examining his book, reported that it did distinctly defend and maintain the obnoxious doctrines, and Galilei, having been meanwhile privately advised by the Commissary-General of the Inquisition to adopt a more submissive attitude, admitted at the next hearing that on reading his book again he recognised that parts of it gave the arguments for Coppernicanism more strongly than he had at first thought. The pitiable state to which he had been reduced was shewn by the offer which he now made to write a continuation to the Dialogue which should as far as possible refute his own Coppernican arguments. At the final hearing on June 21st he was examined under threat of torture,[1] and on the next day he was brought up for sentence. He was convicted "of believing and holding the doctrines—false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures—that the sun is the centre of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move and is not the centre of the world; also that an opinion can be held and supported as probable after it has been declared and decreed contrary to the Holy Scriptures." In punishment, he was required to "abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors," the abjuration being at once read by him on his knees; and was further condemned to the "formal prison of the Holy Office" during the pleasure of his judges, and required to repeat the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years. On the following day the Pope changed the sentence of imprisonment into confinement at a country-house near Rome belonging to the Grand Duke, and Galilei moved there on June 24th.[2] On petitioning to be allowed to return to Florence, he was at first allowed to go as far as Siena, and at the end of the year was permitted to retire to his country-house at Arcetri near Florence, on condition of not leaving it for the future without permission, while his intercourse with scientific and other friends was jealously watched.
- ↑ The official minute is: Et ei dicto quod dicat veritatem, alias devenietur ad torturam.
- ↑ The three days June 21-24 are the only ones which Galilei could have spent in an actual prison, and there seems no reason to suppose that they were spent elsewhere than in the comfortable rooms in which it is known that he lived during most of April.
