1. GALILEO TORTURED IN THE INQUISITION.--Galileo Galilei, son of a Florentine nobleman, was born A.D. 1564. He became a famous mathematician and astronomer at Pisa and Padua, and by his newly invented telescope he made valuable discoveries, so that, A.D. 1615, he taught that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of our system. This was considered by the Pope and cardinals a heresy, and he was seized by the Inquisition, and condemned as a heretic. He recanted, and was released under promise not to offend again; but being confident in the correctness of his science, he published, A.D. 1632, his “Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican System of the World,” when he was again arrested and condemned by that court to imprisonment for life, while his books were burnt, as if science could injure religon. Torture in the prison compelled him to sign the following abjuration; and, lest his death should endanger the Inquisition, he was banished to Florence. “I, Galileus, son of the late Vincentius Galileus, a Florentine, aged _seventy_, being here personally upon my trial, and on my knees before you, the most eminent and reverend the lord cardinals, inquisitors-general of the universal Christian commonwealth against heretical pravity, having before my eyes the most Holy Gospels, which I touch with my proper hands, do swear that I always have believed, and do now believe, and by the help of God hereafter will believe all that which the holy Catholic and apostolic Roman church doth hold, preach, and teach. But because, after I had been juridically enjoined and commanded by this Holy Office, that I should wholly forsake that false opinion, which holds that the sun is the centre, and immoveable; and that I should not hold, defend, nor by any manner, neither by word or writing, teach the aforesaid false doctrine; and after it was notified to me that the aforesaid doctrine was contrary to the Holy Scripture, I have written and printed a book, in which I treat of the said doctrine already condemned, and produce reasons of great force in favour of it, without giving any answer to them, I am, therefore, judged by the Holy Office as vehemently suspected of heresy, _viz._, that I have held and believed that the sun is the centre of the world, and immoveable, and that the earth is not the centre, but moves.