Dini also warned again, in the same vein: ‘One may write freely as long as one keeps out of the sacristy.’28 Galileo answered these admonitions in a letter to Dini dated 23 March. His answer was to refuse any compromise on the Copernican system. Copernicus did not mean it to be understood merely as a hypothesis. It was to be accepted or rejected absolutely. He agreed that the reinterpretation of Holy Scripture in the light of Copernicus should be left to the theologians, but he cannot help it if he has been forced on theological grounds, and since Bellarmine had quoted Psalm 19 to Dini, the
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