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Still it moves, are indeed myths. [271] The broken-spirited old man was in no mood so to speak; he was, moreover, in all respects save his science, an orthodox Catholic, [272] and as such not likely to defy the Church to its face. In reality he was formally in the custody of the Inquisition--and this not in a cell, but in the house of an official--for only twenty-two days. After the sentence he was again formally detained for some seventeen days in the Villa Medici, but was then allowed to return to his own rural home at Acatri, [273] on condition that he lived in solitude, receiving no visitors. He was thus much more truly a prisoner than the so-called
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in our own day. The worst part of the sentence, however, was the placing of all his works, published and unpublished, on the Index Expurgatorius, and the gag thus laid on all utterance of rational scientific thought in Italy--an evil of incalculable influence.
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The lack of liberty and speculation, writes a careful Italian student,
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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
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--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:
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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.