When was Galileo found guilty of heresy?
Conflict thesis
Pope Urban VIII had been an admirer and supporter of Galileo, and there is evidence he did not believe the inquisition's declaration rendered heliocentrism a heresy. Urban may have rather viewed Heliocentrism as a potentially dangerous or rash doctrine that nevertheless had utility in astronomical calculations. In 1632 Galileo, now an old man, published his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", which implicitly defended heliocentrism, and was popular. Pope Urban VIII had asked that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo's book, and were voiced by a character named "Simplicio" who was a simpleton. This angered the Pope and weakened Galileo's position politically. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo's "Dialogue" was banned, the publication of his past or future works forbidden, he was ordered to "abjure, curse and detest" heliocentric ideas. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642.
Galileo Galilei
The biblical roots of Galileo's name and surname were to become the subject of a famous pun. In 1614, during the Galileo affair, one of Galileo's opponents, the Dominican priest Tommaso Caccini, delivered against Galileo a controversial and influential sermon. In it he made a point of quoting Acts , "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?".
Galileo affair
With the loss of many of his defenders in Rome because of "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", in 1633 Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy "for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world" against the 1616 condemnation, since "it was decided at the Holy Congregation [...] on 25 Feb 1616 that [...] the Holy Office would give you an injunction to abandon this doctrine, not to teach it to others, not to defend it, and not to treat of it; and that if you did not acquiesce in this injunction, you should be imprisoned".
Giordano Bruno
He went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, and applied unsuccessfully for the chair of mathematics, which was given instead to Galileo Galilei one year later. Bruno accepted Mocenigo's invitation and moved to Venice in March 1592. For about two months he served as an in-house tutor to Mocenigo. When Bruno announced his plan to leave Venice to his host, the latter, who was unhappy with the teachings he had received and had apparently come to dislike Bruno, denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition, which had Bruno arrested on 22 May 1592. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him in Venice, based on Mocenigo's denunciation, was his belief in the plurality of worlds, as well as accusations of personal misconduct. Bruno defended himself skillfully, stressing the philosophical character of some of his positions, denying others and admitting that he had had doubts on some matters of dogma. The Roman Inquisition, however, asked for his transfer to Rome. After several months of argument, the Venetian authorities reluctantly consented and Bruno was sent to Rome in February 1593.
Eppur si muove (EP)
"Eppur si muove", alternately spelled "E pur si muove!", is an Italian phrase translated to "And yet it moves", attributed to Galileo Galilei after he was sentenced by the Roman Inquisition to recant his belief in heliocentrism.
Galileo Galilei
His observations of the satellites of Jupiter caused a revolution in astronomy: a planet with smaller planets orbiting it did not conform to the principles of Aristotelian cosmology, which held that all heavenly bodies should circle the Earth, and many astronomers and philosophers initially refused to believe that Galileo could have discovered such a thing. His observations were confirmed by the observatory of Christopher Clavius and he received a hero's welcome when he visited Rome in 1611. Galileo continued to observe the satellites over the next eighteen months, and by mid-1611, he had obtained remarkably accurate estimates for their periods—a feat which Kepler had believed impossible.
Galileo Galilei
These plans were dropped, however, after Pope Urban VIII and his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, protested, because Galileo had been condemned by the Catholic Church for "vehement suspicion of heresy". He was instead buried in a small room next to the novices' chapel at the end of a corridor from the southern transept of the basilica to the sacristy. He was reburied in the main body of the basilica in 1737 after a monument had been erected there in his honour; during this move, three fingers and a tooth were removed from his remains. One of these fingers, the middle finger from Galileo's right hand, is currently on exhibition at the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy.
Letter to Benedetto Castelli
On 14 December 1613 Galileo's friend and former pupil Benedetto Castelli wrote to him to say that at a recent dinner in Pisa with the Grand Duke Cosimo II de' Medici a conversation had taken place in which Cosimo Boscaglia, a professor of philosophy, argued that the motion of the Earth could not be true, as it was contrary to the Bible. Castelli had disagreed with him and maintained, as Galileo held, that the Earth's motion was possible. After the dinner, Castelli had been called back by the Dower Duchess Christina of Tuscany to answer points she raised from scriptural arguments against the motion of the Earth. Castelli had responded and Boscaglia had remained silent. Castelli wished to alert Galileo to this exchange, and advised Galileo that their mutual friend Niccolò Arrighetti would come to Florence and explain matters further. This Arrighetti did.
Fortunio Liceti
Liceti was also involved in a friendlier astronomical debate with Galileo between 1640 and 1642. In 1640, Liceti published "Litheosphorus, sive De lapide Bononiensi lucem in se conceptam ab ambiente claro mox in tenebris mire conservante," a work which examined the so-called “light-bearing stone of Bologna.” This stone was a type of barite originating in Mount Paderno near Bologna. The stone had the unusual property of becoming phosphorescent during the process of calcination, but it was believed at the time that the phosphorescence was caused by the stone absorbing and then gradual releasing sunlight. Liceti used this stone as analogy for the moon, believing that the moon released light absorbed by the sun, contrary to Galileo's argument in Sidereus Nuncius that the moon's illumination is caused by the reflection of sunlight from the earth. Liceti sent a copy of his book to Galileo, who, in response, wrote a polemical letter to Prince Leopoldo de' Medici of Tuscany defending his views; this letter is the last scientific work produced by Galileo before his death. Liceti complained that the letter was circulated before he had seen it so Galileo sent a friendlier version of the letter to Liceti, who published it along with his point-by-point response in 1642 as "De Lunae subobscura luce prope coniunctiones, et in eclipsibus observata".
Galileo Galilei
For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the condemnation of Galileo in 1616. Galileo's resulting book, "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.
Pietro Redondi
In his 1983 book, Redondi developed a new approach to the trial of Galileo. According to this approach, the main reason for his conviction as "vehemently suspected of heresy" was not his advocacy of the Copernican worldview, but his earlier conflict with the Jesuits in his book "Il Saggiatore" of 1623, in which he advocated an atomist theory of Democritus that ran counter to Aristotelian doctrines endorsed by Rome as well as the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. A report to the Inquisition (sent anonymously in 1624, and first discovered by Redondi in the archives of the Inquisition) did not succeed at the time. The Jesuits saw a new opportunity in 1632 to start a trial of Galileo. Until then the pope and the Curia had patronized Galilei, but withdrew their support in 1632.
