submit. They said resistance was hopeless and fatal. Within the memory
of men still young, Giordano Bruno had been burnt alive for a similar
heresy. This had happened while Galileo was at Padua. Venice was full of
it. And since that, only eight years ago indeed, Antonio de Dominis,
Archbishop of Salpetria, had been sentenced to the same fate: "to be
handed over to the secular arm to be dealt with as mercifully as
possible without the shedding of blood." So ran the hideous formula
condemning a man to the stake. After his sentence, this unfortunate man
died in the dungeons in which he had been incarcerated six years--died
what is called a "natural" death; but the sentence was carried out,
notwithstanding, on his lifeless body and his writings. His writings for
which he had been willing to die!

These were the tender mercies of the Inquisition; and this was the kind
of meaning lurking behind many of their well-sounding and merciful
phrases. For instance, what they call "rigorous examination," we call
"torture." Let us, however, remember in our horror at this mode of
compelling a prisoner to say anything they wished, that they were a
legally constituted tribunal; that they acted with well established
rules, and not in passion; and that torture was a recognized mode of
extracting evidence, not only in ecclesiastical but in civil courts, at
that date.

All this, however, was but poor solace to the pitiable old philosopher,
thus ruthlessly haled up and down, questioned and threatened, threatened
and questioned, receiving agonizing letters from his daughter week by
week, and trying to keep up a little spirit to reply as happily and
hopefully as he could.

This condition of things could not go on. From February to June the
suspense lasted. On the 20th of June he was summoned again, and told he
would be wanted all next day for a rigorous examination. Early in the
morning of the 21st he repaired thither, and the doors were shut. Out of
those chambers of horror he did not reappear till the 24th. What went on
all those three days no one knows. He himself was bound to secrecy. No
outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously
guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually
underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been
expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several eminent
scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be indisputable
(geometrically ce