§ 156.4. =Galileo and the Inquisition.=--Galileo Galilei, professor of mathematics at Pisa and Padua, who died in A.D. 1642, among his many distinguished services to the physical, mathematical, and astronomical sciences, has the honour of being the pioneer champion of the Copernican system. On this account he was charged by the monks with contradicting Scripture. In A.D. 1616 Paul V., through Cardinal Bellarmine, threatened him with the Inquisition and prison unless he agreed to cease from vindicating and lecturing upon his heretical doctrine. He gave the required promise. But in A.D. 1632 he published a dialogue, in which three friends discussed the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, without any formal conclusion, but giving overwhelming reasons in favour of the latter. Urban VIII., in A.D. 1636, called upon the Inquisition to institute a process against him. He was forced to recant, was condemned to prison for an indefinite period, but was soon liberated through powerful influence. How far the old man of seventy-two years of age was compelled by torture to retract is still a matter of controversy. It is, however, quite evident that it was forced from him by threats. But that Galileo went out after his recantation, gnashing his teeth and stamping his feet, muttering, “Nevertheless it moves!” is a legend of a romancing age. This, however, is the fact, that the Congregation of the Index declared the Copernican theory to be false, irrational, and directly contrary to Scripture; and that even in A.D. 1660 Alexander VII., with apostolic authority, formally confirmed this decree and pronounced it _ex cathedrâ_ (§ 149, 4) irrevocable. It was only in A.D. 1822 that the curia set it aside, and in a new edition of the Index (§ 149, 14) in A.D. 1835 omitted the works of Galileo as well as those of Copernicus.[459]
§ 156.5. =The Controversy on the Immaculate Conception= (§ 112, 4) received a new impulse from the nun =Mary of Jesus, died 1665, of Agreda=, in Old Castile, superior of the cloister there of the Immaculate Conception, writer of the “Mystical City of God.” This book professed to give an inspired account of the life of the Virgin, full of the strangest absurdities about the immaculate conception. The Sorbonne pronounced it offensive and silly; the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and Rome forbad the reading of it; but the Franciscans defended it as a divine revelation. A violent controversy ensued, which Alexander VII. silenced in A.D. 1661 by expressing approval of the doctrine of the immaculate conception set forth in the book.--Continuation, § 185, 2.