Geocentric model
The 1835 edition of the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books for the first time omits the "Dialogue" from the list. In his 1921 papal encyclical, "In praeclara summorum", Pope Benedict XV stated that, "though this Earth on which we live may not be the center of the universe as at one time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ". In 1965 the Second Vatican Council stated that, "Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed." The footnote on this statement is to Msgr. Pio Paschini's, "Vita e opere di Galileo Galilei", 2 volumes, Vatican Press (1964). Pope John Paul II regretted the treatment which Galileo received, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1992. The Pope declared the incident to be based on a "tragic mutual miscomprehension". He further stated:
Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Galileo Galilei was named court mathematician to Cosimo in 1610, a post that freed Galileo from the constraints of teaching mathematics at universities. As court mathematician, Galileo was free to challenge the distinction between disciplines and advance theories of Nicolaus Copernicus by using mathematics to address questions of physics. The already famous Galileo had used his telescopic accomplishments in his bid for patronage. Once appointed, Galileo moved to the Florence court and found a resource rich environment where he worked as philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Galileo was actively involved in court life and supported the dynastic rhetoric of the Medici family. Aside from producing intellectual spectacles, Galileo used the Medici court to advance his theoretical claims and discoveries. The four moons of Jupiter he had discovered were named "Medicean Stars" in reference to Cosimo and his three brothers. Tuscan ambassadors were used to advance scientific debate in Europe. Ambassadors in Prague, Paris, London and Madrid received copies of Galileo's "Sidereus Nuncius" and were sent telescopes constructed by Galileo, paid for by the court treasury.
Galileo (1975 film)
For the 1947 stage production, Hanns Eisler composed music for a series of songs that were sung by a trio of boys at the beginning of each of the fourteen different scenes of the play. In addition, the ninth scene is a musical entertainment occurring on April Fool's Day, 1632. Historically, 1632 was one year before Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Roman Inquisition. The Ballad Singer and his wife sing about Galileo's effect on civil order to a rowdy crowd. Eisler composed the music for the ballad, which included orchestration for seventeen instruments. A recording of Eisler himself singing this ballad has been released, together with many other recordings related to the collaboration of Laughton, Brecht, and Eisler. Since 1930, Eisler had been Brecht's close friend and collaborator, and their collaboration continued after they had both decamped from Hollywood to East Berlin.
Virginio Cesarini
In 1619, the Jesuit Orazio Grassi, writing under the pseudonym Lotario Sassi, published "Libra Astronomica ac Philosophica", which attacked Galileo. In May 1622, Cesarini wrote to Galileo asking him to publish a reply to Sarsi, which he owed it to the world to write. In October of the same year, Galileo’s response, The Assayer, was ready. It was published the following year, in the form of a letter to Cesarini.Information about Cesarini's membership of Italian academies, and of his links with other intellectuals of his time can be found on the British Library's database of Italian Academies and their members
Galileo Galilei
In 1619, Galileo became embroiled in a controversy with Father Orazio Grassi, professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano. It began as a dispute over the nature of comets, but by the time Galileo had published "The Assayer" ("Il Saggiatore") in 1623, his last salvo in the dispute, it had become a much wider controversy over the very nature of science itself. The title page of the book describes Galileo as philosopher and "Matematico Primario" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Agatha Dietschi
Agatha Dietschi was arrested and charged for heresy, suspected of being a homosexual. It was unusual for women to be prosecuted for homosexuality, but when they were, they were charged with heresy just like their male counterparts, which is illustrated by the rare case against Agatha Dietschi. However, as sexual intercourse was defined as penetration, women were convicted only if they had penetrated each other with a dildo, which happened in the case of Catherine de la Maniere and Francoise de l'Estrage in France in 1537, and against an unnamed woman in Basel the same year. In the case of Agatha Dietschi, witnesses claimed to have seen Ditschi and Reuli involved in sexual activity in a barn, and evidence was presented that she had manufactured a dildo. However, Max Cross insisted that Reuli was a virgin, and the court ruled that the dildo in question was useless for penetration.
Joseph Calasanz
When Galileo fell into disgrace, Calasanz instructed members of his congregation to provide him with whatever assistance he needed and authorized the Piarists to continue studying mathematics and science with him. Unfortunately, those opposed to Calasanz and his work used the Piarists' support and assistance to Galileo as an excuse to attack them. Despite such attacks, Calasanz continued to support Galileo. When, in 1637, Galileo lost his sight, Calasanz ordered the Piarist Clemente Settimi to serve as his secretary.
Galileo Galilei
When Galileo Galilei was eight, his family moved to Florence, but he was left with Jacopo Borghini for two years. He was educated from 1575 to 1578 in the Vallombrosa Abbey, about 30 km southeast of Florence.
Galileo Galilei (opera)
In addition to depicting Galileo's trials before the Inquisition, the opera also allows us a glance into Galileo's more personal side. Namely, in showing us his relationship to his daughter Maria Celeste, who was a nun. Maria Celeste shared her father's love of learning and science, but also understood that he was a man of great faith. She recognized that science was the very subject that served to deepen his faith, and she encouraged him on this path. The two met rarely. They were separated not only by distance, but by Galileo's often ailing health. Sadly, they were ultimately separated by her death at the age of 33, a source of incredible sadness for Galileo. However, their connection in this opera serves to give his story a more personal rendering. The story itself is told backwards through time. It begins with an aged Galileo, blinded from having looked at the sun too often and ends with him as a child. This is related to his invention of the telescope, which works by reversing images with lenses. Much of the staging in this production is representative of Galileo's theories and follows the patterns of the discoveries, planets, and constellations that his inventions made known to the world.
