[130b]
III. THE WAR UPON GALILEO.
On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last
concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican
theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the
world as a truth. Against him, then, the war was long and bitter.
The supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared his
discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy.
Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the
Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked
him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors,
congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him,
and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.[131]
I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I
can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language,
since the whole history was placed in a new light by the
revelations of the trial documents in the Vatican Library, honestly
published for the first time by L'Epinois in 1867, and since that
by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and others.
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