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Galileo Quotes
While Galileo awaited the outcome of this
first hearing, confined to assigned rooms in the palace of the
Inquisition, a second team of three theologians cross-examined the
Dialogue, itself. In less than a week, these consultors to the Holy
Office, two of whom had served on the commission charged with reviewing
the book the previous September, turned in statements of varying length
and vehemence, all concurring that the book unabashedly backed
Copernicus.
"It is beyond question that Galileo
teaches the Earth’s motion in writing," concluded the Jesuit
panelist, Melchior Inchofer. "Indeed his whole book speaks for
itself, Nor can one reach in any other way those of future
generations and those who are absent except through writing…and he
writes in Italian, certainly not to extend the hand to foreigners or
other learned men, but rather to entice to that view common people
in whom errors very easily take root."
Not only did Inchofer submit the longest of
the three condemnations of the Dialogue, but he also felt personally
affronted by it. "If Galileo had attacked some individual thinker
for his inadequate arguments in favor of the stability of the Earth, we
might still put a favorable construction on his text, but as he declares
war on everybody and regards as mental dwarfs all who are not
Pythagorean or Copernican, it is clear enough what he has in mind."
"For, Signor Ignoli, if your
philosophical sincerity and my old regard for you will allow me to
say so, you should in all honest have known that Nicolaus Copernicus
had spent more years on these very difficult studies than you had
spent days on them; so you should have been more careful and not let
yourself be lightly persuaded that you could knock down such a man,
especially with the sort of weapons you use, which are among the
most common and trite objections advance in this subject; and,
though you add something new, this is no more effective than the
rest. Thus, did you really think that Nicolaus Copernicus did not
grasp the mysteries of the extremely shallow Sacrobosco (Latinized
name given to the work of 13th century English astronomer
John of Holywood who authored the influential textbook Sphere of
Sacrobosco) ? That he did not understand parallax? That he had
not read and understood Ptolemy and Aristotle? I am not surprised
that you believed you could convince him, given that you thought so
little of him. However, if you had read him with the care required
to understand him properly, at least the difficulty of the subject
(if nothing else) would have confused your spirit of opposition, so
that you would have refrained or completely abstained from taking
such a step.
Since what is done is done, let us try,
as far as possible, to prevent you or others from multiplying
errors. So I come to the arguments you give to prove that the Earth,
and not the sun, is located at the center of the universe. [From
Galileo’s fifty page, October 1624, "Reply to Ingoli]
On June 16, Pope Urban VIII presided over a
meeting of the cardinal inquisitors. Urban had absorbed the official
report summarizing the Galileo affair from the first accusations against
the philosopher in 1615, through the publication of his book, up to his
recent defense and plea for mercy. Now His Holiness demanded that
Galileo be interrogated "on intent" to determine, technically
by torture if necessary, his true purpose in writing the Dialogue.
The book itself could not escape censure in any case, the pontiff
averred, and would assuredly be prohibited. As for Galileo, he would
have to serve a prison term and perform penance. His
public humiliation would warn all Christendom of the folly of disobeying
orders and gainsaying Holy Scripture dictated by the mouth of God.
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