Giorgio Coresio
Coresio's contribution to this dispute was his 1612 work "Operetta intorno al Galleggiare de Corpi Solidi" ("Short Essay on the Floating of Solid Bodies"). Galileo, working together with Benedetto Castelli, put together a reply under the heading of "Errori più manifesti commessi da Messer Giorgio Coresio" ("The most obvious errors committed by Mr. Giorgio Coresio"). This work was never published however as by 1613 when it was ready, Galileo's attention had been diverted to defending himself against many other hostile essays published by associates of delle Colombe. By 1614, signs of Coresio's mental health problems had become clear, and this may be another reason why Galileo never published his response.
Galileo affair
On March 19, Caccini arrived at the Inquisition's offices in Rome to denounce Galileo for his Copernicanism and various other alleged heresies supposedly being spread by his pupils.
George Coyne
Coyne has been forthright in criticizing the Church's lukewarm admission of responsibility for its prosecution of Galileo in the early seventeenth century.
Sidereus Nuncius
The conflict between Galileo and the church ended in 1633 with his being sentenced to a form of house arrest by the Catholic Church.
Federico Cesi
Since it was an uncertain time to conduct scientific research — in 1578 the Inquisition had closed Giambattista della Porta's "Academia Secretorum Naturae" in Naples under suspicion of sorcery — the "Accademia dei Lincei" had rough beginnings. Cesi's own father forbade Cesi's association with the other three men, suspecting them of undermining his authority and trying to separate his son from family interests. The four "Lynxes" soon returned to their native cities and continued to communicate only by letter, adopting astronomical pen names: Cesi, perpetual president, was "Celívago". Cesi traveled to Naples where he met della Porta, who he seemed to have been corresponding with for some time. There he described his academy to Della Porta, who encouraged Cesi to continue with his endeavors. The academy managed to survive due to Cesi's resources as a rich nobleman and his diplomatic skills in navigating the politics of Counter-Reformation Rome. Cesi managed to expand the ranks of the Academy, recruiting Giambattista della Porta himself in 1610 and Galileo Galilei in 1611. Cesi's letter to Galileo of 21/7/1612 mentioned Kepler's ellipses. Cesi's Academy published Galileo's "Istoria e dimostrazione intorno alle macchie solari" (Letters on Sunspots) in 1613, "The Assayer" in 1623, and also had a hand in defending Galileo in his controversies with establishment leaders and ecclesiastical authorities.
Letters on Sunspots
In 1632 Galileo published "Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo" ("Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems"), a fictitious four day-long discussion about natural philosophy between the characters Salviati (who argued for Copernican ideas and was effectively a mouthpiece of Galileo), Sagredo, who represented the interested but less well-informed reader, and Simplicio, who argued for Aristotle, and whose arguments were possibly a parody of those made by Pope Urban VIII. The book was reviewed by the Roman Inquisition and in 1633 Galileo was interrogated and found 'vehemently suspect of heresy' because of it. He was forced to renounce his belief in heliocentrism, sentenced to house arrest and banned from publishing anything further. The "Dialogue" was placed on the Index.
Galileo Galilei
In 1609, Galileo was, along with Englishman Thomas Harriot and others, among the first to use a refracting telescope as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons. The name "telescope" was coined for Galileo's instrument by a Greek mathematician, Giovanni Demisiani, at a banquet held in 1611 by Prince Federico Cesi to make Galileo a member of his Accademia dei Lincei. The name was derived from the Greek "tele" = 'far' and "skopein" = 'to look or see'. In 1610, he used a telescope at close range to magnify the parts of insects. By 1624, Galileo had used a compound microscope. He gave one of these instruments to Cardinal Zollern in May of that year for presentation to the Duke of Bavaria, and in September, he sent another to Prince Cesi. The Linceans played a role again in naming the "microscope" a year later when fellow academy member Giovanni Faber coined the word for Galileo's invention from the Greek words "μικρόν" ("micron") meaning "small", and "σκοπεῖν" ("skopein") meaning "to look at". The word was meant to be analogous with "telescope". Illustrations of insects made using one of Galileo's microscopes and published in 1625, appear to have been the first clear documentation of the use of a compound microscope.
Heresy in Christianity
There were many Christian sects, cults, movements and individuals throughout the Middle Ages whose teachings were deemed heretical by the established church, such as:
The last case of an execution by the inquisition was that of the schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, accused of deism by the waning Spanish Inquisition and hanged on 26 July 1826 in Valencia after a two-year trial. Eight years later in 1834, Spain, the last remaining government to still be providing the Catholic Church with the right to pronounce and effect capital punishment, formally withdrew that right from the Church. The era of such absolute Church authority had lasted some 1,449 years, from AD 385 through to 1834. The number of people executed as heretics as sentenced by various church authorities is not known; however it most certainly numbers into the several thousands. Coincidentally, the first heretic executed had been a Spaniard, Priscillian; the most notorious organization known for the persecution of heretics had been based in Spain, the Spanish Inquisition, and the last heretic executed had been a Spaniard, Cayetano Ripoll. Thus, the era of the execution of heretics by the Catholic Church had come to an end.
Roman Inquisition
Galileo Galilei revised the Copernican theories and was admonished for his views on heliocentrism in 1615. The Roman Inquisition concluded that his theory could only be supported as a possibility, not as an established fact. Galileo later defended his views in "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point.
Alexandre Koyré
Koyré's conclusions were first challenged in 1961 by Thomas B. Settle, who as a graduate student at Cornell University succeeded in reproducing Galileo's experiments with inclined planes using the methods and technologies described in Galileo's writing. Later, Stillman Drake and others worked through Galileo's notes and demonstrated that Galileo was a careful experimentalist whose observations did play the role in the development of his scientific system that he later claimed in his published work. However, such critiques do not entail that Platonism did not have a significant epistemic impact on informing Galileo's science.
Role of Christianity in civilization
The famous astronomers Nicholas Copernicus, who put the sun at the centre of the heavens in 1543, and Galileo Galilei, who experimented with the new technology of the telescope and, with its aid declared his belief that Copernicus was correct – were both practising Catholics – indeed Copernicus was a catholic clergyman. Yet the church establishment at that time held to theories devised in pre-Christian Greece by Ptolemy and Aristotle, which said that the sky revolved around the earth. When Galileo began to assert that the earth in fact revolved around the sun, he therefore found himself challenging the Church establishment at a time where the Church hierarchy also held temporal power and was engaged in the ongoing political challenge of the rise of Protestantism. After discussions with Pope Urban VIII (a man who had written admiringly of Galileo before taking papal office), Galileo believed he could avoid censure by presenting his arguments in dialogue form – but the Pope took offence when he discovered that some of his own words were being spoken by a character in the book who was a simpleton and Galileo was called for a trial before the Inquisition.
