[131b]
In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites by
showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either
declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the
satellites as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius
declared that "to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an
instrument which would create them." In vain did Galileo try to
save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the
Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he
argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied
to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his
heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than Luther or Calvin."
The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been
carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the
doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for
Joshua, by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are
fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the sun
"runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other.
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