"without prejudice" to his previous depositions or the conclusions which his judges had previously arrived at as to his intention, and which Galileo persistently denied. His Catholic answer consisted in his repeated assurance that he did not hold the opinion of Copernicus, and had not held it after the command to renounce it had been intimated to him. The Inquisition could but call this a Catholic answer, as Galileo thereby entirely renounced the condemned doctrine.[1].
We turn now to the other assertion of these writers, that "examen rigorosum" means torture. This is in a general sense correct, if by torture the actual application of it is not intended. But they take the passage in the sentence for decisive evidence that torture was actually carried out, in which they are mistaken, as the following passage from the "Sacro Arsenale" undoubtedly proves: "If the culprit who was merely taken to the torture chamber, and there undressed, or also bound, without however being lifted up, confessed, it was said that he had confessed under torture and under examen rigorosum!"[2] The last expression then by no means always implies the actual application of torture. Dr. Wohlwill knows this passage, and the sentence therefore only proves to him that Galileo was taken into the torture chamber; what took place there, whether the old man was actually tortured, or whether they contented themselves with urging him to speak the truth, and threatening him with the instruments they were showing him (a degree of torture called territio realis), appears shrouded in mystery to Dr. Wohlwill. In spite of his acquaintance with the literature of the Inquisition, he has fallen into a mistake. He thinks that
- ↑ Even Wohlwill allows, p. 29, that the opinion that "Catholic answer" means answer under torture is not tenable
- ↑ "Il Reo, che solamente condotto al luogo della tortura ò quivi spogliato, ò pur anco legato senza però esser alzato, confessa dicesi haver confessato ne' tormenti, e nell' esamina rigorosa." ("Sacro Arsenale overo Prattica dell' Officio della Santa Inquisitione." Bologna, 1865, Mesini's ed. p. 412.)
