Segnitius de Lauda. It is, however, so incredible that no communication should be made to the Congregation about the most important part of the proceedings of 26th February, and that Cardinal Bellarmine should not have made the slightest reference to it in his report, that this document of 3rd March, 1616, discovered by Professor Gherardi, would be sufficient of itself to justify the suspicion that the course of the proceedings on 26th February, 1616, was not at all that reported in the note relating to it in the Vatican MS., but was in accordance with the papal ordinance of 25th February, and ended with the cardinal’s admonition.
Let us see now whether the ensuing historical events agree better with this suspicious note. Two days after the sitting of 3rd March, in accordance with the order of Paul V., the decree of the Congregation of the Index on writings and books treating of the Copernican system was published. It ran as follows:—
"And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation, that the Pythagorean doctrine—which is false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture—of the motion of the earth, and the quiescence of the sun, which is also taught by Nicholas Copernicus in De Revolutionibus orbinim Cœlestium, and by Diego di Zuñiga in (his book on) Job, is now being spread abroad and accepted by many—as may be seen from a certain letter of a Carmelite Father, entitled, Letter of the Rev. Father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, Carmelite, on the opinion of the Pythagoreans and of Copernicus concerning the motion of the earth, and the stability of the sun, and the new Pythagorean system of the world, at Naples, printed by Lassaro Scorriggio, 1615: wherein the said father attempts to show that the aforesaid doctrine of the quiescence of the sun in the centre of the world, and of the earth’s motion, is consonant with truth and is not opposed to Holy Scripture. Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicholas Copernicus, De Revolutionibus orbium, and Diego di Zuñiga, on Job, be suspended until they be corrected; but that the book of the Carmelite Father, Paolo Antonio Foscarini, be altogether prohibited and condemned, and that all other works likewise, in which the same is taught, be prohibited, as by this present decree it prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively. In witness whereof the present decree has been signed and sealed with the hands and with the seal of the most eminent and Reverend
