Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia/Chapter 23

by Karl von Gebler

CHAPTER III.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH.

Refusal of some Favour asked by Galileo.—His pious Resignation.—Continues his scientific Researches.—His pupil Viviani.—Failure of attempt to renew Negotiations about Longitudes.—Reply to Liceti and Correspondence with him.—Last Discussion of the Copernican System in reply to Rinuccini.—Sketch of its Contents.—Pendulum Clocks.—Priority of the discovery belongs to Galileo.—Visit from Castelli.—Torricelli joins Viviani.—Scientific discourse on his Deathbed.—Death, 8th Jan., 1642.—Proposal to deny him Christian Burial.—-Monument objected to by Urban VIII.—Ferdinand II. fears to offend him.—Buried quietly.—No Inscription till thirty-two years later.—First Public Monument erected by Viviani in 1693.—Viviani directs his Heirs to erect one in Santa Croce.—Erected in 1738.—Rome unable to put down Copernican System.—In 1757 Benedict XIV. permits the Clause in Decree forbidding Books which teach the new System to be expunged.—In 1820 permission given to treat of it as true.—Galileo's Work and others not expunged from the Index till 1835.

 

We now come to the last three years of Galileo's life.

From two documents published by Professor Gherardi^[1] we learn that in 1639 Galileo once more asked at Rome for some favours not specified, but that they were absolutely refused by the Pope. From this time Galileo came no further into direct contact with the Roman curia. He had been compelled to give up all hope of any amelioration of his lot from the implacable Urban VIII. So he ended his days quietly and resigned, as the prisoner of the Inquisition, in his villa at Arcetri. Castelli also, who (as his letters to Galileo of 1639 bear witness)^[2] had warmly exerted himself on his behalf with Cardinal Barberini and other influential persons, had probably come to the conclusion that nothing more could be done for his unfortunate friend, for from this time we find nothing in his letters to Galileo but scientific disquisitions and spiritual consolations.^[3]

This indicates the two interests which occupied the latest period of Galileo's life—deep piety and scientific meditations. His utter hopelessness and pious resignation are very clearly expressed in the brief sentence he used often to write to Castelli: "Place cosi a Dio, dere piacere cosi ancora a Noi."^[4] (If it please God, it ought also to please us.) He never omitted in any letter to his old friend and pupil to commend himself in conclusion to his prayers,^[5] and in his letter of 3rd December, 1639, he added: "I remind you to persevere in your prayers to the all-merciful and loving God, that He will cast out the bitter hatred from the hearts of my malicious and unhappy persecutors."

The lofty genius with which nature had endowed Galileo never displayed itself in so striking and surprising a manner as during these last three years. No sooner were his physical sufferings in some measure relieved than he occupied himself in scientific speculations, the results of which he partly communicated to his great pupil and subsequent biographer, Viviani, by word of mouth, and partly dictated them to some of those about him. The society of young Viviani, then eighteen years of age, who, by permission of the Inquisition, spent the last two years and a half of the old master's life near him,^[6] was the greatest comfort to him, and he conceived a fatherly affection for the talented youth. We owe it partly to the assistance and stimulus given by Viviani that the aged Galileo worked on to the end in improving and enlarging his "Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze," made a number of additions, and added new evidence of great importance to science in two supplementary dialogues.^[7]

During this last period of his life also, he again took up the negotiations with the States-General, broken off by his severe illness in 1638. After he became blind he had given up all his writings, calculations, and astronomical tables relating to the Medicean stars, to his old pupil. Father Vincenzo Renieri, in order that he might carry them further; he was well adapted for the task, and executed it with equal skill and zeal.^[8] The new ephemerides were just about to be sent to Hortensius, when Diodati informed Galileo of his sudden death in a letter of 28th October, 1639.^[9] The three other commissioners charged by the States-General with the investigation of Galileo's proposal having also died one after another, in quick succession, it was difficult to resume the negotiations. The interest of the Netherlanders in Galileo's scheme (perhaps from its acknowledged imperfection) had also evidently cooled, and his proposal to replace the commissioners was not carried out, although he offered to send Renieri to Holland to give all needful explanations by word of mouth. Galileo's death then put an end to these fruitless negotiations.^[10]

