Note 12 — THE ASTRONOMICAL MESSENGER

Galileo’s Systema Mundi. Owing to the violent opposition provoked by the discussion of the discoveries of Galileo, and their bearing on the Copernican system of astronomy, Galileo seems to have found it necessary to delay the publication of this work until 1632, when, believing himself safe under the friendship and patronage of Pope Urban VIII. and others in power at Rome, he at length published it. Urban, however, now turned against him, denounced the book and its author, and summoned him to Rome, where the well-known incidents of his trial and condemnation took place.