GALILEO—AND BISHOP BARNES [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I
hold no brief for the Roman Church in its mediaeval handling of scientific questions, still less in its modern claim
to infallibility ; but as your correspondent " Bystander " champions " fairness " as against " misrepresentation,"
would you allow me to suggest to him that Galileo was never put to the torture, as the documents of the process clearly
show ? Most of us have been brought up on this idea, and also on the idea that the question at issue was, clearly and definitely, the denial of the truth of the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy. Was it not Copernicus, who some time before Galileo first denounced that system ? But Copernicus lived and died a respected Canon of the Church.
It was, therefore, not so much the truth which Galileo pro- claimed as the way in which lie proclaimed it that brought him into trouble. And even his imprisonment was an easy and pleasant confinement in a sumptuous villa.
(I should not venture to place the Bishop of Birmingham on a par with Galileo, but I think their cases have more in common than at first sight might appear.)—I am, Sir, &c., L. R.
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