ring their hatred. They were of opinion that he should not honour an adversary concealed behind a pseudonym with a reply written by himself, but should depute the task to a pupil, or, if he intended to conduct his defence in person, clothe his reply in the form of a letter instead of a treatise, not addressed to Sarsi himself, but to one of his own party.[1] He decided for the latter; and adopting a hint from Mgr. Ciampoli,[2] he addressed the reply to Mgr. Cesarini, one of his most devoted friends and dauntless defenders.
But the completion of this afterwards famous rejoinder was delayed for two years, and its publication, which, according to custom with all works by members of the Accadémia dei Lincei, was undertaken by the Society, was delayed fully another year owing to the scruples of Prince Cesi and other "lynxes." Galileo's procrastination is to be explained partly by his continued ill health, but more so by the position of affairs at Rome as well as in Tuscany, which was by no means encouraging for a contest with a Jesuit.
The imperious Paul V. was still the reigning Pope, and his good will towards Galileo would certainly only have lasted so long as he was entirely submissive. His dialectic reply, which was pervaded by cutting irony aimed at a father of the order of Jesuits, even sometimes making him appear ridiculous, could not have been much to the taste of a Pope to whom the inviolability of the Church and her ministers was all in all. It is characteristic of this pontiff that, as appears from the negotiations with James I., he seriously claimed the right of deposing kings, and called every attempt to make him relinquish this claim "a heretical proceeding," and pronounced the writings of some Venetian ecclesiastics who disputed it, to be worse than Calvinistic. Just as this stern
- ↑ Compare the letters of Stelluti (27th January, 1620) to Prince Cesi, 4th March and 18th May, 1620; and from Mgr. Ciampoli, 18th May, 1620, to Galileo. (Op. viii. pp. 436-439, and 441-443.)
- ↑ See his letter of 12th and 17th July, 1620, to Galileo. (Op. viii. p. 447; Wolynski, "Lettere inedite," etc., p. 59.)