Catholic Church and science
Initially a beneficiary of church patronage of astronomy, Galileo rose to prominence with the publication of "Sidereus Nuncius", which comprised astronomical observations made possible by the 1608 invention of the telescope. He was feted in Rome, honoured by the Jesuits of the Roman College, and received by Pope Paul V and church dignitaries. Galileo began to dismiss geocentrism and emerging alternative theories like that of Tycho Brahe. Proponents of these alternatives began to work against Galileo and claim a contradiction between the Bible and his theories. Galileo rejected the accusation – quoting Cardinal Baronius: "The Holy Ghost intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." He invited the Church to follow established practice and reinterpret Scripture in light of the new scientific discoveries. The leading Jesuit Theologian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine agreed that this would be an appropriate response to a true demonstration that the sun was at the center of the universe, but cautioned that the existing materials upon which Galileo relied did not yet constitute an established truth.
Galileo (disambiguation)
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was a scientist and philosopher.
Letter to Benedetto Castelli
Galileo Galilei's Letter to Benedetto Castelli (1613) was his first statement on the authority of scripture and the Catholic Church in matters of scientific enquiry. In a series of bold and innovative arguments, he undermined the claims for Biblical authority which the opponents of Copernicus used. The letter was the subject of the first complaint about Galileo to the Inquisition in 1615.
Life of Galileo
The action of the play follows the career of the great Italian natural philosopher Galileo Galilei and the Galileo affair, in which he was tried by the Roman Catholic Church for the promulgation of his scientific discoveries. The play embraces such themes as the conflict between dogmatism and scientific evidence, as well as interrogating the values of constancy in the face of oppression.
Catholic Church and science
Pope Urban VIII refused Galileo a stately burial upon his death, though later his bones were interned under a monument at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. In 1980, Pope John Paul II ordered a re-examination of the evidence against Galileo and formally acquitted him in 1992.
Galileo Galilei
On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. In March 2008, the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Nicola Cabibbo, announced a plan to honour Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls. In December of the same year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy. A month later, however, the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Gianfranco Ravasi, revealed that the plan to erect a statue of Galileo in the grounds of the Vatican had been suspended.
Johannes Kepler
In the first months of 1610, Galileo Galilei—using his powerful new telescope—discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter. Upon publishing his account as "Sidereus Nuncius" [Starry Messenger], Galileo sought the opinion of Kepler, in part to bolster the credibility of his observations. Kepler responded enthusiastically with a short published reply, "Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo" [Conversation with the Starry Messenger]. He endorsed Galileo's observations and offered a range of speculations about the meaning and implications of Galileo's discoveries and telescopic methods, for astronomy and optics as well as cosmology and astrology. Later that year, Kepler published his own telescopic observations of the moons in "Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus", providing further support of Galileo. To Kepler's disappointment, however, Galileo never published his reactions (if any) to "Astronomia Nova".
Galileo affair
In the end, Galileo did not persuade the Church to stay out of the controversy, but instead saw heliocentrism formally declared false. It was consequently termed heretical by the Qualifiers, since it contradicted the literal meaning of the Scriptures, though this position was not binding on the Church.
Catholic Church and science
After 1610, when Galileo began publicly supporting the heliocentric view which placed the Sun at the center of the universe, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Galileo defended his theories by means of the long-established Catholic understanding of Scripture, that the Bible was not intended to expound scientific theory and where it conflicted with common sense, should be read as allegory. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture" in February 1616, and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it, which he promised to do.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo's astronomical discoveries and investigations into the Copernican theory have led to a lasting legacy which includes the categorisation of the four large moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) as the Galilean moons. Other scientific endeavours and principles are named after Galileo including the Galileo spacecraft, the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Jupiter, the proposed Galileo global satellite navigation system, the transformation between inertial systems in classical mechanics denoted Galilean transformation and the Gal (unit), sometimes known as the "Galileo," which is a non-SI unit of acceleration.
Galileo affair
One of the first suggestions of heresy that Galileo had to deal with came in 1613 from a professor of philosophy, poet and specialist in Greek literature, Cosimo Boscaglia. In conversation with Galileo's patron Cosimo II de' Medici and Cosimo's mother Christina of Lorraine, Boscaglia said that the telescopic discoveries were valid, but that the motion of the earth was obviously contrary to Scripture:
Dr. Boscaglia had talked to Madame [Christina] for a while, and though he conceded all the things you have discovered in the sky, he said that the motion of the earth was incredible and could not be, particularly since Holy Scripture obviously was contrary to such motion.
Galileo affair
On February 19, 1616, the Inquisition asked a commission of theologians, known as qualifiers, about the propositions of the heliocentric view of the universe. Historians of the Galileo affair have offered different accounts of why the matter was referred to the qualifiers at this time. Beretta points out that the Inquisition had taken a deposition from Gianozzi Attavanti in November 1615, as part of its investigation into the denunciations of Galileo by Lorini and Caccini. In this deposition, Attavanti confirmed that Galileo had advocated the Copernican doctrines of a stationary sun and a mobile earth, and as a consequence the Tribunal of the Inquisition would have eventually needed to determine the theological status of those doctrines. It is however possible, as surmised by the Tuscan ambassador, Piero Guiccardini, in a letter to the Grand Duke, that the actual referral may have been precipitated by Galileo's aggressive campaign to prevent the condemnation of Copernicanism.
