Today’s installment concludes Galileo Recants,
our selection by Sir Oliver Lodge.
If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of three thousand words. Congratulations!
Previously in Galileo Recants.
Time: 1633
Place: Rome
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: (1) The official threat in the court; (2) the taking to the door of the torture-chamber and renewing the official threat; (3) the taking inside and showing the instruments; (4) undressing and binding upon the rack; (5) 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 judgment sentences him: (1) To the abjuration, (2) to formal imprisonment for life, (3) to recite the seven penitential psalms every week.
Ten cardinals were present; but, to their honor, 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.
I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, being brought personally to judgment and kneeling before your Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lords Cardinals, General Inquisitors of the universal Christian republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands, swear that I have always believed and now believe and with the help of God will in future believe, every article which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome holds, teaches and preaches. But because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office altogether to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the sun is the center and immovable and forbidden to hold, defend or teach the said false doctrine in any manner and after it hath been signified to me that the said doctrine is repugnant with the Holy Scripture, I have written and printed a book, in which I treat of the same doctrine now condemned and adduce reasons with great force in support of the same, without giving any solution and therefore have been judged grievously suspected of heresy; that is to say, that I held and believed that the sun is the center of the universe and is immovable and that the earth is not the center and is movable; willing, therefore, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and of every Catholic Christian, this vehement suspicion rightfully entertained toward me, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse and detest the said errors and heresies and generally every other error and sect contrary to Holy Church; and I swear that I will never more in future say or assert anything verbally or in writing, which may give rise to a similar suspicion of me; but if I shall know any heretic or anyone suspected of heresy, that I will denounce him to this Holy Office or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be; I swear, moreover and promise, that I will fulfil and observe fully, all the penances which have been or shall be laid on me by this Holy Office. But if it shall happen that I violate any of my said promises, oaths and protestations (which God avert!), I subject myself to all the pains and punishments which have been decreed and promulgated by the sacred canons and other general and particular constitutions, against delinquents of this description. So may God help me and his Holy Gospels which I touch with my own hands. I, the above-named Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised and bound myself as above and in witness thereof with my own hand have subscribed this present writing of my abjuration, which I have recited word for word. At Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, June 22, 1633. I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand.”
Those who believe the story about his muttering to a friend, as he rose from his knees, “E pur si muove” (“And yet it does move”), do not realize the scene.
There was no friend in the place. It would have been fatally dangerous to mutter anything before such an assemblage. He was by this time an utterly broken and disgraced old man; wishful, of all things, to get away and hide himself and his miseries from the public gaze; probably with his senses deadened and stupefied by the mental sufferings he had undergone and no longer able to think or care about anything — except perhaps his daughter — certainly not about any motion of this wretched earth.
Far and wide the news of the recantation spread. Copies of the abjuration were immediately sent to all universities, with instructions to the professors to read it publicly. At Florence, his home, it was read out in the cathedral church, all his friends and adherents being specially summoned to hear it.
For a short time more he was imprisoned in Rome but at length was permitted to depart, nevermore of his own will to return.
This ends our series of passages on Galileo Recants by Sir Oliver Lodge. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.
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