To avert these extreme measures from being actually carried out, the Grand Duke told Cioli to write to Galileo on 11th January, 1633, that he (Ferdinand) took a sincere interest in the affair, and regretted that he was unable to spare him the journey, but it was at last necessary that he should obey the supreme authorities. In order that he might perform the journey more comfortably, he would place one of the grand ducal litters and a trustworthy guide at his disposal, and would also permit him to stay at the house of the ambassador, Niccolini, supposing that he would, within a month, be released from Rome.[1]
The pitiful impotence of an Italian ruler of that day in face of the Roman hierarchy is obvious in this letter. His sovereign does not dare to protect the philosopher—the greatest of whom Italy can boast—from papal persecution, but was obliged to give him up to the dreaded Inquisition. It must not, however, be supposed that the young Ferdinand, then only twenty-two, because he had been brought up in the strictest Romish fashion by the two Grand Duchesses and Cioli, acted otherwise than any other Italian ruler would have done in the like situation. Not one of them would have had courage, nor have been independent enough of Rome, to put an energetic veto on a papal mandate like this, The Venetian Republic, in which it had been established as an axiom by Paolo Sarpi that "the power of rulers is derived immediately from God, and spiritual as well as temporal things are subject to it," was the only State of Italy which would have asserted its sovereignty and would never have delivered up one of its
- ↑ Op. ix. pp. 322, 323. This last observation of the Grand Duke's, only meaning that he reckoned on a speedy release for Galileo, afterwards gave Cioli occasion, as we shall see by-and-by, for a most mean act towards Galileo.
convaluerit et cessante periculo carceratus et ligatus ac cum ferris transmittat. Commissiarius autem et medici transmittantur ejus sumptibus et expensis quid se in tali statu et temporibus constituit et tempore oportuno ut ei fuerat preceptum venire et facere contempsit." (Gherardi's Documents, Doc. x.; and Vat. MS. fol. 409 vo.)