At the beginning of 1640 Fortunio Liceti, a former pupil of Galileo's, published a book on the phosphorescent Bolognian stone. In the fiftieth chapter of this work he treats of the faint light of the side of the moon not directly illuminated by the sun, and rejects the view advocated by Galileo in his "Sidereus Nuntius," that it arises from a reflection of the sun's rays striking our earth, which the earth reflects to our satellite, who again reflects them to us. Galileo was undecided whether it were not best to take no notice of Liceti's objections, the scientific value of which he did not estimate very highly, when a letter from Prince Leopold de' Medici, brother of the reigning Grand Duke, relieved him of his doubts.^[11] This prince, who has gained a permanent name in the history of science by founding the celebrated "Accadémia del Cimento," invited Galileo to give him his views on Liceti's objections.^[12] This challenge sufficed to rouse all the blind old man's dialectic skill, though he was then seventy-six and bowed down by mental and bodily sufferings. He dictated a reply, in the form of a letter to Prince Leopold, which occupies fifty large pages in the extant edition of his "Opere," and in fire, spirit, mastery of language, and crushing argument, it is quite a match for the most famous controversial works of his manhood.^[13]

A most interesting direct correspondence then ensued between Galileo and Liceti, which was carried on from June, 1640, to January, 1641, in which not this question only was discussed, but Galileo took occasion to express his opinions, with great spirit and learning, on the modern Peripatetic school and philosophy, on Aristotle himself, and his fanatical followers. These letters of the venerable hero of science are characterised by ostensible politeness pervaded by cutting irony, which makes them instructive and stimulating reading.^[14]

Ten months before his death, thanks to an indiscreet question from one of his former pupils, a last opportunity occurred of speaking of the Copernican system. Francesco Rinuccini, Tuscan resident at Venice, and afterwards Bishop of Pistoja, having apparently forgotten that the master had solemnly abjured that opinion, and had even been compelled to promise to denounce its adherents wherever he met with them to the Inquisition, informed him in a letter of 23rd March, 1641,^[15] that the mathematician Pieroni asserted that he had discovered by means of the telescope a small parallax of a few seconds in some of the fixed stars, which would place the correctness of the Copernican system beyond all question. Rinuccini then goes on to say, in the same breath, that he had lately seen the manuscript of a book about to appear, which contained an objection to the new doctrine, and made it appear very doubtful. It was this: because we see exactly one half of the firmament, it follows inevitably that the earth is the centre of the starry heavens. Rinuccini begs Galileo to clear up these doubts for him, and to help him to a more certain opinion.

This was the impulse to Galileo's letter of 29th March, 1641,^[16] which, as Alfred Von Reumont truly says,^[17] whether jest or mask, had better never have been written. There is no doubt that it must not be taken in its literal sense. Precisely the same tactics are followed as in the letter which accompanied the "Treatise on the Tides," to the Grand Duke of Austria in 1618, and in many passages of the "Dialogues on the Two Systems." Galileo conceals his real opinions behind a thick veil, through which the truth is only penetrable by the initiated. The cautious course he pursued in this perilous answer to Rinuccini is as clever as it is ingenious, and appears appropriate to his circumstances; but it does not produce a pleasant impression, and for the sake of the great man's memory, one would prefer to leave the subject untouched.

We will now examine this interesting letter more closely. When we call to mind the disquisitions on the relation of Scripture to science, which Galileo wrote to Castelli in 1613, and to the Grand Duchess Christine in 1615, the very beginning is a misrepresentation only excusable on the ground of urgent necessity. He says: "The incorrectness of the Copernican system should not in any case be doubted, especially by us Catholics, for the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture is opposed to it, as interpreted by the greatest teachers of theology, whose unanimous declaration makes the stability of the earth in the centre, and the revolution of the sun round it, a certainty. The grounds on which Copernicus and his followers have maintained the contrary fall to pieces before the fundamental argument of the Divine omnipotence. For since this is able to effect by many, aye, endless means, what, so far as we can see, only appears practicable by one method, we must not limit the hand of God and persist obstinately in anything in which we may have been mistaken.^[18] And as I hold the Copernican observations and conclusions to be insufficient, those of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and their followers appear to me far more delusive and mistaken, because their falsity can clearly be proved without going beyond the limits of human knowledge."^[19]

