taunted as
a criminal who had been actually punished for his offences. As a
refutation of these calumnies, Cardinal Bellarmine had given him a
certificate in his own handwriting, declaring that he neither abjured
his opinions, nor suffered punishment for them; and that the doctrine of
the earth's motion, and the sun's stability, was only denounced to him
as contrary to Scripture, and as one which could not be defended. To
this certificate the Cardinal did not add, because he was not called
upon to do it, that Galileo was enjoined not _to teach in any manner_
the doctrine thus denounced; and Galileo ingeniously avails himself of
this supposed omission, to account for his having, in the lapse of
fourteen or sixteen years, forgotten the injunction. He assigned the
same excuse for his having omitted to mention this injunction to
Riccardi, and to the Inquisitor-General at Florence, when he obtained
the licence to print his Dialogues. The court held the production of
this certificate to be at once a proof and an aggravation of his
offence, because the certificate itself declared that the obnoxious
doctrines had been pronounced contrary to the Holy Scriptures.

Having duly weighed the confessions and excuses of their prisoner, and
considered the general merits of the case, the Inquisition came to an
agreement upon the sentence which they were to pronounce, and appointed
the 22d of June as the day on which it was to be delivered. Two days
previous to this, Galileo was summoned to appear at the holy office; and
on the morning of the 21st, he obeyed the summons. On the 22d of June he
was clothed in a penitential dress, and conducted to the convent of
Minerva, where the Inquisition was assembled to give judgment. A long
and elaborate sentence was pronounced, detailing the former proceedings
of the Inquisition, and specifying the offences which he had committed
in teaching heretical doctrines, in violating his former pledges, and in
obtaining by improper means a license for the printing of his Dialogues.
After an invocation of the name of our Saviour, and of the Holy Virgin,
Galileo is declared to have brought himself under strong suspicions of
heresy, and to have incurred all the censures and penalties which are
enjoined against delinquents of this kind; but from all these
consequences he is to be held absolved, provided that with a sincere
heart, and a faith unfeigned, he abjures and curses the heresies he has
cherished, as well