Other equally learned commentators, however, deny that the last stage was reached. For there are five stages all laid down in the rules of the Inquisition, and steadily adhered to in a rigorous examination, at each stage an opportunity being given for recantation, every utterance, groan, or sigh being strictly recorded. The recantation so given has to be confirmed a day or two later, under pain of a precisely similar ordeal.
The five stages are:—1st. The official threat in the court. 2nd. The taking to the door of the torture chamber and renewing the official threat. 3rd. The taking inside and showing the instruments. 4th. Undressing and binding upon the rack. 5th. Territio realis.
Through how many of these ghastly acts Galileo passed I do not know. I hope and believe not the last.
There are those who lament that he did not hold out, and accept the crown of martyrdom thus offered to him. Had he done so we know his fate—a few years' languishing in the dungeons, and then the flames.
Whatever he ought to have done, he did not hold out—he gave way. At one stage or another of the dread ordeal he said: "I am in your hands. I will say whatever you wish." Then was he removed to a cell while his special form of perjury was drawn up.
The next day, clothed as a penitent, the venerable old man was taken to the Convent of Minerva, where the Cardinals and prelates were assembled for the purpose of passing judgment upon him.
The text of the judgment I have here, but it is too long to read. It sentences him—1st. To the abjuration. 2nd. To formal imprisonment for life. 3rd. To recite the seven penitential psalms every week.
Ten Cardinals were present; but, to their honour be it said, three refused to sign; and this blasphemous record of intolerance and bigoted folly goes down the ages with the names of seven Cardinals immortalized upon it.
This having been read, he next had to read word for word the abjuration which had been drawn up for him, and then sign it.