only alteration being that he should like not only to be first mathematican at Pisa, but also first mathematician and philosopher to the Grand Duke himself,[1] the decree summoning him to the court of Tuscany in this twofold capacity was issued on 12th July, 1610.
Notwithstanding all the great advantages which this new post secured to him, it was a very bad exchange for Galileo from the free republican soil to the doubtful protection of a princely house which, although very well disposed towards him, could never offer so decided an opposition to the Roman curia as the republic of Venice. It was indeed the first step which precipitated Galileo's fate.[2] In the Venetian republic full liberty of doctrine was really enjoyed, in religious Tuscany it was only nominal. In Venice politics and science were secure from Jesuitical intrigues; for when Pope Paul V. thought proper to place the contumacious republic under an interdict in April, 1606, the Jesuit fathers had been compelled to quit the soil of Venice "for ever."[3] In Tuscany, on the contrary, where they felt quite at home, their influence weighed heavily on everything affecting their own interests, and especially therefore on politics and science. Had Galileo never left the pure, wholesome air of the free city for the stifling Romish atmosphere of a court, he would have escaped the subsequent persecutions of Rome; for the republic which, not long before, had been undaunted by the papal excommunication of their doge and senate, would assuredly never have given up one of its university professors to the vengeance of the Inquisition.
At the beginning of September, 1610, Galileo, to the no small displeasure of the Paduans, left their university, at which eighteen years before he had found willing recep-
- ↑ Op. vi. p. 112.
- ↑ Libri justly says, p. 38: "this mistake was the beginning of all his misfortunes."
- ↑ In a letter from Galileo to his brother Michel Angelo, of May 11th, 1606, he describes the somewhat comical scene of the nocturnal deportation of the Jesuits from the city of Lagunes. (Op. vi. p. 32.)
