Neither Copernicus nor his immediate followers suffered inconvenience or restraint on account of their astronomical doctrines: nor had Galileo, until this period of his life, incurred ecclesiastical censure for any thing which he had said or written. But the Inquisition now took up the matter as heretical, and contrary to the express words of Scripture; and in 1616, Copernicus’s work ‘De Revolutionibus,’ Kepler’s Epitome, and some of Galileo’s own letters, were placed on the list of prohibited books; and he himself, being then in Rome, received formal notice not to teach that the earth revolves round the sun. He returned to Florence full of indignation; and considering his hasty temper, love of truth, and full belief of the condemned theory, it is rather wonderful that he kept silence so long, than that he incurred at last the censures of the hierarchy. He did, however, restrain himself from any open advocacy of the heretical doctrines, even in composing his great work, the ‘Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems.’ This was completed in 1630, but not printed till 1632, under licence from officers of the church, both at Rome and Florence. It is a dialogue between Simplicio, an Aristotelian, Salviati, who represents the author, and Sagredo, a half convert to Salviati’s opinions. It professes “indeterminately to propose the philosophical arguments, as well on one side as on the other:” but the neutrality is but ill kept up, and was probably assumed, not with any hope that the court of Rome would be blinded as to the real tendency of the book, but merely that it would accept this nominal submission as a sufficient homage to its authority. If this were so, the author was disappointed; the Inquisition took cognizance of the matter, and summoned him to Rome to undergo a personal examination. Age and infirmity were in vain pleaded as excuses; still, through the urgent and indignant remonstrances of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was treated with a consideration rarely shown by that iniquitous tribunal. He was allowed to remain at the Florentine ambassador’s palace, with the exception of a short period, from his arrival in February, until the passing of sentence, June 21, 1633. He was then condemned, in the presence of the Inquisitors, to curse and abjure the “false doctrines,” which his life had been spent in proving; to be confined in the prison of the Holy Office during pleasure, and to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week during three years. The sentence and the abjuration are given at full length in the Life of Galileo, in the ‘Library of Useful Knowledge.’ “It is said,” continues the biographer, “that Galileo, as he rose from his knees, stamped on the ground, and whispered to one of his friends, ‘e pur si muove,’ (it does move though.”)
Galileo’s imprisonment was not long or rigorous; for after four days he was reconducted to the Florentine ambassador’s palace: but he was still kept under strict surveillance. In July he was sent to Sienna, where he remained five months in strict seclusion. He obtained permission in December to return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence: but there, as at Sienna, he was confined to his own premises, and strictly forbidden to receive his friends. It is painful to contemplate the variety of evils which overcast the evening of this great man’s life. In addition to a distressing chronic complaint, contracted in youth, he was now suffering under a painful infirmity which by some is said to have been produced by torture, applied in the prisons of the Inquisition to extort a recantation. But the arguments brought forward to show that the Inquisitors did resort to this extremity do not amount to anything like direct proof. In April, 1634, Galileo’s afflictions were increased by the death of a favourite, intelligent, and attached daughter. He consoled his solitude, and lightened the hours of sickness, by continuing the observations which he was now forbidden to publish to the world; and the last of his long train of discoveries was the phenomenon known by the name of the moon’s libration. In the course of 1636–7 he lost successively the sight of both his eyes. He mentions this calamity in a tone of pious submission, mingled with a not unpleasing pride. “Alas, your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally and irreparably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which with wonderful observations I had enlarged a hundred and thousand times beyond the belief of by-gone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into the narrow space which I myself fill in it. So it pleases God: it shall therefore please me also.” In 1638 he obtained leave to visit Florence, still under the same restrictions as to society; but at the end of a few months he was remanded to Arcetri, which he never again quitted. From that time, however, the strictness of his confinement was relaxed, and he was allowed to receive the friends who crowded round him, as well as the many distinguished foreigners who eagerly visited him. Among these we must not forget Milton, whose poems contain several allusions to the celestial wonders observed and published by the Tuscan astronomer. Though blind and nearly deaf, Galileo retained to the last his intellectual powers; and his friend and pupil, the celebrated Torricelli, was employed in arranging his thoughts on the nature of percussion, when he was attacked by his last illness. He died January 8, 1642, aged seventy-eight.
It was disputed, whether, as a prisoner of the Inquisition, Galileo had a right to burial in consecrated ground. The point was conceded; but Pope Urban VIII. himself interfered to prevent the erection of a monument to him in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, for which a large sum had been subscribed. A splendid monument now covers the spot in which his remains repose with those of his friend and pupil, the eminent mathematician Viviani.
In 1618, Galileo published, through the medium of Mario Guiducci, an Essay on the Nature of Comets. His opinions (which, in fact, were erroneous) were immediately attacked under the feigned signature of Lotario Sarsi. To this antagonist he replied in a work entitled ‘Il Saggiatore,’ the Assayer, which we select for mention, not so much for the value of its contents, though, like the rest of his works, it has many remarkable passages, as for the high reputation which it enjoys among Italian critics as a model of philosophical composition. The “Dialogues on Motion,” the last work of consequence which Galileo published, contain investigations of the simpler branches of dynamics, the motion of bodies falling freely or down inclined planes, and of projectiles; determinations of the strength of beams, and a variety of interesting questions in natural philosophy. The fifth and sixth are unfinished; the latter was intended to comprise the theory of percussion, which, as we have said, was the last subject which occupied the author’s mind. For a full analysis of this and the other treatises here briefly noted, and for an account of Galileo’s application of the pendulum to the mensuration of time; his invention of the thermometer, though in an inaccurate and inconvenient form; his methods of discovering the longitude, and a variety of other points well worth attention, we must refer to the Life of Galileo already quoted. The numerous extracts from Galileo’s works convey a lively notion of the author’s character, and are distinguished by a peculiar tone of quaint humour. For older writers we may refer to the lives of Viviani, Gherardini, and Nelli; and to the English one by Salusbury, of which however the second volume is so rare that the Earl of Macclesfield’s copy is the only one known to exist in England. Venturi has given to the world some unpublished manuscripts, and collected much curious and scattered information in his “Memorie e Lettere de Gal. Galilei.” Of Galileo’s works several editions exist: the most complete are those of Padua, in four volumes quarto, 1744, and of Milan, in thirteen volumes octavo, 1811.
In conclusion, we quote the estimate of Galileo’s character, from the masterly memoir from which this sketch is derived. “The numberless inventions of his acute industry; the use of the telescope, and the brilliant discoveries to which it led; the patient investigation of the laws of weight and motion, must all be looked upon as forming but a part of his real merits, as merely particular demonstrations of the spirit in which he everywhere withstood the despotism of ignorance, and appealed boldly from traditional opinions to the judgment of reason and common sense. He claimed and bequeathed to us the right of exercising our faculties in examining the beautiful creation which surrounds us. Idolised by his friends, he deserved their affection by numberless acts of kindness; by his good humour, his affability, and by the benevolent generosity with which he devoted himself, and a great part of his limited income, to advance their talents and fortunes. If an intense desire of being useful is everywhere worthy of honour; if its value is immeasurably increased when united to genius of the highest order; if we feel for one, who, notwithstanding such titles to regard, is harassed by cruel persecution, then none deserve our sympathy, our admiration, and our gratitude, more than Galileo.”
[Monument to Galileo in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence.]
Engraved by R. Woodman.
REMBRANDT.
From the original Picture by himself
in his Majesty’s Collection.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall East.