Catholic Church and science
Galileo Galilei was a Catholic scientist of the Reformation period whose support for Copernican heliocentrism was suppressed by the Inquisition. He is considered one of the inventors of modern science. Along with fellow Catholic scientist Copernicus, Galileo was among those who ultimately overturned the notion of geocentrism. Protestant and atheist critics of Catholicism's relationship to science have placed great emphasis on the Galileo affair. Galileo was ordered not to support Copernican theory in 1616, but in 1632, after receiving permission from a new Pope (Urban VIII) to address the subject indirectly through a dialogue, he fell foul of the Pontiff by placing the pope's views in the mouth of an imbecile within the text, and was hauled before the Inquisition. The Inquisition found him guilty of defending Copernican theory as a probability, "vehemently suspect of heresy," and placed him under house arrest for the remainder of his life.
Giordano Bruno
Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern, as was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science, although historians have debated the extent to which his heresy trial was a response to his astronomical views or to other aspects of his philosophy and theology.
Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.
Cesare Marsili
The letters also provide insight into otherwise unknown experiments. In April 1626, after learning from Marsili that "a certain engineer" in Bologna had built a device that imitated the motion of the tides, Galileo responded that he had made a similar machine himself twenty years previously, but that it had not been for studying the tides. Galileo's accounts indicate that he had a clear idea of the principles of the thermometer by around 1606-08, so the claim to have invented it properly belong to him. In another letter of 7 July 1626, Marsili reported that a Bolognese artisan had succeeded in manufacturing a mirror that could produce the effects of a telescope, but that it had not yet been possible for him to verify its working. As the correspondence continued, it was clear that Marsili and Galileo were developing the concept of the reflecting telescope, an idea that was to be developed by Cavalieri.
Galileo Galilei
In 1612, having determined the orbital periods of Jupiter's satellites, Galileo proposed that with sufficiently accurate knowledge of their orbits, one could use their positions as a universal clock, and this would make possible the determination of longitude. He worked on this problem from time to time during the remainder of his life, but the practical problems were severe. The method was first successfully applied by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1681 and was later used extensively for large land surveys; this method, for example, was used to survey France, and later by Zebulon Pike of the midwestern United States in 1806. For sea navigation, where delicate telescopic observations were more difficult, the longitude problem eventually required development of a practical portable marine chronometer, such as that of John Harrison. Late in his life, when totally blind, Galileo designed an escapement mechanism for a pendulum clock (called Galileo's escapement), although no clock using this was built until after the first fully operational pendulum clock was made by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s.
Role of Christianity in civilization
Pope John Paul II, on 31 October 1992, publicly expressed regret for the actions of those Catholics who badly treated Galileo in that trial. Cardinal John Henry Newman, in the nineteenth century, claimed that those who attack the Church can only point to the Galileo case, which to many historians does not prove the Church's opposition to science since many of the churchmen at that time were encouraged by the Church to continue their research.
Astronomy and religion
As science began to develop during the Middle Ages, conflict arose between the orthodoxy of the Catholic church and the secular beliefs of scientifically inclined investigators. Examples of such conflict include Galileo Galilei, who was tried by the pope on suspicion of heresy. However, many astronomers were also highly religious and attempted to reconcile their beliefs with the discoveries they made following the invention of the telescope.
Catholic Church and science
In March 1616, the Church's Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending "De revolutionibus" until it could be "corrected", on the grounds that the supposedly Pythagorean doctrine that the Earth moves and the Sun does not was "false and altogether opposed to "Holy Scripture."" The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with "Scripture". On the orders of Pope Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine gave Galileo prior notice that the decree was about to be issued, and warned him that he could not "hold or defend" the Copernican doctrine. The corrections to "De revolutionibus", which omitted or altered nine sentences, were issued four years later, in 1620.
In 1623, Galileo's friend Maffeo Barberini was elected as Pope Urban VIII. Urban VIII was an intellectual and patron of the arts and architecture, who had written poetry as a young man in praise of Galileo's astronomical writings. Galileo met with the new Pope, hoping to persuade him to lift the 1616 ban. Instead he received permission to write a book on Aristotelian and Copernican theories, provided he did not take sides. The book, "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", was passed by the censors and was well received across Europe, but ultimately offended Urban VIII, whose own arguments were put into the mouth of the buffoon-like Simplicio in the dialogue. The Preparatory Commission for the trial of Galileo noted that the Pope's stated belief that it would be extravagant boldness to limit the power and wisdom of God to an individual's particular conjecture was put "into the mouth of a fool" in Galileo's text.
Heresy
Within six years of the official criminalization of heresy by the Emperor, the first Christian heretic to be executed, Priscillian, was condemned in 386 by Roman secular officials for sorcery, and put to death with four or five followers. However, his accusers were excommunicated both by Ambrose of Milan and Pope Siricius, who opposed Priscillian's heresy, but "believed capital punishment to be inappropriate at best and usually unequivocally evil". The edict of Theodosius II (435) provided severe punishments for those who had or spread writings of Nestorius. Those who possessed writings of Arius were sentenced to death.
Galilean moons
Galileo initially called his discovery the Cosmica Sidera ("Cosimo's stars"), in honour of Cosimo II de' Medici (1590–1621). At Cosimo's suggestion, Galileo changed the name to Medicea Sidera ("the Medician stars"), honouring all four Medici brothers (Cosimo, Francesco, Carlo, and Lorenzo). The discovery was announced in the "Sidereus Nuncius" ("Starry Messenger"), published in Venice in March 1610, less than two months after the first observations.
Galileo Galilei
According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase ""And yet it moves"". A 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon. The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death, but Stillman Drake writes "there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death".
Galileo (1975 film)
Galileo is a 1975 biographical film about the 17th century scientist Galileo Galilei, whose astronomical observations with the newly invented telescope led to a profound conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. The film is an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play of the same name. The film was produced by Ely Landau for the American Film Theatre, which presented thirteen film adaptations of plays in the United States from 1973 to 1975. Brecht's play was recently called a "masterpiece" by veteran theater critic Michael Billington, as Martin Esslin had in 1960. The film's director, Joseph Losey, had also directed the first performances of the play in 1947 in the US — with Brecht's active participation. The film is fairly true to those first performances, and is thus of historical significance as well.
The Assayer
In 1616 Galileo may have been silenced on Copernicanism. In 1623 his supporter and friend, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a former patron of the Accademia dei Lincei and uncle of future Cardinal Francesco Barberini, became Pope Urban VIII. The election of Barberini seemed to assure Galileo of support at the highest level in the Church. A visit to Rome confirmed this.