After this introduction Galileo proceeds to answer Rinuccini's question. He treats that argument against the Copernican system as delusive, and says that it originates in the assumption that the earth stands still in the centre, and by no means from precise astronomical observation. He refutes, therefore, the scientific objection to the new doctrine. Speaking of the assumed discovery of Pieroni, he says, that if it should be confirmed, however small the parallax may be, human science must draw the conclusion from it that the earth cannot be stationary in the centre. But in order to weaken this dangerous sentence, he hastens to add, that if Pieroni might be mistaken in thinking that he had discovered such a parallax of a few seconds, those might be still more mistaken who think they can observe that the visible hemisphere never varies, not even one or two seconds; for such an exact and certain observation is utterly impossible, partly from the insufficiency of the astronomical instruments, and partly from the refraction of the rays of light.

As will be seen, Galileo takes great care to show the futility of the new arguments brought into the field against the Copernican system. It therefore seems very strange that some writers, and among them the well-known Italian historian, Cesare Cantu, suppose from this letter that at the close of his life Galileo had really renounced the prohibited doctrine from profound conviction!^[20] The introduction, and many passages thrown in in this cautious refutation, must, as Albèri and Henri Martin justly observe, be regarded as fiction, the author having the Inquisition in view; it had recently given a striking proof of its watchfulness by forbidding the author of a book called "De Pitagorea animarum transmigratione," to apply the epithet "clarissimus" to Galileo, and it had only with great difficulty been persuaded to permit "notissimus Galileus"!^[21]

A short time before the close of Galileo's brilliant scientific career, in spite of age, blindness, and sickness, he once more gave striking evidence of the genius which could only be quenched by death. It will be remembered that the inadequacy of his proposed chronometer had been the chief obstacle to the acceptance by the States-General of his method of taking longitudes at sea. Now, in the second half of the year 1641, it occurred to him, as is confirmed beyond question by Viviani, who was present,^[22] though the idea is generally ascribed to Christian Huyghens, of adding a pendulum to the then very imperfect clocks, as regulator of their motion. As this was sixteen years before Huyghens made known his invention of pendulum clocks, priority indisputably belongs to Galileo. But it was only permitted to the blind master to conceive the great idea—he was not to carry it out. It was his intention to employ the eyes and hands of his son Vincenzo, a very clever mechanician, to put his idea in practice, and he told him of his plan. Vincenzo was to make the necessary drawings according to his father's instructions, and to construct models accordingly. But in the midst of these labours Galileo fell ill, and this time he did not recover.^[23] His faithful pupil, Castelli, who probably foresaw the speedy dissolution of the revered old man, came to see him about the end of September, 1641. In October, on the repeated and urgent invitation of Galileo, Torricelli joined Castelli and Viviani, not to leave the Villa Arcetri until they left it with Galileo's coffin. Torricelli was then thirty-three, and the old master had discerned his eminent talents from a treatise on the theory of motion which he had sent him.^[24] Castelli was not permitted to stay till the close. At the beginning of November he had to return to Rome, leaving Galileo, Torricelli, and Viviani eagerly occupied with the completion of the "Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze."

On 5th November Galileo was attacked by an insidious hectic fever, which slowly but surely brought him to the grave.^[25] Violent pains in his limbs threw him on a sick bed, from which he did not rise again. In spite of all these sufferings, which were augmented by constant palpitation of the heart and almost entire sleeplessness, his active mind scarcely rested for a moment, and he spent the long hours of perpetual darkness in constant scientific conversation and discussions with Torricelli and Viviani, who noted down the last utterances of the dying man with pious care. As they chiefly related to the "Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze," they are to be found in the two supplementary Dialogues added to that work.

On 8th January, 1642, the year of Newton's birth, having received the last sacraments and the benediction of Urban VIII., Galileo breathed his last, at the age of nearly seventy-eight years. His son Vincenzo, his daughter-in-law Sestilia Bocchineri, his pupils Torricelli and Viviani, and the parish priest, were around his bed.^[26] And when Vincenzo closed his father's sightless eyes for their last long sleep, they gave not a thought at Rome to the severe loss sustained by science by Galileo's death, but only prepared in hot haste to guard the interests of the Church, and as far as it lay in their power, to persecute the Cæsar of science even beyond the grave. The aim was now, as far as possible, to extinguish his memory, with which so many perils for Rome were bound up.

