See also Roberts, Pontifical decrees against the Earth's Movement, and St.George Mivart's article, as above quoted; also Reusch, Index der verbotenen Bucher, Bonn, 1885, vol.ii, pp.

29 et seq.
When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decision against Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as such, an eminent theological authority, Father Lecazre, rector of the College of Dijon, publicly contradicted him, and declared that it "was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church," that had condemned Galileo; and to this statement the Pope and other Church authorities gave consent either openly or by silence.

When Descartes and others attempted to raise the same point, they were treated with contempt.
Father Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his cost just what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church.

Cardinal Querenghi, in his letters; the ambassador Guicciardini, in his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani, in his biography of Galileo--all writing under Church inspection and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome.

The Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time (Bellarmin), took the same view.