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Updated: June 24, 2025
Galileo's proof of the Copernican theory marked the downfall of mediævalism and established astronomy on a firm foundation. But while his telescope multiplied a hundredfold the number of visible stars, more than a century elapsed before the true possibilities of sidereal astronomy were perceived.
Cardinal Barberino seems to have received notice of the state of Galileo's feelings, and, with a magnanimity which posterity will ever honour, he liberated the philosopher on his own responsibility; and in ten days after his first examination, and on the last day of April, he was restored to the hospitable roof of the Tuscan ambassador.
Hear Lydiat's life and Galileo's end. For the "patron," Johnson had originally written the "garret." The change was made after an experience of patronage to be presently described in connexion with the Dictionary. For London Johnson received ten guineas, and for the Vanity of Human Wishes fifteen. Though indirectly valuable, as increasing his reputation, such work was not very profitable.
Speculations as to the cause of sun-spots have never ceased from Galileo's time to ours. He supposed them to be clouds. Scheiner said they were the indications of tumultuous movements occasionally agitating the ocean of liquid fire of which he supposed the sun to be composed.
He made fun and sport of the theologians, as Samson did of the Philistines; and the Philistines of Galileo's day cut off his locks and put out his eyes when the Pope put him into their power, those Dominican inquisitors who made a crusade against human thought.
Wherefore, in Galileo's time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to burn had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation even the great pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and had leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.
It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and not to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, eternal legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of this former human wish. If Galileo's Inquisitors put a check upon the earth, which yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the Reformers' who arrested the moving man, and inhibited the moving God.
What becomes of all the riches of the soul, the piles and pyramids of precious thoughts which men heap together? Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe?
The Pope's argument had been put into the mouth of one of the characters in the Dialogue named "Simplicio." Galileo's enemies maintained that by adopting such a method for the expression of his Holiness's opinion, Galileo had intended to hold the Pope himself up to ridicule. Galileo's friends maintained that nothing could have been farther from his intention.
He swore that for the future he will never say nor write such things as may bring him under suspicion, and that if he does so he submits to all the pains and penalties of the sacred canons. This abjuration was subsequently read in Florence before Galileo's disciples, who had been specially summoned to attend.
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