Niccolini received an official reply that there had been a talk of erecting a monument to Galileo, but that his Highness had not come to any decision, and proper regard would certainly be paid to the hints received from the Pope.[598] The weak Ferdinand II. did not venture to act in the least against the heartless Pope’s wishes. Even Galileo’s desire in his will to be buried in the vault of his ancestors in the Church of Santa Croce, at Florence, was not respected. His mortal remains were placed in a little obscure room, in a side chapel belonging to the Church, called “the Chapel of the Novitiate.” He was buried according to the desire of Urban VIII., very quietly, without any pomp. No monument nor inscription marked his resting place; but though Rome did all she could to obliterate the memory of the famous philosopher, she could not effect that the immortal name of Galileo Galilei should be buried in the grave with his lifeless remains.
It was not till thirty-two years later, when Urban VIII. had long been in his grave, and more lenient views were entertained about Galileo at the Vatican, that Fra Gabriel Pierozzi, Rector of the Novices of the Convent of Santa Croce, ventured to adorn Galileo’s grave with a long bombastic inscription.[599] In 1693 Viviani, whose greatest pride it was to sign himself “Discépolo ultimo di Galileo,” erected the first public monument to his immortal master. The front of his handsome house in the Via San Antonio was made to serve for it, for he placed the bronze bust of Galileo, after the model of the famous sculptor, Giovanni Caccini, over the door. A long eulogy on Galileo was engraved over and on both sides of it.[600]
But Viviani was not content with thus piously honouring the memory of the master; in his last will he enjoined on his heirs to erect a splendid monument to him, which was to cost about 4000 scudi, in the Church of Santa Croce.[601] Decades, however, passed after Viviani’s death before his heirs thought of fulfilling his wishes. At length, in 1734, the preliminary steps were taken by an inquiry from the Convent of Santa Croce, whether any decree of the Holy Congregation existed which would forbid the erection of such a monument in the Church? The Inquisitor at Florence immediately inquired of the Holy Office at Rome whether it would be permitted thus to honour a man “who had been condemned for notorious errors.”[602] The opinion of the counsellors of the Holy Office was taken. They said that there was nothing to prevent the erection of the monument, provided the intended inscription were submitted to the Holy Congregation, that they might give such orders about it as they thought proper.[603] This opinion was confirmed by the Congregation of the Holy Office on 16th June, 1734.[604] And so the pompous monument to Galileo, which displayed the tastelessness of the age, and was not completed till four years later, could be raised in the Church of Santa Croce, this pantheon of the Florentines, where they bury their famous dead, and of which Byron finely sings in “Childe Harold”:—
“In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which have relapsed to chaos:—here repose
Angelo’s, Alfieri’s bones, and his,