myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633.
I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand."[1]
Certain Catholic writers express the hope, at the expense of truth, for the sake of Galileo's salvation and honour, that he really had, from conviction, renounced the opinion which he had been labouring for and advocating up to old age. Indeed, the super-Catholic author of an essay, called "The Holy See against Galileo Galilei and the Astronomical System of Copernicus,"[2] does not hesitate to say: "Probably the physical absurdities of his (Galileo's) doctrine had achieved a victory for the voice of reason and religion."[3] Undoubtedly there were many physical difficulties in the way of a general acceptance of the new doctrines (especially the prevailing incorrect ideas about the specific gravity of the air),[4] and they were only finally overcome by the discovery of the law of gravitation by the genius of Newton; but they were not so great as to prevent men, like Kepler, Descartes, Gassendi, Diodati, Philip Landsberg, Joachim Rhäticus, and others, and above all, the great Italian reformer of physics and astronomy, from, even at that time, recognising the truth of the new theory. It does not appear, either, that the author of that article had much faith in his own conjecture, for he proceeds to a demonstration, from opposite premises, which was for a time much in vogue with the Jesuitical defenders
- ↑ Appendix VI.
- ↑ Vol. vii. of the "Historisch-politischen Blätter für das Catholische Deutschland." Munich, 1841.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 578.
- ↑ The reproach which the apologists of the Inquisition are fond of bringing against Galileo, that he knew nothing about the specific gravity of the air, is incorrect, as appears from his letter to Baliani of 12th March, 1613 (published for the first time in 1864 by Signor Giuseppe Sacchi, director of the library at Brera, where the autograph letter is to be seen), in which Galileo describes a method he had invented for determining the specific gravity of the air.
