have been the poorer by the loss of his greatest work, the Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze, which he did not publish until 1636.[1]
Even more hotly debated has been the action of the Congregations in condemning the Copernican doctrine, and sentencing Galileo as a heretic for upholding it.[2] Though both Paul V and Urban VIII spurred on these actions, neither signed either the decree or the sentence, nor was the latter present at Galileo's examinations. Pope Urban would prefer not so openly to have changed his position from that of tolerance to his present one of active opposition caused partly by his piqued self-respect[3] and partly by his belief that this heresy was more dangerous even than that of Luther and Calvin.[4] It is a much mooted question whether the infallibility of the Church was involved or not. Though the issue at stake was not one of faith, nor were the decrees issued by the Pope ex cathedra, but by a group of Cardinals, a fallible body, yet they had the full approbation of the Popes, and later were published in the Index preceded by a papal bull excommunicating those who did not obey the decrees contained therein.[5] It seems to be a matter of the letter as opposed to the spirit of the law. De Morgan points out that contemporary opinion as represented by Fromundus, an ardent opponent of Galileo, did not consider the Decree of the Index or of the Inquisition as a declaration of the Church.[6]—a position which Galileo himself may have held, thus explaining his practical disregard of the decree of 1616 after he was persuaded the authorities were more favorably disposed to him. But M. Martin, himself a Catholic, thinks[7] that theoretically the Congregations could punish Galileo only for disobedience of the secret order,—but even so his book had been examined and passed by the official censors.
When the Index was revised under Pope Benedict XIV in 1757, largely through the influence of the Jesuit astronomer Boscovich, so it is said,[8] the phrase prohibiting all books teach-
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