Even around his bier the struggle began. Some pettifogging theologians went so far as to wish that Christian burial should be denied him, and that his will should be declared null and void, for a man condemned on suspicion of heresy, and who had died as a prisoner of the Inquisition, had no claim to rest in consecrated ground, nor could he possess testamentary rights. A long consultation of the ecclesiastical authorities in Florence, and two circumstantial opinions from them were required to put these fanatics to silence.

Immediately after Galileo's death his numerous pupils and admirers made a collection for a handsome monument to the famous Tuscan. The Inquisitor, Fanano, at once sent word of this to Rome, and received a reply by order of the Pope, dated 23rd January, that he was to bring it in some way to the ears of the Grand Duke that it was not at all suitable to erect a monument to Galileo, who was sentenced to do penance by the tribunal of the Holy Office and had died during that sentence; good Catholics would be scandalised, and the reputation of the Grand Duke for piety might suffer. But if this did not take effect, the Inquisitor must see that there was nothing in the inscription insulting to the reputation of the holy tribunal, and exercise the same care about the funeral sermon.^[27]

Besides this, Urban VIII. seized the next opportunity of giving the Tuscan ambassador to understand that "it would be a bad example for the world if his Highness permitted such a thing, since Galileo had been arraigned before the Holy Office for such false and erroneous opinions, had also given much trouble about them at Florence, and had altogether given rise to the greatest scandal throughout Christendom by this condemned doctrine."^[28] In the despatch in which Niccolini reported these remarks of the Pope to his Government, he advised that the matter be postponed, and reminded them that the Pope had had the body of the Duchess Matilda, of Mantua, removed from the Carthusian convent there, and buried at St. Peter's at Rome, without saying a word to the Duke about it beforehand, excusing himself afterwards by saying that all churches were papal property, and therefore all the bodies buried in them belonged to the clergy! If, therefore, they did not wish to incur the danger of perhaps seeing Galileo's bones dragged away from Florence, all idea must be given up for the present of suitably celebrating his memory.

Niccolini received an official reply that there had been a talk of erecting a monument to Galileo, but that his Highness had not come to any decision, and proper regard would certainly be paid to the hints received from the Pope.^[29] The weak Ferdinand II. did not venture to act in the least against the heartless Pope's wishes. Even Galileo's desire in his will to be buried in the vault of his ancestors in the Church of Santa Croce, at Florence, was not respected. His mortal remains were placed in a little obscure room, in a side chapel belonging to the Church, called "the Chapel of the Novitiate." He was buried according to the desire of Urban VIII., very quietly, without any pomp. No monument nor inscription marked his resting place; but though Rome did all she could to obliterate the memory of the famous philosopher, she could not effect that the immortal name of Galileo Galilei should be buried in the grave with his lifeless remains.

It was not till thirty-two years later, when Urban VIII. had long been in his grave, and more lenient views were entertained about Galileo at the Vatican, that Fra Gabriel Pierozzi, Rector of the Novices of the Convent of Santa Croce, ventured to adorn Galileo's grave with a long bastic inscription.^[30] In 1693 Viviani, whose greatest pride it was to sign himself "Discépolo ultimo di Galileo," erected the first public monument to his immortal master. The front of his handsome house in the Via San Antonio was made to serve for it, for he placed the bronze bust of Galileo, after the model of the famous sculptor, Giovanni Caccini, over the door. A long eulogy on Galileo was engraved over and on both sides of it.^[31]

But Viviani was not content with thus piously honouring the memory of the master; in his last will he enjoined on his heirs to erect a splendid monument to him, which was to cost about 4000 scudi, in the Church of Santa Croce.^[32] Decades, however, passed after Viviani's death before his heirs thought of fulfilling his wishes. At length, in 1734, the preliminary steps were taken by an inquiry from the Convent of Santa Croce, whether any decree of the Holy Congregation existed which would forbid the erection of such a monument in the Church. The Inquisitor at Florence immediately inquired of the Holy Office at Rome whether it would be permitted thus to honour a man "who had been condemned for notorious errors."^[33] The opinion of the counsellors of the Holy Office was taken. They said that there was nothing to prevent the erection of the monument, provided the intended inscription were submitted to the Holy Congregation, that they might give such orders about it as they thought proper.^[34] This opinion was confirmed by the Congregation of the Holy Office on 16th June, 1734.^[35] And so the pompous monument to Galileo, which displayed the tastelessness of the age, and was not completed till four years later, could be raised in the Church of Santa Croce, this pantheon of the Florentines, where they bury their famous dead, and of which Byron finely sings in "Childe Harold":—

