Alfred Jean François Mézières

“ If here and there in his correspondence Galileo, out of respect to religion, endeavored to reconcile the data of science with the text of the Bible, he never published these explanations. It was not upon these private manuscript documents that he was tried, and the only document that furnished a basis for the charge was a printed work, purely scientific in character, and having nothing whatever to do with theology. By no manner of argumentation can the fact be negatived that a tribunal of theologians constituted itself a judge in a question of science, and decided it as an authority decides. ”

“ Galileo, who was a man of rare good sense, and perfectly conversant with the ways of the world, had in advance formed at Rome the best and the most powerful of relations. Besides, he came there in a sort of official capacity, at the grand-duke's charges, and he was entertained there by the Tuscan embassador. Prelates, cardinals, princes, vied with one another for the honor of offering fétes and banquets to the most illustrious representative of Italian science. ”

“ Galileo, celebrated from his early years for the value of his discoveries and the brilliancy of his lectures at the University of Padua, loaded with honors at Venice and at Florence, and admired throughout all Italy, was pursuing the course of his great researches with the boldness of a man confident of his strength and of his fame, when certain slight indications no doubt warned him that it would not be disadvantageous, if he would carry on his researches in safety, to win the favor of the Sacred College. ”

“ Provided that the culprit spoke no more about the motion of the earth, the court of Rome would like nothing better than to make the most of a great mind that for a moment had gone astray, but whose genius and whose scientific fame were intact. After the trial, Galileo remained three months in Rome, and was kindly received by the sovereign pontiff. In fact, the rumor having spread that he had been punished by the Holy Office and obliged to retract and to do penance, he obtained from Cardinal Bellarmin a certificate to the contrary effect. ”

“ On being interrogated for the last time on the 21st of June, Galileo was ordered to state whether he then held or ever had held the opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and that the earth moves. He humbly replied that ever since the decree of the Congregation of the Index, in 1616, he had always held and still did hold the opinion of Ptolemy to be "most true and unquestionable." This reply not appearing to be satisfactory, the father commissary insisted on knowing the truth, and wound up by declaring that, if the whole truth were not stated, recourse would be had to torture. ”

“ We would not weaken, by any comments of ours, the importance of the documents we have been examining. It is a fixed historical fact that in the beginning of the seventeenth century the Roman congregations, assuming to represent the Church, and not disavowed by her, made themselves the judges of a scientific question, and decided it in a way contrary to the conclusions of science. The splendor of Galileo's genius and the commiseration inspired by his sufferings impress upon this discussion a tragical and popular character ”

“ All of Galileo's answers at the first interrogatory present the same character of ambiguity. On being asked whether, before he begged of Father Riccardi license to print his "Dialogues," he had informed the master of the Sacred Palace of his having previously been forbidden to treat certain subjects, his reply was that he had not mentioned that to Father Riccardi, "for he did not think it necessary to do so, having no scruples, nor having supported or defended in his book the opinion of the earth's motion and the stability of the sun." ”

“ I therefore think it would be wise to forbid persons from using texts of Holy Scripture, and from forcing them, as it were, to support as true certain propositions in natural science, whereof the contrary may to-morrow be demonstrated by the senses or by mathematical reasoning. ”

“ In truth, Holy Scripture and Nature both come from the Divine Word, the one being the dictation of the Holy Ghost, while the other is the executor of God's decrees; but it was fitting that, in the Scriptures, the language should be adapted to the people's understanding in many things where the appearance differs widely from the reality. ”

“ According to all the treatises on inquisitorial law, the commissary was authorized not to inflict torture on aged men, or on persons suffering from disease, who might die under the punishment. The advanced age of Galileo, and his infirmities, aggravated as they were by so much mental suffering, naturally placed him in the category of culprits who were not subjected to torture. ”

“ If he was spared that dreadful infliction, Berti gives all the credit to the humanity of the father commissary; he even appears to think that, but for the kindly intervention of Father Macolano, the sovereign pontiff and the Congregation of the Holy Office would have given over Galileo to the executioner.
Let us be more fair. It would be a libel on Urban VIII. to represent him as thirsting for the blood and pleased with the sufferings of his old friend. ”

“ All that was known of this MS. before the publication of Berti's work rested upon a selection of documents published at Rome in 1850, with many precautions, by Monsignore Marino Marini, sometime Prefect of the Secret Archives of the Holy See, and upon a larger work, in some respects inexact, and in others imperfect, published in Paris in 1867, by Henri de l'Épinois. Both of these writers take special points of view: they appear to be more intent upon justifying the judges that condemned Galileo than upon laying bare the whole truth with the boldness and freedom of an historian. ”

“ When a prohibition is issued in terms so formal as those we have given, upon so definite a point, neither the form nor the substance is ever forgotten. Ambiguity was out of the question after Bellarmin's warning, and still more after the solemn injunction of the commissary-general. Domenico Berti is in error with regard to the psychological conditions of memory where he says that it must have been easier for Galileo to recollect the conciliatory words of Cardinal Bellarmin than the threats of the commissary-general. ”

“ Both of these suppositions appear to be equally inadmissible, for they are in flat contradiction to all the precedents and all the rules of the tribunal. Neither can we suppose that the agent of the Holy Office suppressed the procès-verbal of the torture in order that both he and his principals might escape the indignation of posterity. This were gratuitously to transform an obscure, an irresponsible personage into an humanitarian philosopher who is ages ahead of the thought of his time and who purposely destroys a sorrowful page of history. ”

“ Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she is not at all concerned whether the hidden reasons and means through which she works are or are not intelligible to man, because she never oversteps the limit of the laws imposed upon her. ”

“ We have here no work of partisanship, undertaken in the interest of religious controversy, but an historical work executed with all the scrupulous care that is nowadays exacted in all historical researches. ”

“ Hence it appears that when we have to do with natural effects brought under our eyes by the experience of our senses, or deduced from absolute demonstrations, these can in no wise be called in question on the strength of Scripture texts that are susceptible of a thousand different interpretations, for the words of Scripture are not so strictly limited in their significance as the phenomena of Nature. ”

“ Urban instructed a commission to examine the book and report to him. As soon as the report came into his hands, he commanded the inquisitor at Florence to communicate to Galileo a formal summons to appear in October before the commissary-general of the Holy Office in Rome. Galileo, then seventy years of age, and suffering from hernia, asked the authorities to take into consideration his age and his malady, and to dispense him from the journey. The Grand-duke of Tuscany interceded for him. But Urban would listen to nothing ”

“ The pontifical decree of June 16th has this important proviso regarding the employment of torture, that it should not be used unless the accused could endure it. When he expressed himself thus, the sovereign pontiff was perfectly well aware that Galileo could not stand such a trial, and he consented beforehand, without needing to be entreated by the commissary, to the omission of the torture. What, indeed, would have been the use of such extreme rigor? Urban did not desire the death of the culprit ”

“ The text of the sentence shows that he was treated more rigorously yet. "Inasmuch as it appears to us that you have not told the whole truth as touching your intention, we have deemed it necessary to resort to the examen rigorosum." Now, in the language of the Inquisition, examen rigorosum means just the torture and that alone: it is the law-term approved by jurists and regularly employed in sentences which condemn the accused to the cruel punishment of the strappado. ”

“ His judges, however, were not yet satisfied; he was feared even after his abjuration. He was confined at first in the palace of the Archbishop Piccolomini, at Siena, then at his own villa of Arcetri, near Florence, with leave to receive a few visits of relatives and friends, but on condition that several persons should never meet there to hold conversation. It was particularly feared that he would communicate with learned men abroad and in Italy. ”