Note 365 — Chapter VII · THE TRIAL BEFORE THE INQUISITION.

There is a passage in a letter of Galileo’s to Geri Bocchineri of 25th February, 1633, in which he says: “The cessation of all bodily exercise which, as you know I am accustomed to take for the benefit of my health, and of which I have now been deprived for nearly forty days, begins to tell upon me, and particularly to interfere with digestion, so that the mucus accumulates; and for three days violent pains in the limbs have occasioned great suffering, and deprived me of sleep. I hope strict diet will get rid of them.” (Op. vii. p. 23.) Since this time two months had elapsed without Galileo’s having been in the open air. Even the Inquisitors saw, as we shall find, that a change must be made in the regulations, if they did not wish to endanger his life.