Those who saw nothing in the punishment of Galileo but passion and blinded superstition, took occasion to revert to the history of a similar blunder of the Court of Rome in the middle of the eighth century. A Bavarian bishop, named Virgil, eminent both as a man of letters and politician, had asserted the existence of Antipodes, which excited in the ignorant bigots of his time no less alarm than did the motion of the earth in the seventeenth century. Pope Zachary, who was scandalized at the idea of another earth, inhabited by another race of men, and enlightened by another sun and moon (for this was the shape which Virgil's system assumed in his eyes), sent out positive orders to his legate in Bavaria. "With regard to Virgil, the philosopher, (I know not whether to call him priest,) if he own these perverse opinions, strip him of his priesthood, and drive him from the church and altars of God." But Virgil had himself occasionally acted as legate, and was moreover too necessary to his sovereign to be easily displaced. He utterly disregarded these denunciations, and during twenty-five years which elapsed before his death, retained his opinions, his bishopric of Salzburg, and his political power. He was afterwards canonized.[88] Even the most zealous advocates of the authority of Rome were embarrassed in endeavouring to justify the treatment which Galileo experienced. Tiraboschi has attempted to draw a somewhat subtle distinction between the bulls of the Pope and the inquisitorial decrees which were sanctioned and approved by him; he dwells on the reflection that no one, even among the most zealous Catholics, has ever claimed infallibility as an attribute of the Inquisition, and looks upon it as a special mark of grace accorded to the Roman Catholic Church, that during the whole period in which most theologians rejected the opinions of Copernicus, as contrary to the Scriptures, the head of that Church was never permitted to compromise his infallible character by formally condemning it.[89]