It has been supposed, without any satisfactory evidence, that Urban may have been influenced by less creditable motives. Salviati and Sagredo being well-known personages, it was inferred, that Simplicio must also have a representative. The enemies of Galileo are said to have convinced his holiness that Simplicio was intended as a portraiture of himself; and this opinion received some probability from the fact, that the peripatetic disputant had employed many of the arguments which Urban had himself used in his discussions with Galileo. The latest biographer of Galileo[27] regards this motive as necessary to account for "the otherwise inexplicable change which took place in the conduct of Urban to his old friend;"—but we cannot admit for a moment the truth, of this supposition. The church had been placed in hostility to a powerful and liberal party, which was adverse to its interests. The dogmas of the Catholic faith had been brought into direct collision with the deductions of science. The leader of the philosophic band had broken the most solemn armistice with the inquisition: he had renounced the ties of gratitude which bound him to the pontiff; and Urban was thus compelled to intrench himself in a position to which he had been driven by his opponents.
The design of summoning Galileo before the inquisition, seems to have been formed almost immediately after the publication of his book; for even in August, 1632, the preliminary proceedings had reached the ears of the grand duke Ferdinand. The Tuscan ambassador at Rome was speedily acquainted with the dissatisfaction which his sovereign felt at these proceedings; and he was instructed to forward to Florence a written statement of the charges against Galileo, in order to enable him to prepare for his defence. Although this request was denied, Ferdinand again interposed; and transmitted a letter to his ambassador, recommending the admission of Campanella and Castelli into the congregation of ecclesiastics by which Galileo was to be judged. Circumstances, however, rendered it prudent to withhold this letter. Castelli was sent away from Rome, and Scipio Chiaramonte, a bigotted ecclesiastic, was summoned from Pisa to complete the number of the judges.
It appears from a despatch of the Tuscan minister, that Ferdinand was enraged at the transaction; and he instructed his ambassador, Niccolini, to make the strongest representations to the pope. Niccolini had several interviews with his holiness; but all his expostulations were fruitless. He found Urban highly incensed against Galileo; and his holiness begged Niccolini to advise the archduke not to interfere any farther, as he would not "get through it with honour." On the 15th of September the pope caused it to be intimated to Niccolini, as a mark of his especial esteem for the grand duke, that he was obliged to refer the work to the inquisition; but both the prince and his ambassador were declared liable to the usual censures if they divulged the secret.
From the measures which this tribunal had formerly pursued, it was not difficult to foresee the result of their present deliberations. They summoned Galileo to appear before them at Rome, to answer in person the charges under which he lay. The Tuscan ambassador expostulated warmly with the court of Rome on the inhumanity of this proceeding. He urged his advanced age, his infirm health, the discomforts of the journey, and the miseries of the quarantine[28], as motives for reconsidering their decision: but the pope was inexorable; and though it was agreed to relax the quarantine as much as possible in his favour, yet it was declared indispensable that he should appear in person before the inquisition.
Worn out with age and infirmities, and exhausted with the fatigues of his journey, Galileo arrived at Rome on the 14th of February, 1633. The Tuscan ambassador announced his arrival in an official form to the commissary of the holy office, and Galileo awaited in calm dignity the approach of his trial. Among those who proffered their advice in this distressing emergency, we must enumerate the cardinal Barberino, the pope's nephew, who, though he may have felt the necessity of an interference on the part of the church, was yet desirous that it should be effected with the least injury to Galileo and to science. He accordingly visited Galileo, and advised him to remain as much at home as possible, to keep aloof from general society, and to see only his most intimate friends. The same advice was given from different quarters; and Galileo felt its propriety, and remained in strict seclusion in the palace of the Tuscan ambassador.
During the whole of the trial which now commenced, Galileo was treated with the most marked indulgence. Abhorring, as we must do, the principles and practice of this odious tribunal, and reprobating its interference with the cautious deductions of science, we must yet admit that, on this occasion, its deliberations were not dictated by passion, nor its power directed by vengeance. Though placed at their judgment-seat as a heretic, Galileo stood there with the recognised attributes of a sage; and though an offender against the laws of which they were the guardian, yet the highest respect was yielded to his genius, and the kindest commiseration to his infirmities.
