his vindication not give satisfaction on all points he will reply in detail to objections, he proceeds to the second means of averting the journey to Rome.
He only wishes that his adversaries would be as ready to commit to paper what they have perhaps verbally and ad aures said against him, as he was to defend himself in writing. If they will not accept his written vindication, and still insist upon a verbal one, there was an Inquisitor, Nuncius, archbishop, and other high officials of the Church at Florence, whose summons he was quite ready to obey. He says:—"It appears to me that things of much greater importance are decided by this tribunal. And it is not likely that under the keen and watchful eyes of those who examined my book with full liberty to omit, to add, and to alter as seemed good to them, errors so weighty could escape that the authorities of this city should be incompetent to correct or punish them." This passage again clearly indicates that Galileo knew nothing whatever of the prohibition of 1616; that he had no idea of having broken his word to the ecclesiastical authorities. His only thought is of a revision of his work as the result of a conviction that it contained errors.[1]
The letter to the cardinal concludes with the following assurance:—"If neither my great age, nor my many bodily infirmities, nor the deep concern I feel, nor the wearisomeness of a journey under the present most unfavourable circumstances, are considered sufficient reasons, by this high and sacred tribunal, for granting a dispensation, or at least a delay, I will undertake the journey, esteeming obedience more than life."[2]
Niccolini could not deliver this letter to the cardinal imme-
