ase,
since it was ignorant of science. In 1615 it was decreed that Galileo
should renounce his obnoxious doctrines, and pledge himself neither to
defend nor publish them in future. And Galileo accordingly, in dread of
prison, appeared before Cardinal Bellarmine and declared that he would
renounce the doctrines he had defended. This cardinal was not an
ignorant man. He was the greatest theologian of the Catholic Church; but
his bitterness and rancor in reference to the new doctrines were as
marked as his scholastic learning. The Pope, supposing that Galileo
would adhere to his promise, was gracious and kind.

But the philosopher could not resist the temptation of ridiculing the
advocates of the old system. He called them "paper philosophers." In
private he made a mockery of his persecutors. One Saisi undertook to
prove from Suidas that the Babylonians used to cook eggs by whirling
them swiftly on a sling; to which he replied: "If Saisi insists on the
authority of Suidas, that the Babylonians cooked eggs by whirling them
on a sling, I will believe it. But I must add that we have eggs and
slings, and strong men to whirl them, yet they will not become cooked;
nay, if they were hot at first, they more quickly became cool; and as
there is nothing wanting to us but to be Babylonians, it follows that
being Babylonians is the true cause why the eggs became hard." Such was
his prevailing mockery and ridicule. "Your Eminence," writes one of his
friends to the Cardinal D'Este, "would be delighted if you could hear
him hold forth in the midst of fifteen or twenty, all violently
attacking him, sometimes in one house, and sometimes in another; but he
is armed after such a fashion that he laughs them all to scorn."

Galileo, after his admonition from the Inquisition, and his promise to
hold his tongue, did keep comparatively quiet for a while, amusing
himself with mechanics, and striving to find out a new way of
discovering longitude at sea. But the want of better telescopes baffled
his efforts; and even to-day it is said "that no telescope has yet been
made which is capable of observing at sea the eclipses of Jupiter's
satellites, by which on shore this method of finding longitude has many
advantages."

On the accession of a new Pope (1623), Urban VIII., who had been his
friend as Cardinal Barberini, Galileo, after eight years of silence,
thought that he might now venture to publish his great work on the
Ptolemaic and Copernican sy