"The Assayer" is a milestone in the history of science: here Galileo describes the scientific method, which was quite a revolution at the time, given the prevalence of scholasticism, which, instead of relying on the observation of nature to make assumptions, relied heavily on ipse dixit.
Christina of Lorraine
Christina and the Medici Court also offered patronage to the philosopher Cosimo Boscaglia. When the court was in Pisa during winter, in December 1613, Galileo's former student Benedetto Castelli was invited to court. At a breakfast attended by Cosimo II, his wife, his mother Christina and Boscaglia the Medicean stars were discussed. These were the four moons of Jupiter Galileo had discovered and named after Cosimo II and his brothers. Boscaglia conceded that these moons were real, and not an illusion produced by the lens of the telescope. But Boscaglia argued that Galileo's interpretation of his discoveries was wrong, mainly because "the motion of the Earth seemed incredible and could not be true, all the more so since Holy Scripture was clearly against this opinion." Christina asked Castelli for his opinion on the matter, not as a mathematician but as a theologian. Castelli responded that with regards to the exact workings of nature, he gave precedence to natural philosophers, and that theologians should in the light of these findings determine the meaning of the Bible. In the letter to Galileo, Castelli stated that Christina criticized heliocentrism, and Galileo did not like this. However, Christina's disagreement was prompted by Boscaglia rather than by her own thought.
Life of Galileo
Galileo, an eminent professor and scientist in the 17th century Venetian Republic, is short of money. A prospective student tells him about a novel invention, the telescope ("a queer tube thing"), that is being sold in Amsterdam. Galileo replicates it, and offers it to the Republic as his own creation. He gains an increase in his salary, but within a short time his ruse is discovered.
Catholic Church and science
Galileo was summoned to Rome to be tried by the Inquisition in 1633. According to Bronowski, Galileo's accusers relied on a forged document purporting to have, in 1616, forbidden Galileo from in "any way whatsoever" teaching theories of Copernicus, and thus could find him guilty of dishonestly tricking the censors and therefore ban his book without addressing the issues of substance relating to Copernicus found within it. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of "Holy Scripture."" Galileo was forced to recant, and spend the rest of his life under house arrest. Galileo remained a practicing Catholic and during his house arrest wrote his most influential work "Two New Sciences" – a book which had to be smuggled to the Protestant part of Holland in order to be published.
Catholic Church and science
On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei; this was the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. In March 2008 the Vatican proposed to complete its rehabilitation of Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls. In December of the same year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy.
Galileo Galilei (opera)
All genius meets with extreme resistance before it is accepted as truth. In the case of Galileo, it was the mere hypothesis that the earth revolved around the sun. The notion was considered heretical and blasphemous by scholars and clergy alike. Much was done to destroy Galileo's reputation. And since they could not do so through scientific proof, they did so through slander and threats of torture. It was not until recently that the Catholic Church finally admitted that they were wrong in persecuting Galileo. It took hundreds of years for them to admit the mistake. Galileo died believing that all of the advancements he had made in science were for naught. His books were banned, and his name was disgraced. All of this, for suggesting a theory that turned out to be true.
Role of Christianity in civilization
In this most famous example cited by critics of the Catholic Church's "posture towards science", Galileo Galilei was denounced in 1633 for his work on the heliocentric model of the solar system, previously proposed by the Polish clergyman and intellectual Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus's work had been suppressed de facto by the Church, but Catholic authorities were generally tolerant of discussion of the hypothesis as long as it was portrayed only as a useful mathematical fiction, and not descriptive of reality. Galileo, by contrast, argued from his unprecedented observations of the solar system that the heliocentric system was not merely an abstract model for calculating planetary motions, but actually corresponded to physical reality – that is, he insisted the planets really do orbit the Sun. After years of telescopic observation, consultations with the Popes, and verbal and written discussions with astronomers and clerics, a trial was convened by the Tribunal of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" (not "guilty of heresy," as is frequently misreported), placed under house arrest, and all of his works, including any future writings, were banned. Galileo had been threatened with torture and other Catholic scientists fell silent on the issue. Galileo's great contemporary René Descartes stopped publishing in France and went to Sweden. According to Polish-British historian of science Jacob Bronowski:
History of scientific method
During the period of religious conservatism brought about by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Galileo Galilei unveiled his new science of motion. Neither the contents of Galileo’s science, nor the methods of study he selected were in keeping with Aristotelian teachings. Whereas Aristotle thought that a science should be demonstrated from first principles, Galileo had used experiments as a research tool. Galileo nevertheless presented his treatise in the form of mathematical demonstrations without reference to experimental results. It is important to understand that this in itself was a bold and innovative step in terms of scientific method. The usefulness of mathematics in obtaining scientific results was far from obvious. This is because mathematics did not lend itself to the primary pursuit of Aristotelian science: the discovery of causes.
Gabriel Malagrida
Gabriel Malagrida was declared guilty of high treason, but, as a priest, could not be executed without the consent of the Inquisition. He was imprisoned in the dungeon beneath Belém Tower with other Jesuits who were also implicated. When the Inquisition could find no proof of guilt, Carvalho had his own brother replace the head inquisitor. Under the harsh conditions of his two-and-a-half years imprisonment, Malagrida went mad. He was found guilty of heresy based upon two transcripts of visions it was claimed he experienced. The first was on the Anti-Christ, the second was entitled "The Heroic And Wonderful Life Of The Glorious Saint Anne, Mother Of The Virgin Mary, Dictated By This Saint, Assisted By And With The Approbation And Help Of This Most August Sovereign, And Her Most Holy Son". His authorship of these treatises has never been proved.
Roman Inquisition
He was tried by the Inquisition in 1633. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", forced to recant, and the "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" was also placed on the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" (Index of Forbidden Books). He spent the rest of his life under house arrest at his villa in Arcetri near Florence.
Italophilia
Galileo, born in 1564 in Pisa, was the most famous scientist of his age, and played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. He is often referred to as the “Father of Modern Science.” His achievements include a greatly improved telescope, which he employed in making astronomical observations supporting the heliocentric theory of Copernicus; and also the experiments he carried out leading to his law of falling bodies, which was of key importance in Newton’s synthesis of his own famous three laws of motion.