"In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos:—here repose
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose."^[36]

On 12th March, 1737, Galileo's remains were removed, in presence of all the professors of the University of Florence, and many of the learned men of Italy, with great solemnity and ecclesiastical pomp, from their modest resting-place to the new mausoleum in a more worthy place in the Church of Santa Croce itself, and united with those of his last pupil, Viviani.^[37]

It had long been perceived at Rome that, in spite of every effort, it was vain to try to bury the Copernican system with Galileo in the grave. It could no longer greatly concern the Roman curia that Galileo's memory was held in high honour, when the cause for which he suffered had decidedly gained the victory. It was by a singular freak of nature that in the very same year which closed the career of this great observer of her laws, another who was to complete the work begun by Copernicus and carried on by Galileo, entered upon his. He it is, as we all know, who gave to science those eternal forms now recognised as firmly established, and whose genius, by the discovery of the law of gravitation, crowned the edifice of which Copernicus laid the foundations and which Galileo upreared. During the lifetime of the latter, and the period immediately succeeding his death, the truth of the system of the earth's double motion was recognised by numerous learned men; and in 1696, when Newton published his immortal work, "Philosophiæ naturalis principia Mathematica," it became thoroughly established. All the scientific world who pursued the paths of free investigation accepted the Copernican system, and only a few ossified devotees of the old school, in common with some theological philosophers, still raised impotent objections to it, which have been continued even up to this day by some wrong-headed people.^[38]

At Rome they only accommodated themselves to the new system slowly and reluctantly. In 1757, when it was no longer doubted by any one but a few fanatics, the Congregation of the Index thought the time was come for proposing to Pope Benedict XIV. to expunge the clause from the decree of 5th March, 1616, prohibiting all books which teach that the sun is stationary and the earth revolves. This enlightened pontiff, known as a patron of the arts and sciences, entirely agreed, and signified his consent on 11th May, 1757.^[39] But there still remained on the Index the work of Copernicus, "De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium," Diego di Zuñiga's "Commentary on the Book of Job" (these two works, however, only "donec corrigantur," but this was quite worthless for strict Catholics as far as the work of Copernicus was concerned, as since the announcement of these "corrections" by the decree of 15th May, 1620, no new edition had appeared), Foscarini's "Léttera sópra l'opinione de i Pittagorici e del Copernico della mobilità della Terra et stabilità del Sole, e il nuove Pittagorico Sistéma del Mondo," Kepler's "Epitome astronomiæ Copernicæ," and finally, Galileo's "Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistémi del Mondo." This last work had indeed been allowed to appear in the edition of Galileo's collected works,^[40] undertaken at Padua in 1744, which had received the prescribed ecclesiastical permission; but the editor, the Abbot Toaldo, had been obliged expressly to state in an introduction that the theory of the double motion can and must be regarded only as a mathematical hypothesis, to facilitate the explanation of certain natural phenomena. Besides this, the "Dialogues on the Two Principal Systems" had to be preceded by the sentence on and recantation of Galileo, as well as by an Essay "On the System of the Universe of the Ancient Hebrews," by Calmet, in which the passages of Scripture bearing on the order of the world were interpreted in the traditional Catholic fashion.^[41]

The celebrated French astronomer Lalande, as he himself relates,^[42] tried in vain when at Rome, in 1765, to get Galileo's works expunged from the Index. The Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Index objected that there was a sentence of the Congregation of the Holy Office in existence which must first be cancelled, but this was not done, and all remained as before; and even in the edition of the Index of 1819, strange to say, the five works mentioned above were to be found as repudiated by the Roman curia!

