From a letter from Guiducci to Galileo from Florence of 27th August,[1] we learn the manner in which the publication had taken place there, on the 12th. Both the documents were read aloud in a large assembly of counsellors of the Holy Office, canons and other priests, professors of mathematics and friends of Galileo, such as Pandolfini, Aggiunti, Rinuccini, Peri, and others, who had been invited to the ceremony. This proceeding was followed in all the more important cities of Italy, as well as in the larger ones of Catholic Europe. It is characteristic of the great split which existed in the scientific world about the Copernican system, that Professor Kellison, Rector of the University of Douai, wrote in reply to a letter of the Nuncio at Brussels, who had sent the sentence and recantation of Galileo to that academy: "The professors of our university are so opposed to that fanatical opinion (phanaticœ opinioni), that they have always held that it must be banished from the schools. . . . In our English college at Douai this paradox has never been approved, and never will be."[2]
The Roman curia, however, did not confine itself to trying to frighten all good Catholics from accepting the Copernican doctrine by as wide a circulation as possible of the sentence against Galileo; but in order to suppress it altogether as far as might be, especially in Italy, all the Italian Inquisitors received orders neither to permit the publication of a new edition of any of Galileo's works, nor of any new work.[3] On the other hand, the Aristotelians, who had been very active since the trial, were encouraged to confute the illustrious dead, Copernicus and Kepler, and the now silenced Galileo, with tongue and pen. Thus in the succeeding decades the book market was flooded with refutations of the Copernican system.[4]
