The Sleepwalkers (241 page)

The
only
real
penalty
inflicted
on
Galileo
was
that
he
had
to
abjure
his
conviction.
On
the
other
hand,
up
to
the
age
of
fifty
Galileo
had
been
hiding
that
conviction,
and
at
his
trial
he
had
twice
offered
to
add
a
chapter
to
the
Dialogue
refuting
Copernicus.
To
recant
in
the
Basilica
of
the
Convent
of
Minerva,
when
everybody
understood
that
this
was
an
enforced
ceremony,
was
certainly
much
less
dishonourable
for
a
scholar
than
to
publish
a
scientific
work
contrary
to
his
convictions.
One
of
the
paradoxa
of
this
perverse
story
is
that
the
Inquisition
had
thus
in
fact
saved
Galileo's
honour
in
the
eyes
of
posterity
–
no
doubt
unintentionally.

Shortly
after
the
conclusion
of
the
trial,
a
copy
of
the
prohibited
Dialogue
was
smuggled
out
to
Kepler's
old
friend,
the
faithful
Bernegger
in
Strasburg,
who
arranged
for
a
Latin
translation;
it
was
published
in
1635
and
circulated
widely
in
Europe.
A
year
later,
Bernegger
also
arranged
for
Italian
and
Latin
versions
of
the
Letter
to
the
Grand
Duchess
Christina
to
be
published
in
Strasburg.

Galileo
himself
spent
the
year
following
the
trial
in
writing
the
book
on
which
his
true
and
immortal
fame
rests:
the
Dialogues
concerning
Two
New
Sciences
.
At
long
last,
in
his
seventies,
he
rediscovered
his
real
vocation:
the
science
of
dynamics.
He
had
abandoned
it
a
quarter
century
before,
when
he
embarked
on
his
propaganda
crusade
for
the
heliocentric
astronomy
of
which
he
had
only
a
sketchy
knowledge.
The
crusade
had
ended
in
a
fiasco;
and
out
of
the
shambles
modern
physics
was
born.

The
book
was
completed
in
1636,
when
Galileo
was
seventy-two.
As
he
could
not
hope
for
an
imprimatur
in
Italy,
the
manuscript
was
smuggled
out
to
Leyden
and
published
by
the
Elzevirs;
but
it
could
also
have
been
printed
in
Vienna
where
it
was
licensed,
probably
with
Imperial
consent,
by
the
Jesuit
Father
Paulus.

In
the following year his right eye was blinded by an inflammation, and
by the end of the year both eyes were lost.

"Alas,"
he
wrote
to
his
friend
Diodati,
"your
friend
and
servant
Galileo
has
been
for
the
last
month
hopelessly
blind;
so
that
this
heaven,
this
earth,
this
universe,
which
I,
by
marvelous
discoveries
and
clear
demonstrations,
have
enlarged
a
hundred
thousand
times
beyond
the
belief
of
the
wise
men
of
bygone
ages,
henceforward
for
me
is
shrunk
into
such
small
space
as
is
filled
by
my
own
bodily
sensations."
⁴⁶

Yet
he
kept
on
dictating
additional
chapters
to
the
Two
New
Sciences
,
and
received
a
stream
of
distinguished
visitors;
among
them
Milton
in
1638.

He
died
at
the
age
of
seventy-eight,
in
1642,
the
year
Newton
was
born,
surrounded
by
friends
and
pupils
–
Castelli,
Toricelli,
Viviani.

His
bones,
unlike
Kepler's,
were
not
scattered
into
the
wind;
they
rest
in
the
Pantheon
of
the
Florentines,
the
Church
of
Santa
Croce,
next
to
the
remains
of
Michelangelo
and
Machiavelli.
His
epitaph
was
written
for
him
by
posterity:
eppur
si
muove
–
the
famous
words
which
he
never
uttered
at
his
trial.
When
his
friends
wanted
to
erect
a
monument
over
his
grave,
Urban
told
the
Tuscan
Ambassador
that
this
would
be
a
bad
example
for
the
world,
since
the
dead
man
"had
altogether
given
rise
to
the
greatest
scandal
throughout
Christendom."
That
was
the
end
of
the
"perilous
adulation",
and
the
end
of
one
of
the
most
disastrous
episodes
in
the
history
of
ideas;
for
it
was
Galileo's
ill-conceived
crusade
which
had
discredited
the
heliocentric
system
and
precipitated
the
divorce
of
science
from
faith.
^*

____________________