  The most controversial element of Gassendi's astronomy concerns whether, and to what extent, he may be counted as a defender of Galileo and the Copernican view. There is little question that he sympathized with Galileo, and that he was fully aware of the merits of Copernicanism, at times defending the view and some of its main planks openly. Yet he was also clearly concerned with allegiance to Holy Writ as interpreted by the Church, and to this end offers a Church-friendly account of the condemnation that focuses not on the underlying heliocentrism but on particularities of the Galilean model (O V 60b). His considered judgment is that the Tychean model is preferable to the Ptolemaic model, but also to the Copernican model—in the latter case simply because the heliocentric picture does not fit with Church teachings. He hastens to suggest, however, that those teachings are themselves warranted by our own current empirical evidence—the implication being that such truths and the concomitant rejection of Copernicanism might well be revisable.