of Galileo which threatened to overturn all their previous belief. The learned, and still more the semi-learned, world of Italy felt the ground tremble beneath their feet; and it seemed to them as if the foundations of all physics, mathematics, philosophy, and religion, were, with the authority of Aristotle, which had reigned for two thousand years, being borne to the grave. This did not present itself to them as progress, but as sacrilege.
A young fanatic, the monk Sizy (the same who seven years later was broken on the wheel for political crimes at Paris), was the first to transfer what had been a purely scientific discussion to the slippery arena of theology. At the beginning of 1611 he published at Venice a work called "Dianoja Astronomica"[1] in answer to the "Sidercus Nuncius," in which he asserted that the existence of the moons of Jupiter was incompatible with the doctrines of Holy Scripture. He appropriately dedicated his book to that semi-prince of the blood, John de' Medici, who was known to be the mortal enemy of Galileo. The author, as we learn from his own work, was one of those contemptible men who carefully abstained from even looking through a telescope although firmly convinced that the wonders announced by Galileo were not to be seen. Galileo did not vouchsafe to defend himself from this monkish attack any more than from Horky's libel the year before. He contented himself with writing on the back of the title page of the copy still preserved in the National Library at Florence the following lines from Ariosto:—
"Soggiunse il duca: Non sarebbe onesto
Che io volessi la battaglia torre,
Di quel che m' offerisco manifesto,
Quando ti piaccia, innanci agli occhi torre."[2]
- ↑ The full title was: "Dianoja Astronomica, Optica, Physica, qua Siderei Nuncii rumor de quatuor Planetis a Galilaeo Galilaeo Mathematico celeberrimo, recens perspicilli cujusdam ope conspectis, vanus redditur. Auctore Francisco Sitio Florentino."
- ↑ Op. vi. p. 94, note i; and xv, "Bibliografia Galileiana," p. vi.
