lso Lecky,
History of Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 50. For the case of Descartes, see
Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, pp. 103, 110. For the facility
with which the term "atheist" has been applied from the early Aryans
down to believers in evolution, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, p.
420.

Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man, whose
cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Galileo's deduction of a
great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an
archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus.
Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and
intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astronomer.

Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to his
friend Castelli and to the Grand-Duchess Christine two letters to show
that his discoveries might be reconciled with Scripture. On a hint from
the Inquisition at Rome, the archbishop sought to get hold of these
letters and exhibit them as proofs that Galileo had uttered heretical
views of theology and of Scripture, and thus to bring him into the
clutch of the Inquisition. The archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to
let him see the original letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli
declines. The archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing
constantly and bitterly to the Inquisition against Galileo, professes
to Castelli the greatest admiration of Galileo's genius and a sincere
desire to know more of his discoveries. This not succeeding, the
archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open attack.

The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be
amusing were it not so fraught with evil. There were intrigues and
counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying; and in
the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass of priests,
bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes, Paul V and Urban
VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the Church, at the
tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the eve of the greatest errors
in Church policy the world has known, in all the intrigues and
deliberations of these consecrated leaders of the Church, no more
evidence of the guidance or presence of the Holy Spirit than in a caucus
of New York politicians at Tammany Hall.

But the opposing powers were too strong. In 1615 Galileo was summoned
before the Inquisition at Rome, and t