On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth. Against him, then, the war was long and bitter. The supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared his discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific professors, endeavoring to curry favor with the Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors, congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him, and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.[1]
I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language, since the whole history was placed in a new light by the revelations of the trial documents in the Vatican Library, honestly published for the first time by M. L'Epinois, in 1867, and since that by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and others.
The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter. The enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. As to his method, professors bred in the "safe science" favored by the Church argued that the only way of studying the universe was by comparing texts of Scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that Aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that the Bible showed by all applicable types that there could be only seven planets; that this was proven by the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven branched candlestick of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia; that from Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive to Christian truth: bishops and priests therefore warned their flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.[2]
- ↑ A very curious example of this sham science employed by theologians is seen in the argument, frequently used at that time, that, if the earth really moved, a stone falling from a height would fall back of the point immediately below its point of starting. This is used by Fromundus with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship; Benzenburg has experimentally demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, 389, in one volume, second edition, 1877.
- ↑ See Delambre on the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter as the turning-point with
l'Astronomie Moderne, discours préliminaire, p. xiv; also Laplace, Système du Monde, vol. i, p. 326; and for more careful statements, Kepleri Opera Omni, edit. Frisch., tome ii, p. 464. For Copernicus's prophecy, see Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xv, p. 473 (Cantu is an eminent Roman Catholic).
