ng with and looking after the
pupils; and the custom then was that whoever was engaged in such an
occupation should not wed.

The stormy opposition to Galileo was not without its advantages. We are
advertised no less by our rabid enemies than by our loving friends.
Cosimo the Second, Grand Duke of Tuscany, had intimated that Florence
would give the great astronomer a welcome. Galileo moved to Florence
under the protection of Cosimo, intending to devote all his time to
Science.

In giving up schoolteaching and popular lecturing, Galileo really made a
virtue of necessity. No orthodox lyceum course would tolerate him; he
was neither an impersonator nor an entertainer; the stereopticon and the
melodramatic were out of his line, and his passion for truth made him
impossible to the many.

He was treading the path of Bruno: the accusations, the taunts and
jeers, the denials and denunciations, were urging him on to an unseemly
earnestness.

Father Clavius said that Galileo never saw the satellites of Jupiter
until he had made an instrument that would create them; and if God had
intended that men should see strange things in the heavens, He would
have supplied them sufficient eyesight. The telescope was really a
devil's instrument.

Still another man declared that if the earth moved, acorns falling from
a high tree would all fall behind the tree and not directly under it.

Father Brini said that if the earth revolved, we would all fall off of
it into the air when it was upside down; moreover, its whirling through
space would create a wind that would sweep it bald.

Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why
stand ye gazing up into heaven?" Only he changed the word "Galilee" to
"Galileo," claiming it was the same thing, only different, and as reward
for his wit he was made a bishop.

Cardinal Bellarmine, a man of great energy, earnest, zealous, sincere,
learned--the Doctor Buckley of his day--showed how that: "if the
Copernican Theory should prevail, it would be the absolute undoing of
the Bible, and the destruction of the Church, rendering the death of
Christ futile. If the earth is only one of many planets, and not the
center of the universe, and the other planets are inhabited, the whole
plan of salvation fails, since the inhabitants of the other spheres are
without the Bible, and Christ did not die for them." This was the
argument of Father Lecazre, and many others who took their cue fro