obligation; for, although by virtue of the authority conferred on it, it can enforce obedience and inflict punishment, its decrees are not "infallible." They can, however, be made so, according to ecclesiastical views, either by the subsequent express confirmation of the Pope by a brief in his name, as supreme head of the Christian Catholic Church; or by the decree of the Congregation being originally provided with the clause: "Sanctissimus confirmavit et publicari mandavit." But the decree of 5th March, 1616, is neither confirmed by a subsequent brief, nor does it contain that special formula; and, therefore, in spite of this decree, which declared the opinion of Copernicus to be "false and contrary to Holy and Divine Scripture," it might still be considered as undecided, and even probable, because the decree might be fallible, and did not entail the obligation to adopt its sentence as an article of faith.[1]
This must also have been the view of the ecclesi-
- ↑ Compare the excellent essay: "La Condemnation de Galilée. Lapsus des ecrivains qui l'opposent à la doctrine de l'infallibilité du Pape," von Abbé Bouix. Also Pieralisi, pp. 121–131; and Gilbert's "La Procés de Galilée," pp. 19–30. We may remark here, that according to these principles the doctrine of Copernicus was not made heretical by the sentence of the Inquisition, because the decree never received the Pope's official ratification. To confirm this statement we subjoin some remarks by theological authorities. Gassendi remarks in his great work, "De motu impresso a motore translato" (Epist. ii. t. iii. p. 519), published nine years after the condemnation of Galileo, on the absence of the papal ratification in the sentence of the Holy Tribunal, and that therefore the negation of the Copernican theory was not an article of faith. As a good priest he recognises the high authority of a decision of the Congregation, and subjects his personal opinions to it. Father Riccioli, in his comprehensive work, "Almagestum novum," published nine years after Gassendi's, reproduces Gassendi's statement word for word (t. i., pars. 2, p. 489), and entirely concurs in it, even in the book which was meant to refute the Copernican theory at all points (pp. 495, 496, and 500). Father Fabri, a French Jesuit, afterwards Grand Penitentiary at Rome, says in a dissertation published there in 1661 against the "Systema Saturnium," of Huyghens (p. 49), that as no valid evidence can be adduced for the truth of the new system, the authorities of the Church are quite right in interpreting the passages of Holy Scripture relating to the system of the universe literally; "but," he adds, "if ever
