About this time he was sunk so low, physically as well as mentally, that he and every one thought his dissolution was at hand. In a letter to Diodati of 7th August, in which he told him of his interview with the German merchants at Florence, he expressed the fear that “if his sufferings increased as they had done during the last three or four days, he would not even be able to dictate letters.”[552] He added, perhaps in reference to the Inquisitor’s intimation of 13th July: “It would be a fruitless undertaking if Signor Hortensius were to take the trouble to come and see me, for if he found me living (which I do not believe), I should be quite unable to give him the least satisfaction.”
His profound vexation about the regulations imposed upon him in this matter by the Roman curia is very evident in a letter to Diodati of 14th August. He writes:—
“As ill luck would have it, the Holy Office came to know of the negotiations I was carrying on about the geographical longitude with the States-General, which may do me the greatest injury. I am extremely obliged to you for having induced Signor Hortensius to give up his intended journey, and thereby averted some calamity from me which would probably have been in store for me if he had come. It is indeed true that these negotiations ought not to do me any harm, for the just and obvious reasons that you mention, but rather to bring me fame and honour, if my circumstances were but like those of other men, that is, if I were not pursued by misfortune more than others. But having been often and often convinced by experience of the tricks fate plays me, I can but expect from its obstinate perfidy, that what would be an advantage to any one else will never bring anything but harm to me. But even in this bitter adversity I do not lose my peace of mind, for it would be but idle audacity to oppose inexorable destiny.”[553]
Galileo, who thought his hours were numbered, dictated his will on 21st August, in the presence of a notary and witnesses, and directed that he should be buried in the family vault of the Galilei in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence.[554] On 8th September the Grand Duke paid the dying astronomer, as was supposed, a visit of two hours, and himself handed him his medicine.[555]
It had been for a long time a cherished wish of Galileo’s to have with him during the evening of his days his most devoted and favourite disciple, Father Castelli.[556] But the professorship which he held at Rome made the attainment of this wish difficult. As it was now supposed that a speedy death would deprive the world of the great philosopher, the Grand Duke requested through Niccolini at Rome that Castelli might come to Florence, for a few months at least, that he might yet receive from the lips of his dying master many ideas of importance for science, which he might not perhaps confide to any but his trusted friend.[557] After some difficulties were surmounted, he actually received the papal consent, but only on condition that a third person should always be present during the conversations with Galileo.[558] Early in October Castelli arrived in Florence, where the Inquisitor-General, as charged by the Holy Office, gave him permission to visit Galileo, with the express prohibition, under pain of excommunication, to converse with him on the condemned doctrine of the earth’s double motion.[559] The permission, however, to visit Galileo seems to have been very limited, for Castelli repeatedly wrote to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, with the most urgent entreaties to obtain an extension of it for him from the Pope. Castelli protests in this letter that he would rather lose his life than converse with Galileo on subjects forbidden by the Church. He gives as a reason for the need of more frequent interviews that he had received from the Grand Duke the twofold charge to minister to Galileo in spiritual matters, and to inform himself fully about the tables and ephemerides of the Medicean stars, because the Prince Giovanni Carlo, Lord High Admiral, was to take this discovery to Spain.[560] The cardinal replied that in consideration of these circumstances, Urban VIII. granted permission for more frequent visits to Galileo, under the known conditions;[561] but the official permission, was not issued until about November.[562] Nothing is known in history, however, of the Lord High Admiral’s having ever taken Galileo’s method of taking longitudes to the Peninsula.
During the same year (1638), the Elzevirs at Leyden issued Galileo’s famous work: “Discourses on and Demonstrations of Two New Sciences appertaining to Mechanics and Motion.”[563] This work, known under the abridged title, “Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze,” was dedicated to the Count de Noailles, in grateful remembrance of the warm interest which he had always shown in the author.[564] It is the most copious and best of all Galileo’s writings, and he himself valued it more highly than any of the others.[565] In it he created the new sciences of the doctrine of cohesion in stationary bodies, and their resistance when torn asunder; also that of phoronomics, and thereby opened up new paths in a field of science that had been lying fallow. He must, indeed, be regarded as the real founder of mechanical physics. It is not our province to enter farther into the contents of this work, or its importance for science. It has, however, some significance in our historical review of Galileo’s relations with the curia, for it excited immense attention in all learned circles, and increasingly attracted the notice of the scientific world to the prisoner of the Inquisition. This was by no means agreeable to the Romanists, who would have been glad to see him sink into oblivion. Galileo now again received communications from all countries, some of them expressing the highest admiration of his new work, and others asking more information on many of the theories expounded. And we now behold the shattered old man of seventy-four, only partially recovered from his severe illness, carrying on an extensive correspondence full of the most abstruse problems in physics and mathematics.[566]
In January, 1639, as his health had so far improved as to allow the hope to be indulged that he might be spared some time longer, he returned to his villa at Arcetri, not to leave it again alive. Was this move a voluntary one? We have no document which finally settles the question. But we hold ourselves justified in doubting it. Not only because it is difficult to reconcile a voluntary return to Arcetri with his previous efforts to obtain permission to reside in Florence, but there is a later letter from him bearing the expressive date: “From the Villa Arcetri, my perpetual prison and place of exile from the city.”[567] And when the wife of Buonamici, who was distinguished for her mental powers, gave him a pressing invitation to Prato, which is only four miles from Florence, he reminds her in his reply of 6th April, 1641, that “he was still a prisoner here for reasons which her husband was well aware of”; he then presses her to visit him at Arcetri, adding: “Do not make any excuses, nor fear that any unpleasantness may accrue to me from it, for I do not trouble myself much how this interview may be judged by certain persons, as I am accustomed to bearing many heavy burdens as if they were quite light.”[568] From such utterances it is clear that Galileo had little pleasure in residing at Arcetri, and that therefore his second banishment from Florence was not voluntary, but was the result of a papal order.[569]