the inaccessible archives relating to the trial of Galileo, since the Inquisitors relied upon it in 1633, and it was the pole and axis of the famous trial. And what the world had accepted in good faith on the somewhat doubtful veracity of the Inquisition was at length, apparently confirmed by the testimony of Mgr. Marino Marini, prefect of the Vatican Archives. In that year he published at Rome a book entitled, "Galileo e l'Inquisizione, Memorie storico-critiche," which, as the author stated, was founded upon the original documents of the trial. It actually contained many "extracts" from the original protocols; and founded upon documentary materials accessible only to the author, it was encircled with the convenient halo of inviolability. And for nearly twenty years no serious objection was raised to it. Many historians did shake their heads and say that the work of the right reverend gentleman was as much like a glorification of the Inquisition as one egg to another, and some were not much impressed by the author's high-flown assertion that "the entire publication of the documents would only redound to the glory of the Inquisition,"[1] but drily remarked that it was really a great pity that Mgr. Marini had allowed so splendid an opportunity to slip of performing a great service alike to history and the Church, while the fragments produced were of little value to either one or the other. None of this served to refute a single sentence of the apology in question. It became, on the contrary, notwithstanding its obvious partizanship, the chief source for subsequent narratives of the trial. And it could not fail to be so; for even taking this partizanship into account, how could the dates given be doubted? Could any one suspect a misrepresentation of the whole subject? Did suspicions of an arbitrary use and distortion of the documents at the author's command seem justified? Assuredly not. Besides, the papal archivist appealed with apparent scrupulous exactness to the Roman MS. Although, therefore, the light thrown by Marini on the trial of Galileo seemed
- ↑ Marini, p. 42.
