that the earth is the centre of the universe,
see Quetelet, Histoire des Sciences mathematiques et physiques,
Bruxelles, 1864, p. 170; also Madler, Geschichte der Astronomie, vol.
i, p. 274. For Bodin's opposition to the Copernican theory, see Hallam,
Literature of Europe; also Lecky. For Sir Thomas Brown, see his Vulgar
and Common Errors, book iv, chap. v; and as to the real reason for his
disbelief in the Copernican view, see Dr. Johnson's preface to his Life
of Browne, vol. i, p. xix, of his collected works.

IV. VICTORY OF THE CHURCH OVER GALILEO.

While news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had
established were coming in from all parts of Europe, Galileo prepared a
careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting the arguments for
and against the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, and offered to submit
to any conditions that the Church tribunals might impose, if they
would allow it to be printed. At last, after discussions which extended
through eight years, they consented, imposing a humiliating condition--a
preface written in accordance with the ideas of Father Ricciardi, Master
of the Sacred Palace, and signed by Galileo, in which the Copernican
theory was virtually exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not
at all as opposed to the Ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the
Inquisition under the direction of Pope Paul V.

This new work of Galileo--the Dialogo--appeared in 1632, and met with
prodigious success. It put new weapons into the hands of the supporters
of the Copernican theory. The pious preface was laughed at from one end
of Europe to the other. This roused the enemy; the Jesuits, Dominicans,
and the great majority of the clergy returned to the attack more violent
than ever, and in the midst of them stood Pope Urban VIII, most bitter
of all. His whole power was now thrown against Galileo. He was touched
in two points: first, in his personal vanity, for Galileo had put the
Pope's arguments into the mouth of one of the persons in the dialogue
and their refutation into the mouth of another; but, above all, he was
touched in his religious feelings. Again and again His Holiness
insisted to all comers on the absolute and specific declarations of Holy
Scripture, which prove that the sun and heavenly bodies revolve about
the earth, and declared that to gainsay them is simply to dispute
revelation. Certainly, if one ecclesiastic more than another ever seemed
NOT under