IV. VICTORY OF THE CHURCH OVER GALILEO.
While news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had
established were coming in from all parts of Europe, Galileo
prepared a careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting
the arguments for and against the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems,
and offered to submit to any conditions that the Church tribunals
might impose, if they would allow it to be printed. At last, after
discussions which extended through eight years, they consented,
imposing a humiliating condition--a preface written in accordance
with the ideas of Father Ricciardi, Master of the Sacred Palace,
and signed by Galileo, in which the Copernican theory was virtually
exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not at all as opposed
to the Ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the Inquisition
under the direction of Pope Paul V.
This new work of Galileo--the _Dialogo_--appeared in 1632, and met
with prodigious success. It put new weapons into the hands of the
supporters of the Copernican theory.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290