Catholic Church and science
Galileo's career coincided with the reaction of the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation, in which the Roman Church found itself in a struggle for authority in Europe, following the emergence of the Protestant Churches and nations of Northern Europe. Pope Paul III created the Roman and Universal Inquisition to stop the spread of "heretical depravity" throughout the Christian world. From 1571, the institution had jurisdiction over books and created the Index of Prohibited Books. Rome established the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in 1622. The historian of science Jacob Bronowski wrote that "Catholics and Protestants were embattled in what we should now call a Cold War. ...The Church was a great temporal power, and in that bitter time it was fighting a political crusade in which all means were justified by the end." In this climate, Cardinal Bellarmine, himself a distinguished scientist of the age, instigated inquiries against Galileo as early as 1613.
Giovanni Ciampoli
In 1614, after completing his studies, Ciampoli moved to Rome where he took holy orders. He was soon introduced to the circles of the Roman Curia and when Galileo was first investigated in 1615-16, out of consideration for his loyalty to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, kept up regular communication with his friend Galileo about developments within the senior ranks of the Catholic Church. Thereafter, in 1618, thanks to the good offices of Galileo, he was inducted into the Accademia dei Lincei together with his friend Virginio Cesarini.
A Posteriori
"Eppur si muove", alternately spelled "E pur si muove!", is an Italian phrase translated to "And yet it moves", attributed to Galileo Galilei after he was sentenced by the Roman Inquisition to recant his belief in heliocentrism.
Nicolaus Copernicus
In 1633 Galileo Galilei was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture", and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Catholic Church and science
The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned "Dialogue") in Florence. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the "Dialogue". In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the "Dialogue" and Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus" remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the Church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.
Galileo Galilei
Although Galileo seriously considered the priesthood as a young man, at his father's urging he instead enrolled in 1580 at the University of Pisa for a medical degree. In 1581, when he was studying medicine, he noticed a swinging chandelier, which air currents shifted about to swing in larger and smaller arcs. To him, it seemed, by comparison with his heartbeat, that the chandelier took the same amount of time to swing back and forth, no matter how far it was swinging. When he returned home, he set up two pendulums of equal length and swung one with a large sweep and the other with a small sweep and found that they kept time together. It was not until the work of Christiaan Huygens, almost one hundred years later, that the tautochrone nature of a swinging pendulum was used to create an accurate timepiece. Up to this point, Galileo had deliberately been kept away from mathematics, since a physician earned a higher income than a mathematician. However, after accidentally attending a lecture on geometry, he talked his reluctant father into letting him study mathematics and natural philosophy instead of medicine. He created a thermoscope, a forerunner of the thermometer, and, in 1586, published a small book on the design of a hydrostatic balance he had invented (which first brought him to the attention of the scholarly world). Galileo also studied "disegno", a term encompassing fine art, and, in 1588, obtained the position of instructor in the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, teaching perspective and chiaroscuro. Being inspired by the artistic tradition of the city and the works of the Renaissance artists, Galileo acquired an aesthetic mentality. While a young teacher at the Accademia, he began a lifelong friendship with the Florentine painter Cigoli, who included Galileo's lunar observations in one of his paintings.
Io (moon)
The first reported observation of Io was made by Galileo Galilei on 7 January 1610 using a 20x-power, refracting telescope at the University of Padua. However, in that observation, Galileo could not separate Io and Europa due to the low power of his telescope, so the two were recorded as a single point of light. Io and Europa were seen for the first time as separate bodies during Galileo's observations of the Jovian system the following day, 8 January 1610 (used as the discovery date for Io by the IAU). The discovery of Io and the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter was published in Galileo's "Sidereus Nuncius" in March 1610. In his "Mundus Jovialis", published in 1614, Simon Marius claimed to have discovered Io and the other moons of Jupiter in 1609, one week before Galileo's discovery. Galileo doubted this claim and dismissed the work of Marius as plagiarism. Regardless, Marius' first recorded observation came from 29 December 1609 in the Julian calendar, which equates to 8 January 1610 in the Gregorian calendar, which Galileo used. Given that Galileo published his work before Marius, Galileo is credited with the discovery.
Galileo Galilei (disambiguation)
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was a scientist and philosopher.
Counter-Reformation
An actual new calendar had to wait until the Gregorian calendar in 1582. At the time of its publication, "De revolutionibus" passed with relatively little comment: little more than a mathematical convenience that simplified astronomical references for a more accurate calendar. Physical evidence suggesting Copernicus's theory regarding the Earth's motion was literally true promoted the apparent heresy against the religious thought of the time. As a result, Galileo Galilei was placed under house arrest, served in Rome, Siena, Arcetri, and Florence, for publishing writings, said to be "vehemently suspected of being heretical", and his opponents condemned heliocentric theory and temporarily banned its teaching in 1633.
Galileo (1968 film)
Galileo (also known as "Galileo Galilei") is a 1968 Italian-Bulgarian biographical drama film directed by Liliana Cavani. It depicts the life of Galileo Galilei and particularly his clash with the Catholic Church regarding the interpretation of his astronomical observations with the newly invented telescope.
Conflict thesis
The Galileo affair was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610, culminating with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633 for his support of heliocentrism. In 1610, Galileo published his "Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger)", describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (published in "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" in 1543). Galileo's initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical. Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.
Galileo (1968 film)
In 1597, the scientist Galileo Galilei meets the philosopher Giordano Bruno, author of treatises that upset the Church for their extreme accuracy on the nature of the world. In fact the period is that of the oppressor and the Counter-Reformation and Bruno having worsened his relations with the Church, is unjustly tried and condemned to the stake. Meanwhile, Galileo discovers the telescope, a gift from a friend, and perfects its potential. Thanks to it, therefore the scientist makes his first experiments on the stars and began to write his treatises. But the new Pope Urbano VIII and his beloved cardinal discover these theories, find them heretical and order the scientist to recant publicly and to allow his lyrics are declared heretics and burned at the stake."Galileo" was released in 2010 as a Region 2 DVD. A Region 1 DVD has not been released.
