Note 275 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

It was thus in the other countries of Europe that Galileo’s teaching bore its fruit, for he speedily got his condemned Dialogues published in Latin by the Elzevirs; and in 1638, also at the hands of the Elzevirs, appeared his Dialogues of the New Sciences [i.e., of mechanics and motion], the “foundation of mechanical physics.” By this time he was totally blind, and then only, when physicians could not help him save by prolonging his life, was he allowed to live under strict surveillance in Florence, needing a special indulgence from the Inquisition to permit him even to go to church at Easter. The desire of his last blind days, to have with him his best-beloved pupil, Father Castelli, was granted only under rigid limitation and supervision, though even the papacy could not keep from him the plaudits of the thinkers of Europe. Finally he passed away in his rural “prison”—after five years of blindness—in 1642, the year of Newton’s birth. At that time his doctrines were under anathema in Italy, and known elsewhere only to a few. Hobbes in 1634 tried in vain to procure for the Earl of Newcastle a copy of the earlier Dialogues in London, and wrote: “It is not possible to get it for money.... I hear say it is called-in, in Italy, as a book that will do more hurt to their religion than all the books of Luther and Calvin, such opposition they think is between their religion and natural reason.”275 Not till 1757 did the papacy permit other books teaching the Copernican system; in 1765 Galileo was still under ban; not until 1822 was permission given to treat the theory as true; and not until 1835 was the work of Copernicus withdrawn from the Index.276