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Updated: June 24, 2025
The significance of this circumstance has been commented on in connection with the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope. We can judge of the anxiety felt by Sister Maria Celeste about her beloved father during these terrible trials. The wife of the ambassador Niccolini, Galileo's steadfast friend, most kindly wrote to give the nun whatever quieting assurances the case would permit.
Religious prejudices however, and their effects and thanks be to God their almost final conclusion too may be found nearer home than Galileo's tomb; while Milton has a monument in the same cathedral with Dr. South, who perhaps would have given credit to no human information, which should have told him that event would take place.
But it was work of a different kind that established Galileo's popular reputation. In 1609 Galileo heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had combined a pair of lenses so as to magnify distant objects. Working on this hint, he solved the same problem, first on paper and then in practice. So he came to make one of the first telescopes ever used in astronomy.
This fact threw a new light upon Galileo's difficulties, and he immediately drew the conclusion, which he considered to be indubitable, "that there were in the heavens three stars which revolved round Jupiter, in the same manner as Venus and Mercury revolve round the sun."
In 1633 he finished his treatise on "The World; or on Light," an epitome of his "Physics," which, however, he deemed it wise, in view of Galileo's fate, to withhold from publication during his lifetime.
But, however this may have been, the treatise of Guiducci afforded a favourable point of attack to Galileo's enemies, and the dangerous task was entrusted to Horatio Grassi, a learned Jesuit, who, in a work entitled The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, criticised the discourse on comets, under the feigned name of Lotario Sarsi. Discorso delle Comete.
I know not whether it be in the vicinity of Galileo's tower, and in the influence of his spirit, but I have hardly ever watched the stars with such interest as now. September 29th. Last evening I met Mr. Powers at Miss Blagden's, and he talked about his treatment, by our government in reference, to an appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars made by Congress for a statue by him.
This was maintained only partly by Galileo's visits, which were very irregular and were, indeed, often suspended for long intervals. But his letters to this daughter were evidently frequent and affectionate, especially in the latter part of his life. Most unfortunately, however, all his letters have been lost.
As spots on the sun were at that time unknown, Kepler did not hesitate to publish the fact in 1607, in his Mercurius in Sole visus; but when Galileo, a few years afterwards, discovered a great number of similar spots with the telescope, Kepler retracted his opinions, and acknowledged that Galileo's discovery afforded an explanation, also, of many similar observations in old writers, which he had found it difficult to reconcile with the actual motions of Mercury.
Sir William Herschel began his observations of double stars in the hope of discovering an annual parallax of the stars. In this he was following a suggestion of Galileo's. The presumption is that, if there be no physical connection between the stars of a pair, the largest is the nearest, and has the greatest parallax.
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