Was Galileo Tortured?

Abstract

THIS work treats with exhaustive thoroughness a question first raised about a century ago, as early, in fact, as advancing political liberty rendered its public discussion consistent with personal safety, and which has occupied scientific biographers pretty continuously since that time. The author's main object in reopening an issue, which the majority of recent authorities consider as settled in the negative, is to bring into due prominence the bearing on it of fresh evidence rendered accessible only within the last ten years. Up to 1867, though it was known that a detailed official record of Galileo's trial was preserved in the archives of the Inquisition, only a few isolated and questionable extracts from it had been made public. In that year, however, M. Henri de l'Epinois, by permission of the Papal authorities, published in extenso the most important of the documents contained in the trial-record. These, supplemented by still more recent corrections and additions, which it is unnecessary to particularise here supplied a body of new evidence bearing more or less directly on the issue whether the Roman Inquisition, in its treatment of the great astronomer, had recourse in any degree to that test of physical endurance which formed a recognised part of its procedure as of that of contemporary secular courts in cases like his.

Ist Galilei gefoltert worden?

Eine kritische Studie. Von Emil Wohlwill. (Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1877.)