owed time to make his defence: those holy Inquisitors would not
unnecessarily harm a hair of his head. Nor was it probably their object
to inflict bodily torments: these would call out sympathy and degrade
the tribunal. It was enough to threaten these torments, to which they
did not wish to resort except in case of necessity. There is no evidence
that Galileo was personally tortured. He was indeed a martyr, but not a
sufferer except in humiliated pride. Probably the object of his enemies
was to silence him, to degrade him, to expose his name to infamy, to
arrest the spread of his doctrines, to bow his old head in shame, to
murder his soul, to make him stab himself, and be his own executioner,
by an act which all posterity should regard as unworthy of his name
and cause.

After a fitting time has elapsed,--four months of dignified
session,--the mind of the Holy Tribunal is made up. Its judgment is
ready. On the 22d of June, 1633, the prisoner appears in penitential
dress at the convent of Minerva, and the presiding cardinal, in his
scarlet robes, delivers the sentence of the Court,--that Galileo, as a
warning to others, and by way of salutary penance, be condemned to the
formal prison of the Holy Office, and be ordered to recite once a week
the seven Penitential Psalms for the benefit of his soul,--apparently a
light sentence, only to be nominally imprisoned a few days, and to
repeat those Psalms which were the life of blessed saints in mediaeval
times. But this was nothing. He was required to recant, to abjure the
doctrines he had taught; not in private, but publicly before the world.
Will he recant? Will he subscribe himself an imposter? Will he abjure
the doctrines on which his fame rests? Oh, tell it not in Gath! The
timid, infirm, life-loving old patriarch of science falls. He is not
great enough for martyrdom. He chooses shame. In an evil hour this
venerable sage falls down upon his knees before the assembled cardinals,
and reads aloud this recantation: "I, Galileo Galilei, aged seventy, on
my knees before you most reverend lords, and having my eye on the Holy
Gospel, which I do touch with my lips, thus publish and declare, that I
believe, and always have believed, and always will believe every
article which the Holy Catholic Roman Church holds and teaches. And as I
have written a book in which I have maintained that the sun is the
centre, which doctrine is repugnant to the Holy Scriptures, I, with
sincere heart an