at Rome."[1] This decree was ratified by Pius VII. on 25th September.
But full thirteen years more went by until, in 1835, when the new edition of the catalogue of prohibited books appeared, the five works in which the theory of the double motion was maintained and defended were expunged from the list.
It was not until 1835, therefore, that the last trace was effaced of the memorable warfare so long and resolutely waged by ecclesiastical power against the superior insight of science. If it is denied to history to surround the head of Galileo, the greatest advocate of the new system, with the halo of the martyr, ready to die for his cause, posterity will ever regard with admiration and gratitude the figure of the man, who, though he did not heroically defend the truth, was, by virtue of his genius, one of her first pioneers, and had to bear for her sake an accumulation of untold suffering.
- ↑ "Dichiarono permessa in Roma la stampa e la publicazione operum tractantium de mobilitate terrae et immobilitate solis, juxta communem modernorum astronomorum opinionem." (Olivieri, p. 97, or "Hist.-polit, Blätter," p. 588.)
