After a fitting time has elapsed,—­four months of dignified session,—­the mind of the Holy Tribunal is made up.  Its judgment is ready.  On the 22d of June, 1633, the prisoner appears in penitential dress at the convent of Minerva, and the presiding cardinal, in his scarlet robes, delivers the sentence of the Court,—­that Galileo, as a warning to others, and by way of salutary penance, be condemned to the formal prison of the Holy Office, and be ordered to recite once a week the seven Penitential Psalms for the benefit of his soul,—­apparently a light sentence, only to be nominally imprisoned a few days, and to repeat those Psalms which were the life of blessed saints in mediaeval times.  But this was nothing.  He was required to recant, to abjure the doctrines he had taught; not in private, but publicly before the world.  Will he recant?  Will he subscribe himself an imposter?  Will he abjure the doctrines on which his fame rests?  Oh, tell it not in Gath!  The timid, infirm, life-loving old patriarch of science falls.  He is not great enough for martyrdom.  He chooses shame.  In an evil hour this venerable sage falls down upon his knees before the assembled cardinals, and reads aloud this recantation:  “I, Galileo Galilei, aged seventy, on my knees before you most reverend lords, and having my eye on the Holy Gospel, which I do touch with my lips, thus publish and declare, that I believe, and always have believed, and always will believe every article which the Holy Catholic Roman Church holds and teaches.  And as I have written a book in which I have maintained that the sun is the centre, which doctrine is repugnant to the Holy Scriptures, I, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, do abjure and detest, and curse the said error and heresy, and all other errors contrary to said Holy Church, whose penance I solemnly swear to observe faithfully, and all other penances which have been or shall be laid upon me.”

It would appear from this confession that he did not declare his doctrines false, only that they were in opposition to the Scriptures; and it is also said that as he arose from his knees he whispered to a friend, “It does move, nevertheless.”  As some excuse for him, he acted with the certainty that he would be tortured if he did not recant; and at the worst he had only affirmed that his scientific theory was in opposition to the Scriptures.  He had not denied his master, like Peter; he had not recanted the faith like Cranmer; he had simply yielded for fear of bodily torments, and therefore was not sincere in the abjuration which he made to save his life.  Nevertheless, his recantation was a fall, and in the eyes of the scientific world perhaps greater than that of Bacon.  Galileo was false to philosophy and himself.  Why did he suffer himself to be conquered by priests he despised?  Why did so bold and witty and proud a man betray his cause?  Why did he not accept the penalty of intellectual freedom, and die, if die he must?  What was life to him,