there is no doubt that the injunction contained in the latter is the same command as that contained in the decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Index. Whence it appears to me that I have a reasonable excuse for not having notified to the Master of the Sacred Palace the command privately imposed upon me, it being the same as that of the Congregation of the Index.
Seeing also, that my book was not subject to a stricter censorship than that made binding by the decree of the Index, it will, it appears to me, be sufficiently plain that I adopted the surest and most becoming method of having it guaranteed and purged of all shadow of taint, inasmuch as I handed it to the supreme Inquisitor at the very time when many books dealing with the same matters were being prohibited solely in virtue of the said decree. After what I have now stated, I would confidently hope that the idea of my having knowingly and deliberately violated the command imposed upon me, will henceforth be entirely banished from the minds of my most eminent and wise judges; so that those faults which are seen scattered throughout my book have not been artfully introduced with any concealed or other than sincere intention, but have only inadvertently fallen from my pen, owing to a vainglorious ambition and complacency in desiring to appear more subtle than the generality of popular writers, as indeed in another . . . [MS. defaced.] deposition I have confessed: which fault I shall be ready to correct by writing whenever I may be commanded or permitted by your Eminences.
Lastly, it remains for me to pray you to take into consideration my pitiable state of bodily indisposition, to which, at the age of seventy years, I have been reduced by ten months of constant mental anxiety and the fatigue of a long and toilsome journey at the most inclement season—together with the loss of the greater part of the years of which, from my previous condition of health, I had the prospect. I am persuaded and encouraged to do so by the clemency and goodness of the most eminent lords, my judges; with the hope that they may be pleased, in answer to my prayer, to remit what may appear to their entire justice . . . to such sufferings as adequate punishment—out of consideration for my declining age, which too, I humbly commend to them. And I would equally commend to their consideration my honour and reputation, against the calumnies of ill-wishers, whose persistence in detracting from my good name may be inferred from the necessity which constrained me to procure from the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine the attestation which accompanies this."[1]
This touching appeal to the mercy of the judges of the Holy Office can scarcely be read without feelings of the profoundest pity for the unhappy old man, who, in the evening
- ↑ Vat. MS. fol. 425 vo.
