A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with
which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and
first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire
that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:
"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of
thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast
on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because
they were ignorant."
There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and
there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for
whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different
from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two
councils.
Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree
against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the
said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is.
In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against
the circulation of the blood.
An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been
subpoenaed.
At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which
it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have
three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost
her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an
oak leaf.
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