It then happened in the following year, 1820, that Canon Joseph Settele, professor of optics and astronomy at the Archive-gymnasium at Rome, wrote a lesson book, "Elementi d'astronomia," in which the Copernican system, in accordance with the results of science, was treated ex professo. The Master of the Palace, Philip Anfossi, to whom in his capacity of chief censor of the press the book was submitted, demanded under appeal to the decree of 5th March, 1616, still in force, that the doctrine of the double motion should be only treated hypothetically, and refused the imprimatur until the MS. had been altered. Canon Settele, however, was not disposed to make himself ridiculous in face of the whole scientific world by compliance with these antiquated conditions, and appealed to Pope Pius VII., who referred the matter to the Congregation of the Holy Office. Here at last some regard was had to the times, and in the sitting of 16th August, 1820, it was decided that Settele might treat the Copernican system as established, which was approved by Pius VII. without hesitation. Father Anfossi could not, after this decision, prevent the work from publication as it was, but he resolutely pointed out the contradiction between this permission and the decree of 5th March, 1616, and published a treatise entitled: "Can any one who has made the Tridentine Confession, defend and teach as a thesis, and as an absolute truth and not a mere hypothesis, that the earth revolves and the sun is stationary?"^[43] This gave rise to discussions in the College of Cardinals of the Holy Inquisition as to the attitude to be adopted by ecclesiastical authority towards the Copernican system, which had been universally adopted for more than a century. In the sitting of 11th September, 1822, they finally agreed, with express reference to the decree of the Index Congregation of 10th May, 1757, and 16th August, 1820, "that the printing and publication of works treating of the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the general opinion of modern astronomers is permitted at Rome."^[44] This decree was ratified by Pius VII. on 25th September.

But full thirteen years more went by until, in 1835, when the new edition of the catalogue of prohibited books appeared, the five works in which the theory of the double motion was maintained and defended were expunged from the list.

It was not until 1835, therefore, that the last trace was effaced of the memorable warfare so long and resolutely waged by ecclesiastical power against the superior insight of science. If it is denied to history to surround the head of Galileo, the greatest advocate of the new system, with the halo of the martyr, ready to die for his cause, posterity will ever regard with admiration and gratitude the figure of the man, who, though he did not heroically defend the truth, was, by virtue of his genius, one of her first pioneers, and had to bear for her sake an accumulation of untold suffering.

