" He was dismissed in disgrace, and
Galileo was forced to appear in the presence of the dread tribunal
without defender or adviser. There, as was so long concealed, but
as is now fully revealed, he was menaced with torture again and
again by express order of Pope Urban, and, as is also thoroughly
established from the trial documents themselves, forced to abjure
under threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of the
Pope; the Inquisition deferring in this whole matter to the papal
authority. All the long series of attempts made in the supposed
interest of the Church to mystify these transactions have at last
failed. The world knows now that Galileo was subjected certainly to
indignity, to imprisonment, and to threats equivalent to torture,
and was at last forced to pronounce publicly and on his knees his
recantation, as follows:
"I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on
my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy
Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the
error and the heresy of the movement of the earth.
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