Therefore, by our order you were summoned to this Holy Office.

The judgment went on to describe the process of the trial in some detail, ending with a sharp dismissal of all Galileo’s arguments, including the worth of the signed certificate from Bellarmino that Galileo had brought with him.

The said certificate you produced in your defense aggravates your case further since, while it says that the said opinion is contrary to Holy Scripture, yet you dared to treat of it, defend it, and show it as probable; nor are you helped by the license you artfully and cunningly extorted, since you did not mention the injunction you were under.

Because we did not think you had said the whole truth about your intention, we deemed it necessary to proceed against you by a rigorous examination. Here you answered in a Catholic manner, though without adequate defense to the above-mentioned matters confessed by you and deduced against you about your intention. Therefore, having solemnly considered the merits of your case, together with the above-mentioned confessions and excuses and with any other reasonable matter worth considering, we have come to the final sentence against you:

We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy.

This was a technical term, a specific category. The categories ranged from slight suspicion of heresy, to vehement suspicion of heresy, to violent suspicion of heresy, to heresy, to heresiarchy, which meant not only being a heretic but inciting others to heresy as well.

Maculano, having paused briefly for Galileo and everyone else to take in the relevant phrase, continued:

Therefore you have incurred all the censures and penalties imposed by the sacred canons against such delinquents. We are willing to absolve you from them provided that first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in front of us you abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies, in the manner and form we will prescribe to you.

Furthermore, so that this serious and pernicious error and transgression of yours does not remain completely unpunished, and so that you will be more cautious in the future and an example for others to abstain from similar crimes, we order that the book Dialogo by Galileo Galilei, Lincei, be prohibited by public edict.

We condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure. As a salutary penance we impose on you to recite the seven penitential Psalms once a week for the next three years. And we reserve the authority to moderate or change, wholly or in part, the above-mentioned penalties and penances.

This we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, order, and reserve by this or any other better manner or form that we reasonably can or shall think of.

So we the undersigned Cardinals pronounce:

Felice Cardinal d’Ascoli

Guido Cardinal Bentivoglio

Fra Desiderio Cardinal di Cremona

Fra Antonio Cardinal di Sant’Onofrio

Berlinghiero Cardinal Gessi

Fabrizio Cardinal Verospi

Marzio Cardinal Ginetti

The missing signatures, therefore, were from Francesco Barberini, Laudivio Zacchia, and Gasparo Borgia.

A compromise had prevailed.

The white-robed old man was then handed his abjuration, to be read aloud in the formal ceremony ending the trial. It was as formulaic as any mass or other sacrament, but Galileo first read over it silently, very intent on it, turning the pages as he went. His face was pale, so that in his white robe, and with his previously reddish hair all mixed now with white and gray, and gaunter than he had ever been, he looked like a ghost of himself. It was a cloudy day, and the massed candles and light from the clerestory windows still left the room slightly in gloom, so that he stood out.

While he read, Cartophilus was standing outside the open door with the other servants, shaking Buonamici by the hand and breathing deeply for the first time in months, maybe years. Confinement, book banned, et cetera: success.

But then Galileo suddenly gestured to Maculano. Cartophilus sucked down a breath sharply and held it, as Galileo began to tap hard at one of the pages of his abjuration. “What is he doing?” Cartophilus whispered in agony to Buonamici.

“I don’t know!” Buonamici whispered back.

Galileo spoke loudly enough that all the cardinals in attendance could hear him, indeed everyone in the room and in the hall outside. His voice had a hoarse ragged edge, and his lips were white under his mustache.

“I will abjure my error willingly, but there are two things in this document that I will not say, no matter what you do to me.”

Dead silence. Out in the hall Cartophilus was now clutching Buon-amici’s arm in both hands, whispering, “No, no, why, why? Say whatever they want, for Christ’s sake!”

“It’s all right,” Buonamici whispered, trying to calm him. “The pope only wants him humiliated, not burned.”

“The pope may not be able to stop it!”

They held each other as inside the room Galileo showed the relevant page to Maculano, poking at the objectionable phrases. “I will not say I am not a good Catholic, for I am one and I intend to stay one, despite all that my enemies can say and do. Secondly, I will not say that I have ever deceived anybody in this affair, especially in the publishing of my book, which I submitted in full candor to ecclesiastical censure, and had it printed after legally obtaining a license for it. I’ll build the pyre and put the candle to it myself if anyone can show otherwise.”

Maculano, taken aback at the penitent’s sudden ferocity, looked to the cardinals. He took the abjuration over to them, pointed out the passages Galileo had objected to. Out in the hallway Cartophilus was hissing with dismay, almost hopping up and down, and Buonamici had stopped trying to reassure him and was peering anxiously through the doorway at the cardinals.

Bentivoglio was whispering to the others. Finally he nodded to Maculano, who took the document to the scribe and had her mark two passages for deletion. While she did so, Maculano faced Galileo with a stern eye that seemed also to contain a gleam of approbation. “Agreed,” he said.

“Good,” Galileo said, but not thank you. Tears suddenly poured from his eyes down his cheeks into his beard, and he wiped them away before taking the revised document from the commissary general. “Give me a moment to compose myself.” He looked over the document again while he wiped his face and whispered a prayer. He pulled a small necklace crucifix out from under his white robe to kiss and then replace it. After that he nodded to Maculano and walked to the center of the room, before the table where the pad for kneeling had been placed. He crossed himself, handed the abjuration to Maculano, kneeled on the pad, adjusted his penitential robe, and took the document from Maculano. He held it in his left hand, put his right hand on the Bible that stood on a waist-high stand before him. When he spoke his voice was clear and penetrating, but flat and void of all expression.

“I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, seventy years of age, arraigned personally for judgment, kneeling before you Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinal Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity in all of Christendom, having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God’s help I will believe in the future all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church holds, preaches, and teaches.

“However, whereas, after having been judicially instructed by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold, defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way; therefore, I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and motionless, and the earth is not the center and moves.