the refutation must be circulated as widely as possible. But the most repulsive feature in Magini's conduct towards Galileo is his double-facedness. He never openly ventured with any work into the arena himself, but incited others all the more from behind concealment.[1] Even if we do not, with Martin Hasdal and Alexander Sertini, accuse him of being exactly the instigator of the famous libel "Peregrinatio contra Nuncium Sidereum," published by his assistant, Martin Horky, against Galileo in 1610, which excited the indignation of all the right-minded learned world, we cannot acquit him of complicity with him, and of having had a hand, more or less, in that pamphlet. The suspicion is strongly confirmed by the ostentation with which Magini, when told of the publication of the "Peregrinatio," drove the author, with disgust and ridicule, out of his house, and took occasion to assert on all hands that he had nothing whatever to do with the shameful act of his famulus, an assertion in strange contradiction with the excuse afterwards made by Horky to Kepler.[2] By Kepler's advice Galileo did not do him the honour of answering. The task was undertaken by Wedderburn, a Scotchman, formerly a pupil of Galileo's, and Antonio Roffeni, professor of philosophy at the university of Bologna; the former at Padua during the same year, the latter at Bologna in 1611.[3]
Meanwhile, in July, 1610, Galileo had observed a new appearance in the heavens by means of his telescope, the ring of Saturn. In consequence, however, of the imper-
- ↑ Compare the letters of Martin Hasdal, Alexander Sertini, and Kepler to Galileo in 1610. (Op. viii. pp. 60-63, 65-68, 82-85, 88, 89, 101, 113-117.)
- ↑ See the letter which Kepler wrote about it to Galileo on 25th Oct. 1610. (Op. viii. pp. 113-117.)
- ↑ Wedderburn's reply was called: "Quatuor Problematum, quæ Martinius Horky contra Nuncium Sidereum de quatuor Planetis novis proposuit"; Roffeni's, "Epistola apologetica contra cœcam peregrinationem cujusdam furiosi Martini cognomine Horky editam adversus, Nuncium Sidereum."
