This report at last opened the eyes of Urban VIII. as to Galileo’s real condition. The cry of distress from the blind old man, approaching dissolution, was too well justified to be wholly ignored, and a partial hearing was given to it at all events, at a sitting of the Congregation held on 25th February, under the presidency of the Pope.[537] But a full release, in spite of the information that Galileo was more like a corpse than a living man, still appeared too dangerous to be ventured on. On 9th March Galileo received from the Inquisitor-General, Father Fanano, the following communication:—
“His Holiness is willing to allow you to remove from your villa to the house which you own in Florence, in order that you may be cured of your illness here. But on your arrival in the city you must immediately repair, or be taken, to the buildings of the Holy Office, that you may learn from me what I must do and prescribe for your advantage.”[538]
Galileo availed himself of the permission to return to his little house, Via della Costa, at Florence, on the very next day. Here the Inquisitor-General, as charged by the Holy Office, informed him, “for his advantage,” of the order, _not to go out in the city under pain of actual imprisonment for life and excommunication, and not to speak with any one whomsoever of the condemned opinion of the double motion of the earth_.[539] It was also enjoined upon him not to receive any suspicious visitors.
It is characteristic of the mode of proceeding of the Inquisition, that Fanano set Galileo’s own son, who was nursing him with the tenderest affection, to watch over him. The Inquisitor enjoined upon Vincenzo to see that the above orders were strictly obeyed, and especially to take care that his father’s visitors never stayed long. He remarks, in a report to Francesco Barberini of 10th March, that Vincenzo could be trusted, “for he is very much obliged for the favour granted to his father to be medically treated at Florence, and fears that the least offence might entail the loss of it; but it is very much to his own interest that his father should behave properly and keep up as long as possible, for with his death a thousand scudi will go, which the Grand Duke allows him annually.” In the opinion of the worthy Father Fanano, then, the son must be anxious for his father’s life for the sake of the thousand scudi! In the same letter the Inquisitor assured Barberini that he would himself keep a sharp look out that his Holiness’s orders were strictly obeyed, which, as we shall soon see, he did not fail to do.