St. Peter, with the view also of obtaining a revocation of the sentence condemning the doctrine of Copernicus. During the two months which he spent in Rome he had six long audiences of the pope, who loaded him with presents, promised him a pension for his son Vincenzo, and recommended him to the special patronage of the new grand-duke of Tuscany. To these marks of affection he added, what was more significant, the appointment of the Abbé Castelli to be his mathematician—the individual to whom Galileo's famous letter had been addressed.
These acts of generosity, and even of affection, Galileo did not view in their proper light. His hostility to the church was unabated, and his resolution to teach and defend his opinions seems to have been coeval with the vow in which he renounced them. With this view he wrote and published in 1632 his great work, "The System of the World," in which he discusses the question between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems in four dialogues, carried on by three persons: Salviati, Sagredi, and Simplicio—the two first both philosophers and wits, and the last erroneously supposed to be the pope, a follower of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Poor Simplicio sinks under the philosophy and wit of his adversaries; and while the science of the catholic church is thus unmercifully exposed, the former decree of the inquisition is denounced with the severest irony. The infallible church was stunned with the unexpected blow, and Pope Urban, as if actuated by personal feelings, neither hesitated nor delayed to assert its supremacy and defend its dogmas. The philosopher, now old and infirm, in obedience to a summons from the inquisition which he had used all his influence to delay, arrived in Rome on the 13th February, 1633, after having remained in quarantine twenty days in the territory of Sienna, owing to the prevalence of an epidemic in Florence. The Tuscan ambassador announced his arrival to the commissary of the Holy Office, and he was allowed to remain under the roof of the ambassador. In April, when his trial commenced, he was removed to the Holy Office, where he occupied the fiscal's apartments, and where his table was provided by the Tuscan ambassador, and every reasonable indulgence allowed him. His examination took place at four different times; the two first on the 12th and 30th April, 1633, during his detention at the Holy Office; the third on the 10th May; and the fourth on the 21st June. It is generally believed, but denied by Biot and others, that Galileo was actually put to the torture. At his last examination he was at least threatened with it if he did not confess the truth, and thus menaced, he replied—"I do not hold, and I have not held the opinions of Copernicus since I was ordered to abandon them. I find myself in your hands: do with me what you please. I am here to make my submission, and I have not held this opinion since it was condemned." After this examination he was detained at the Holy Office, and was next day sent in a penitential dress to the convent of Minerva, where the inquisitors were assembled to give judgment. A long and elaborate sentence was pronounced upon him, detailing his offences, demanding a retractation of his heresies, prohibiting the sale of his "System of the World," and condemning him to the inquisition during pleasure, and to the weekly recitation of the seven penitential psalms during the next three years.
In conformity with this sentence, Galileo, with his hands on the holy evangelists, invoked the divine aid in abjuring and never again teaching that the earth moved and the sun stood still. He signed the awful abjuration, and was committed to his prison cell. Thus were truths eternal and immutable denounced by the presumptuous priest, and thus abjured by the timid philosopher to whom the Almighty had taught them.
The sentence of abjuration was publicly read at several universities. At Florence it was published on the church of Santa Crocé. The inquisitor at Florence, who had heedlessly licensed the printing of the "Dialogues," was reprimanded; and Riccardi, the master of the palace, and Campoli, the secretary of the pope, were dismissed from their situations for having allowed the license to be obtained.
The sentence of confinement in the prison of the inquisition was changed by the pope to detention at the villa of Medici in the garden of Trinita del Monte, to which he was conducted on the 24th June by his friend Niccolini, the Tuscan ambassador. As Florence was then suffering under a contagious disease, it was agreed that the palace of the Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini at Sienna should be the place of his confinement, and he accordingly quitted Rome for that city on the 6th of July, 1633. Having resided six months with this excellent prelate, he was allowed to return to his own villa at Arcetri under the same restrictions. Galileo had no sooner rejoined his family than his favourite daughter Maria was seized with a complaint of peculiar severity. He had arrived at Arcetri in December, 1633, and in the month of March his daughter's illness proved fatal. This heavy blow, and the recurrence of some of his old complaints, threw him into a state of melancholy, which excited the sympathy of his friends. Applications were made in vain to permit him to return to Florence, and he therefore remained five years at Arcetri, from 1634 to 1638, without any remission of his confinement. In 1638, however, the pope of his own accord permitted him to remove to Florence, under the condition that he should neither leave his house nor admit his friends. During Galileo's confinement at Sienna and Arcetri, he composed his "Dialogues on Local Motion," which are carried on by Salviati, Sagredi, and Simplicio—a fact which makes it very probable that Simplicio was not intended to be the representative of Urban VIII. Galileo regarded this work as the best of his writings, and he had the greatest difficulty to get it printed. Attempts were made to have it printed at Vienna and at Prague; but though he was aided in these attempts by Cardinals Dietrichstein and Harrach, they were frustrated either by the influence or the dread of the jesuits. He succeeded, however, in inducing Louis Elzivir to print them at Amsterdam; and they were published under the pretence that they were pirated from a manuscript copy sent to the count de Noailles, to whom they are dedicated. The Latin translation of the Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican System, by Berneggeo, was published under a protest from Galileo, though he not only approved of its appearance, but rewarded the translator with a valuable telescope. Having finished his "Dialogues on Motion" in the spring of 1636, Galileo resumed his astronomical studies. In that year he discovered one of those changes in the lunar disc called the libration, namely, the diurnal libration, and he appears to have had some knowledge also of the libration in longitude, the libration in latitude having been afterwards discovered by Hevelius, and the spheroidal libration more recently by La Grange. About this time he was disturbed by an affection of the cornea which interfered with his sight, and in 1637 the complete opacity of that membrane produced total blindness. He had previously resumed the subject of the longitude, and had offered his method to the states-general of Holland; but though they sent him a gold chain as a mark of their respect, and promised to reward him should his method prove successful; yet, owing to the sudden death of his friend, Renieri, and other causes, no further steps were taken in the matter. There seems to be no doubt that in 1641, in the last year of his life, Galileo had the idea of applying the pendulum to clocks; and that in consequence of his blindness, he intrusted the execution of his plan to his son, who in 1649 constructed a pendulum clock with his own hands. The documents by which these facts are proved have, for reasons which it is difficult to discover, and which appear to be of a very doubtful character, affecting the good name of Viviani, been long withheld from the public; but while we must give the Italian philosopher the merit of his invention, we must at the same time add our opinion to that of very competent judges, that Huygens never heard of what had been done in Italy, and must be considered as the original inventor.—See an interesting article by Biot in the Journal des Savans, October, 1858, pp. 661-681; and the Dissertation of Eugenic Albèri—Dell' Orologio a Pendolo di Galileo—in the new edition of Galileo's works, in twenty volumes, published at Florence in 1858.
The blindness of Galileo having excited the sympathy of the inquisition; he was now allowed the freest intercourse with his friends. The grand-duke of Tuscany frequently visited him; and among the strangers who desired to see the martyr of science, were Gassendi, Diodati, and John Milton. During the last three years of his life his favourite pupil Viviani, formed one of his family; and in October, 1641, the celebrated Torricelli enjoyed the same privilege. Though his health was now greatly impaired not only by mental labour, but by attacks of hypochondria, rheumatism, and almost total deafness, yet he was able to carry on his studies. He had begun a continuation of his "Dialogues on Motion," and was occupied with the study of the force of percussion, when he was attacked with fever and palpitation of the heart, which, after two months' suffering, terminated fatally on the 8th of January, 1642, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. His friends subscribed a large sum for erecting
