In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that "to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them." In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than Luther or Calvin."
The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua, by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other."[1]
But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, and another revelation was announced—the mountains and valleys in the moon. This brought on another attack. It was declared that this, and the statement that the moon shines by light reflected from the sun, directly contradict the statement in Genesis that the moon is "a great light." To make the matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious picture in its usual position beneath the feet of the Blessed Virgin, outlined on its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a sacrilege logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy.
Still another struggle was aroused when the hated telescope revealed spots upon the sun, and their motion indicating the sun's rotation. Monsignor Elci, head of the University of Pisa, forbade the astronomer Castelli to mention these spots to his students. Father Busaeus, at the University of Innspruck, forbade
- ↑ For principal points as given, see Libri, Histoire des Sciences mathématiques en Italie, vol. iv, p. 211; De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 26, for account of Father Clavius. It is interesting to know that Clavius, in his last years, acknowledged that "the whole system of the heavens is broken down, and must be mended." Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xv, p. 478. See Th. Martin, Galilée, pp. 34, 208, and 266; also Heller, Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, p. 366. For the original documents, see L'Epinois, pp. 34 and 36. Martin's translation seems somewhat too free. See also, Gebler, Galileo Galilei, English translation, London, 1879, pp. 76–78; also Gebler, Acten des Galileischen Process, for careful copies of the documents; also Reusch, Der Process Galilei's und die Jesuiten, Bonn, 1879, chapters ix, x, xi. See also full official text in L'Epinois, and also the extract given by Gebler, Galileo Galilei, p. 78.
the heliocentric doctrine. As to its effects on Bacon, see Jevons, Principles of Science, p. 638, as above. For argument drawn from the candlestick and seven churches, sec Delambre, p. 20.
