after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to Holy Scripture;" (2) and that consequently he has incurred all the censures and penalties imposed in the sacred canons against such delinquents. "From which we are content that you be absolved, provided that first you abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies in the form to be supplied by us."
Point 1, according to Romish regulations about making an opinion an article of faith, in its relation to heresy appears to be illegal and incorrect. Galileo had not laid himself open to suspicion of heresy because he had inclined to a doctrine discovered to be contrary to Scripture by the fallible Congregation of the Index. Point 2 must also, therefore, be illegal, which says that Galileo had "consequently" incurred all the censures and penalties adjudged to such criminals by the canon law.
Galileo could never have been legally condemned on suspicion of heresy from his "Dialogues." In the first place, because neither he nor any other Catholic was bound by the decree of 5th March, 1616, to regard the confirmation of the old system or the rejection of the new as an article of faith; in the second place, because the imprimatur of the ecclesiastical authorities relieved him from all responsibility. But he could be condemned for disobedience to the assumed special prohibition of 26th February, 1616. In the sentence this forms the only legal basis of the indictment and condemnation. How far this prohibition is historically credible, we think we have sufficiently demonstrated in the course of our work.
And when we consider the penalties which follow from this sentence, based partly upon incorrect, and partly upon false accusations, we find that the Inquisition, by compelling Galileo to recant with a threat of other and severer penalties, far exceeded its powers. The Holy Tribunal was empowered to punish the "disobedience" of the philosopher with imprisonment and ecclesiastical penances, and to forbid him to