In the beginning of April, when his examination in person was to commence, it became necessary that he should be removed to the holy office; but instead of committing him, as was the practice, to solitary confinement, he was provided with apartments in the house of the fiscal of the inquisition. His table was provided by the Tuscan ambassador, and his servant was allowed to attend him at his pleasure, and to sleep in an adjoining apartment. Even this nominal confinement, however, Galileo's high spirit was unable to brook. An attack of the disease to which he was constitutionally subject contributed to fret and irritate him, and he became impatient for a release from his anxiety as well as from his bondage. Cardinal Barberino seems to have received notice of the state of Galileo's feelings; and with a magnanimity which posterity will ever honour, he liberated Galileo on his own responsibility; and in ten days after his first examination, and on the last day of April, he was restored to the hospitable roof of the Tuscan ambassador.
Though this favour was granted on the condition of his remaining in strict seclusion, Galileo recovered his health, and to a certain degree his usual hilarity, amid the kind attentions of Niccolini and his family; and when the want of exercise had begun to produce symptoms of indisposition, Niccolini obtained for him leave to go into the public gardens in a half-closed carriage.
After the inquisition had examined Galileo personally, they allowed him a reasonable time for preparing his defence. He felt the difficulty of adducing any thing like a plausible justification of his conduct; and he resorted to an ingenious, though a shallow artifice, which was regarded by the court as an aggravation of the crime. After his first appearance before the inquisition in 1616, he was publicly and falsely charged by his enemies with having then abjured his opinions; and he was taunted as a criminal who had been actually punished for his offences. As a refutation of these calumnies. Cardinal Bellarmine had given him a certificate in his own handwriting, declaring that he neither abjured his opinions, nor suffered punishment for them; and that the doctrine of the earth's motion, and the sun's stability, was only denounced to him as contrary to scripture, and as one which could not be defended. To this certificate the cardinal did not add, because he was not called upon to do it, that Galileo was enjoined not to teach in any manner the doctrine thus denounced; and Galileo ingeniously avails himself of this supposed omission, to account for his having, in the lapse of fourteen or sixteen years, forgotten the injunction. He assigned the same excuse for his having omitted to mention this injunction to Riccardi, and to the inquisitor-general at Florence, when he obtained the licence to print his dialogues. The court held the production of this certificate to be at once a proof and an aggravation of his offence; because the certificate itself declared that the obnoxious doctrines had been pronounced contrary to the Holy Scriptures.
Having duly weighed the confessions and excuses of their prisoner, and considered the general merits of the case, the inquisition came to an agreement upon the sentence which they were to pronounce, and appointed the 22d of June as the day on which it was to be delivered. Two days previous to this, Galileo was summoned to appear at the holy office; and on the morning of the 21st, he obeyed the summons. On the 22d of June he was clothed in a penitential dress, and conducted to the convent of Minerva, where the inquisition was assembled to give judgment. A long and elaborate sentence was pronounced, detailing the former proceedings of the inquisition, and specifying the offences which he had committed in teaching heretical doctrines, in violating his former pledges, and in obtaining by improper means a licence for the printing of his Dialogues. After an invocation of the name of our Saviour, and of the Holy Virgin, Galileo is declared to have brought himself under strong suspicions of heresy, and to have incurred all the censures and penalties which are enjoined against delinquents of this kind; but from all these consequences he is to be held absolved, provided that with a sincere heart, and a faith unfeigned, he abjures and curses the heresies he has cherished, as well as every other heresy against the Catholic church. In order that his offence might not go altogether unpunished, that he might be more cautious in future, and be a warning to others to abstain from similar delinquencies, it was also decreed that his Dialogues should be prohibited by public edict; that he himself should be condemned to the prison of the inquisition during their pleasure, and that during the next three years he should recite once a week the seven penitential psalms.