 The details and interpretations of these proceedings have long been debated, and it seems that each year we learn more about what actually happened. One point of controversy is the legitimacy of the charges against Galileo, both in terms of their content and the judicial procedure. Galileo was charged with teaching and defending the Copernican doctrine that holds the sun is at the center of the universe and the Earth moves. The status of this doctrine was cloudy. In 1616, an internal commission of the Inquisition had determined that it was heretical, but this was not publicly proclaimed. Instead, Copernicus’s book had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books—the list of books Catholics were forbidden to read without special permission—with the status “suspended until corrected.” Even more confusingly, the requisite corrections had appeared in 1620, but the book nevertheless remained on the Index until 1835. In fact, the Church’s first public pronouncement that Copernicanism is a heresy appears in Galileo’s condemnation.