![]() ![]() Is it likely that at such a moment he would have muttered or uttered these words? He must have known that the slightest indication by words or gesture of such a state of mind would have consigned him for life to the deepest dungeons of the Inquisition, if to no worse.” 3 But consider for a moment the situation: an old man of seventy years, suffering in body, and distressed in mind by the accumulated anguish of a ten months' trial, alone and without support in the midst of that stern assembly of Inquisitors. Some writers, doubtless to make the story more vraisemblable, 2 provide a friend to whom the words are whispered. “Another error which early biographers were fond of repeating, but of which a moment's reflection would have shown the absurdity, was that Galileo on rising from his knees after reciting the abjuration muttered Eppur si muove (it moves, nevertheless). John Joseph Fahie put it this way in 1903: Whereas some early biographers wouldn't let lack of documentation get in the way of telling a good tale, others have been attempting to debunk this myth since over a century ago. 1 By 1757, it reached an English-language book by Giuseppe Baretti, a literary critic living in London, who included a version of the story, in an annotated bibliography of Italian books. In this case, the earliest known printed mention of this legendary phrase, also written as “E pur si muove,” was over 250 years ago, in 1761, in Querelles Littéraires. Some sayings take on a life of their own, even though documentation is absent. Apocryphal quote - likely false, as explained in Fahie's biography, Galileo, His Life and Work (1903).Īpocryphal is an adjective warning that what is being described has doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as if true. ![]()
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