m him.

Galileo was denounced as "atheist" and "infidel"--epithets that do not
frighten us much now, since they have been applied to most of the really
great and good men who have ever lived. But then such words set fire to
masses of inflammable prejudices, and there were conflagrations of wrath
and hate against which it was vain to argue.

The Archbishop of Pisa especially felt it incumbent upon him "to bring
Galileo to justice."

Galileo was born at Pisa, educated there, taught in the University; and
now he had disgraced the place and brought it into disrepute.

Galileo was still in communication with teachers at Pisa, and the
Archbishop made it his business to have letters written to Galileo
asking certain specific questions. One man, Castelli, declined to be
used for the purpose of entrapping Galileo, but others there were who
loaned themselves to the plan.

In Sixteen Hundred Sixteen, Galileo received a formal summons from Pope
Paul the Fifth to come to Rome and purge himself of heresies that he had
expressed in letters which were then in the hands of the Inquisition.

Galileo appealed to his friends at Florence, but they were powerless.
When the Pope issued an order, it could not be waived. The greatest
thinker of his time journeyed to Rome and faced the greatest theologian
of his day, Cardinal Bellarmine.

The Cardinal firmly and clearly showed Galileo the error of his way.
Galileo offered to prove for the Cardinal by astronomical observations
that the Copernican Theory was true. Cardinal Bellarmine said that there
was only one truth and that was spiritual truth. That the Bible was
true, or it was not. If not, then was religion a fallacy and our hope of
Heaven a delusion.

Galileo contended that the death of Christ had nothing to do with the
truth, so Science and these things should not be shuffled and confused.

This attitude of mind greatly shocked the Inquisitors, and they made
haste to inform the Pope, who at once issued an order that the
astronomer should be placed in a dungeon until he saw fit to disavow
that the sun was the center of the universe, and the earth moves.

A sort of compromise, it seems, was here effected by Galileo's promise
not to further teach that the earth revolves.

He was kept at Rome under strict surveillance for some months, but was
finally allowed to return to Florence, and cautioned that he must cease
all public teaching, speaking and writing on the subject of astronomy.