astical authorities of the censorship, who had given Galileo's book the imprimatur, and thereby, as H. Martin justly remarks,[1] relieved the author of responsibility, not in anything relating to the assumed special prohibition, but concerning the accordance of the work with the published decree. Point 2, therefore, seems as unjustifiable as it is untenable. The sentence now gives a brief résumé of the confessions made by Galileo during the examination, which are employed to confirm his guilt. The twofold reproach is urged against him, as of special weight, that he began to write his "Dialogues" after the issue of the assumed prohibition, and that he said nothing about it in obtaining the imprimatur of the censors; thus the special prohibition was treated as an established fact—on the one hand, his disobedience to an injunction of the ecclesiastical authorities was proved, and on the other, the imprimatur was obtained on false pretences, and was null and void.
- ↑ Page 141.
any conclusive reasons are discovered (which I do not expect), I do not doubt that the Church will say that they are to be taken figuratively," a remark which no priest would have made about a doctrine pronounced heretical by infallible authority. Caramuel, a Spanish Benedictine, who also discussed the future of the Copernican theory, defines the position still more clearly than Fabri. In his "Theologia fundamentalis," published at Lyons in 1676 (t. i., pp. 104–110), after defending the decree and sentence of the Congregation, he discusses the attitude which the Church will take in case the system should prove indisputably true. In the first place he believes this will never happen, and if it does, it could never be said that the Church of Rome had been in error, as the doctrine of the double motion of the earth had never been condemned by an Œcumenical Council, nor by the Pope speaking ex cathedra, but only by the tribunal of cardinals. It is interesting to find that Descartes, Galileo's contemporary, put the same construction on the matter. He wrote on 10th January, 1634, to Father Mersenne: "As I do not see that this censure has been confirmed either by a Council or the Pope, but proceeds solely from the congregation of the cardinals, I do not give up hope that it will not happen to the Copernican theory as it did to that about the antipodes, which was formerly condemned in the same way." (Panthéon littéraire, Œuvres philosophiques de Descartes, p. 545)
