This is plainly to justify the measures taken in consequence by the ecclesiastical authorities against his doctrine and its most distinguished advocate. For immediately after follows, first a recapitulation of the report registered in the Vatican MS. of the events of 25th and 26th February, 1616, and then the decree of the Congregation of the Index of 5th March, 1616, "by which those books were prohibited which treat of the aforesaid doctrine, and the same was declared to be false and entirely contrary to Holy and Divine Scripture." The sentence then comes to the occasion of the trial of Galileo, namely, his "Dialogues,"—and states: firstly, that by this book he had transgressed the special prohibition of 1616;[1] secondly, that his statement therein, which is almost incredible, that he had left the Copernican view undecided and as only probable, is a "gross error," since a doctrine cannot in any way be probable (probalis) which has already been found and declared to be "contrary to Holy Scripture."
The first point, from the standpoint of the Inquisition, which treated the note of 26th February, 1616, as an authentic document, is certainly correct; the second, even according to the maxims of Rome, is not to the purpose. According to these maxims a proposition can only be made into a dogma by "infallible" authority, namely, by the Pope speaking ex cathedra, or by an Œcumenical Council; and on the other hand, it is only by the same method that an obligation can be laid upon the faithful to consider an opinion heretical. But a decree of the Congregation of the Index does not entail the
- ↑ It is very remarkable that Jagemann, in his book on Galileo, which appeared in 1784 (New Ed. 1787, pp. 86, 95), doubts the fact of such a special prohibition. Of course he is acquainted only with the sentence published by Riccioli, and surmises that he invented the passage in which the special prohibition is mentioned, "in order to justify the harsh proceedings of the Court of Rome under Urban VIII." So that ninety years ago, without anything to go by but the wording of the sentence, Jagemann suspected that this strict prohibition was never issued to Galileo, and says,—"Neither does this decree agree with the information given above on all points," i.e., in letters of Galileo and Guiccardini of 1616.
