(63) For various utterances of Pope Urban against the Copernican theory
at this period, see extracts from the original documents given by
Gebler. For punishment of those who had shown some favor to Galileo,
see various citations, and especially those from the Vatican manuscript,
Gebler, p. 216. As to the text of the abjuration, see L'Epinois; also
Polacco, Anticopernicus, etc., Venice, 1644; and for a discussion
regarding its publication, see Favaro, Miscellanea Galileana, p. 804. It
is not probable that torture in the ordinary sense was administered to
Galileo, though it was threatened. See Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, for a
fair summing up of the case.

He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of all
coming ages, to perjure himself. To complete his dishonour, he was
obliged to swear that he would denounce to the Inquisition any other man
of science whom he should discover to be supporting the "heresy of the
motion of the earth."

Many have wondered at this abjuration, and on account of it have denied
to Galileo the title of martyr. But let such gainsayers consider the
circumstances. Here was an old man--one who had reached the allotted
threescore years and ten--broken with disappointments, worn out with
labours and cares, dragged from Florence to Rome, with the threat from
the Pope himself that if he delayed he should be "brought in chains";
sick in body and mind, given over to his oppressors by the Grand-Duke
who ought to have protected him, and on his arrival in Rome threatened
with torture. What the Inquisition was he knew well. He could remember
as but of yesterday the burning of Giordano Bruno in that same city for
scientific and philosophic heresy; he could remember, too, that only
eight years before this very time De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro,
having been seized by the Inquisition for scientific and other heresies,
had died in a dungeon, and that his body and his writings had been
publicly burned.

To the end of his life--nay, after his life was ended--the persecution
of Galileo was continued. He was kept in exile from his family, from his
friends, from his noble employments, and was held rigidly to his
promise not to speak of his theory. When, in the midst of intense bodily
sufferings from disease, and mental sufferings from calamities in his
family, he besought some little liberty, he was met with threats of
committal to a dungeon. When, at last, a special commission had r