of the curia against him at that period, the friendly feeling for him personally, of powerful patrons in the Church, is obvious, and it makes any specially rigorous action against him very improbable. We have also other indications that this categoric prohibition to Galileo had not then been, de facto, issued.
His letters of this epoch afford the strongest evidence. We cannot expect to find in them precise information about the proceedings of 26th February, as it was contrary to the rules of the Inquisition to make public its secret orders, under the severest penalties; but they contain no trace of the deep depression which would have been caused by the stringent orders of the Holy Office against him personally. On the contrary, he writes on the 6th March (the day following the issue of the decree) to Picchena: "I did not write to you, most revered sir, by the last post, because there was nothing new to report; as they were about to come to a decision about that affair which I have mentioned to you as a purely public one, not affecting my personal interests, or only so far as my enemies very inopportunely want to implicate me in it." He goes on to say that he alludes to the deliberations of the Holy Office about the book and opinions of Copernicus; and mentions with evident satisfaction, that the purpose of Caccini and his party to have that doctrine denounced as heretical and contrary to the faith had not been attained, for the Holy Office had simply stated that it did not agree with Holy Scripture, and therefore only prohibited the books which maintained, ex professo, that the Copernican doctrine was not contrary to the Bible. Galileo then tells him more particularly what the decree contained, and that the correction of the works of Copernicus and Zuñiga was entrusted to Cardinal Gaetaori. He emphatically states that the alterations will be confined to such passages as aim to prove the agreement of the modern system with Scripture, and "here and there a word, as when Copernicus calls the earth a star." He adds: "I have, as will be seen from the nature of the case,