1. Gherardi's Documents, Docs. xxviii. and xxix.
2. Castelli's letters to Galileo of 29th Jan., 12th Feb., 1639. (Op. x. pp. 325, 326, and 328, 329.)
3. Op. x. pp. 340-348, 356, 357, 363-365, 367, 368, 385-387, 392-394, 396, 397, 407, 408; Suppl. pp. 287-290.
4. Op. x. pp. 280 and 308.
5. Comp. his letters to Castelli of 8th and 19th Aug., 1st and 3rd Sep., 3rd and 18th Dec., 1639. (Op. vii. pp. 232-236, 238, 239, and 242, 243.)
6. Op. xv. (Viviani), p. 360.
7. Op. vii. pp. 238, 239; xiii. pp. 267-332; xv. pp. 358-360.
8. See his letters to Galileo in 1639 and 1640. (Op. x. pp. 336, 339, 340, 350, 351 362, 363, 382, 383, 402, 419, 420; also xv. (Viviani, pp. 356, 357.)
9. Op. vii. pp. 240, 241.
10. Comp. Op. vii. pp. 243-254. In 1648 Renieri was intending to bring out Galileo's calculations about the satellites of Jupiter, and their application to navigation, which he had completed by long years of labour, when his death occurred after a short illness. The papers were then lost, but were afterwards discovered by Albèri, who arranged them and incorporated them in the "Opere di Galileo Galilei," v.
11. Comp. Galileo's letter to Daniele Spinola of 19th Mar., 1640. (Op. vii. pp. 256-258.)
12. Letter from Prince Leopold de' Medici to Galileo, 11th Mar., 1640. (Op. vii. p. 254.)
13. Op. vii. pp. 261-310; iii. pp. 190-237.
14. See this correspondence. (Op. vii. pp. 317-333, 336-350, 352-358.) Liceti published a large book in 1642, in reply to Galileo's letter to Prince Leopold de' Medici. The latter, in which Galileo had made some alterations, was, with his consent, printed with Liceti's reply.
15. Op. vii p. 360.
16. Op. vii. pp. 361-363.
17. Page 419.
18. This is precisely the same argument, only in other words, brought forward by Simplicius at the end of the "Dialogues on the Two Chief Systems." (Comp. p. 160.)
19. This passage calls the passage in "Il Saggiatore" to mind, where Galileo speaks of Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Tycho.
20. See "Allgemeine Weltgeschichte," by Cesare Cantu. Freely rendered for Catholic Germany, from the 7th edition, by Dr. J. A. M. Brühl, p. 540.
21. Comp. Renieri's letter to Galileo of 6th March, 1641. (Op. x. pp. 408, 409.)
22. See his letter of 20th August, 1659, to Prince Leopold de' Medici. (Op. xiv. pp. 339-356.)
23. Seven years after Galileo's death, Vincenzo was occupied in constructing the first pendulum clock after these drawings and models, when he suddenly fell ill and died. For all this see Albèri's excellent essay: "Dell'orologio a pendolo di Galileo Galilei e di due recenti divinazioni del meccanismo da lui imaginato." (Op. Suppl. pp. 333-358; Nelli, vol. ii. pp. 688-738.)
24. Comp. Torricelli's letters to Galileo of 15th March, 27th April, 1st and 29th June, 17th August, and 28th September, 1641. (Op. x. pp. 412, 413, 417, 418, 420, 421, 423-426, 432, 433.) Also Galileo's letter to Torricelli of 27th September, 1641. (Op. vii. pp. 365-367.)
25. See Rinuccini's letter to Prince Leopold de' Medici, 15th November, 1641. (Op. x. pp. 436, 437.)
26. For this and the preceding, see Op. xv. (Viviani), pp. 360, 361; and Nelli, vol. ii. pp. 839, 840.)
27. Gherardi's Documents, Doc. xxx.
28. Niccolini's despatch to the Tuscan Secretary of State of 25th January, 1642. (Op. xv. pp. 403, 404.)
29. Despatch of the Tuscan Secretary Condi to Niccolini of 29th January, 1642 (Op. xv. p. 404.)
30. Op. xv. p. 405.
31. See for more on the subject, Nelli, vol. ii. pp. 850-867.
32. Nelli, vol. ii. pp. 874-876.
33. Letter of the Inquisitor Fra Paolo Ambr. of 8th June, 1734, to the College of Cardinals at Rome. (See Vat. MS. fol. 558 ro.)
34. Vat. MS. fol. 56l vo.
35. Vat. MS. fol. 561 vo., and Gherardi's Documents, Doc. xxxii.
36. Canto iv., stanza liv.
37. See the document about the exhumation. (Op. xv. pp. 407-409.)
38. For instance, Dr. Carl Schöffer, in his brochure: "Die Bewegungen der Himmelskörper. Neue and unbewegliche Beweise, dass unsere Erde im Mittelpunkte des Weltalls steht, und die Sonne, Mond und Sterne sich um dieselbe bewegen." Brunswick, 1854. ("The Motions of the Heavenly Bodies. New and indisputable proofs that our Earth is the centre of the Universe, and that Sun, Moon, and Stars, revolve round it").
39. Habito verbo cum Sanctissimo, omittatur decretum, quo prohibentur omnes libri docentes immobilitatem solis, et mobilitatem terræ. (Olivieri, p. 94, or "Hist.-polit. Blätter," p. 585.)
40. "Opere di Galileo Galilei divise in quattro Tomi, in questa nuova edizione accresciute di molte cose inedite." In Padova, 1744. "Nella stamperia del Seminario appresso Gio. Manfrè," Tomi iv. in 4°.
41. Comp. Olivieri, p. 96, or "Hist.-polit. Blätter," p. 587, and Op. xv. Bibliografia Galileiana, pp. xxvi., xxvii.
42. "Traité d'astronomie" Paris, 1792, p. 421.
43. "Se possa difendersi ed insegnore, non come semplice ipotesi ma come verissima, e come tesi, la mobilità della terra e la stabilità del sole da chi ha fatta la professione di fede di Pio IV. quaestione teologico-morale."
44. "Dichiarono permessa in Roma la stampa e la publicazione operum tractantium de mobilitate terrae et immobilitate solis, juxta communem modernorum astronomorum opinionem." (Olivieri, p. 97, or "Hist.-polit, Blätter," p. 588.)