he had wrongly declared that the movements of the tides were due to the sun’s stability and the motion of the earth, and that he had failed to give up his old beliefs in regard to the sun and the earth as he had been commanded.