Galileo Galilei
It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, "Two New Sciences". Here he summarised work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials, published in Holland to avoid the censor. This book has received high praise from Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called the "father of modern physics". He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice.
Vincenzo Galilei
Despite being a priest, Mersenne defended Galileo when he came under attack by the church in 1633, but he also questioned Galileo's claims and disputed the accuracy of some of Galileo's findings. He conducted his own duplicate experiments which improved on their accuracy.
Pier Paolo Vergerio
Instead of responding to a second summons by the Nuncio Della Casa to appear before the tribunal in Venice, on May 1, 1549, he left Italy forever. The experiences at Spiera's sick-bed had brought Vergerio to a decision. The twelve treatises which he produced at Basel in 1550 supply information regarding his position. Meanwhile, the second trial had been conducted in Venice "in absentia" and was confirmed at Rome, July 3, 1549. Vergerio was convicted of heresy in 34 points, deposed from his episcopal dignity, and made subject to arrest.
Galileo affair
In 1979, Pope John Paul II expressed the hope that "theologians, scholars and historians, animated by a spirit of sincere collaboration, will study the Galileo case more deeply and in loyal recognition of wrongs, from whatever side they come." However, the Pontifical Interdisciplinary Study Commission constituted in 1981 to study the case did not reach any definitive result. Because of this, the Pope's 1992 speech that closed the project was vague, and did not fulfill his intentions expressed in 1979.
Vincenzo Maculani
After Galileo Galilei's falling-out with Pope Urban VIII, Maculani conducted the first interview with the scientist (on 12 April 1633); the inquiry was conducted in Fra Vincenzo's chambers at the Palace of the Inquisition in Rome. This was the first stage in Galileo's trial and persecution by the Inquisition. Maculani personally delivered the report of the First Examination to Pope Urban VIII and the Cardinals on April 27, 1633 Maculani also presided at the Third Examination on May 10, 1633. Urban VIII ordered a Fourth Examination, to inquire into Galileo's 'intent' in publishing his "Dialogue", and specifically authorized Maculani to threaten to use torture. However, while Maculani was generally cold and uncaring, it was he who determined that Galileo was too old and too ill to undergo torture.
Villa Il Gioiello
Galileo lived there from 1631; in 1633 the inquisition sentenced him to lifelong house arrest which he served in Il Gioiello from early 1634. Despite becoming blind in 1638, he continued to write some of his most significant works. In 1634 he suffered the loss of his favorite daughter, Celeste, but continued to work on "Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences" ("Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze"), in which he presented his theories on the strength and resistance of materials and on motion.
Galileo Galilei
On 7 January 1610, Galileo observed with his telescope what he described at the time as "three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness", all close to Jupiter, and lying on a straight line through it. Observations on subsequent nights showed that the positions of these "stars" relative to Jupiter were changing in a way that would have been inexplicable if they had really been fixed stars. On 10 January, Galileo noted that one of them had disappeared, an observation which he attributed to its being hidden behind Jupiter. Within a few days, he concluded that they were orbiting Jupiter: he had discovered three of Jupiter's four largest moons. He discovered the fourth on 13 January. Galileo named the group of four the "Medicean stars", in honour of his future patron, Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Cosimo's three brothers. Later astronomers, however, renamed them "Galilean satellites" in honour of their discoverer. These satellites were independently discovered by Simon Marius on 8 January 1610 and are now called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto the names given by Marius in his "Mundus Iovialis" published in 1614.
Relationship between religion and science
An often cited example of conflict, that has been clarified by historical research in the 20th century, was the Galileo affair, whereby interpretations of the Bible were used to attack ideas by Copernicus on heliocentrism. By 1616 Galileo went to Rome to try to persuade Catholic Church authorities not to ban Copernicus' ideas. In the end, a decree of the Congregation of the Index was issued, declaring that the ideas that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture", and suspending Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus" until it could be corrected. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the center of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions. However, before all this, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in a book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism as physically proven since the scientific consensus at the time was that the evidence for heliocentrism was very weak. The Church had merely sided with the scientific consensus of the time. Pope Urban VIII asked that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo's book. Only the latter was fulfilled by Galileo. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic geocentric view in "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems", was often portrayed as an unlearned fool who lacked mathematical training. Although the preface of his book claims that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, Simplicio in Italian), the name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". Unfortunately for his relationship with the Pope, Galileo put the words of Urban VIII into the mouth of Simplicio. Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the physical Copernican advocacy. Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings.
Catholic Church and science
Federico Cesi created the Accademia dei Lincei in 1603 as an Italian science academy, of which Galileo became a member. Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed to the geocentric view. Galileo gained wide support for his theories outside the universities by writing in Italian, rather than academic Latin. In response, the Aristotelian professors of the universities formed a united effort to convince the Church to ban Copernicanism.
Christianity in the 17th century
In reaction, scholars such as Cosimo Boscaglia maintained that the motion of the Earth and immobility of the Sun were heretical, as they contradicted some accounts given in the Bible as understood at that time. Galileo's part in the controversies over theology, astronomy and philosophy culminated in his trial and sentencing in 1633, on a suspicion of heresy.
Galileo Galilei
Grassi's arguments and conclusions were criticised in a subsequent article, "Discourse on Comets", published under the name of one of Galileo's disciples, a Florentine lawyer named Mario Guiducci, although it had been largely written by Galileo himself. Galileo and Guiducci offered no definitive theory of their own on the nature of comets although they did present some tentative conjectures that are now known to be mistaken. In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's "Discourse" gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner, and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work. The Jesuits were offended, and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, "The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance", under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano, purporting to be one of his own pupils.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo was born in Pisa (then part of the Duchy of Florence), Italy, on 15 February 1564, the first of six children of Vincenzo Galilei, a famous lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and Giulia (née Ammannati), who had married in 1562. Galileo became an accomplished lutenist himself and would have learned early from his father a scepticism for established authority, the value of well-measured or quantified experimentation, an appreciation for a periodic or musical measure of time or rhythm, as well as the results expected from a combination of mathematics and experiment.
Sidereus Nuncius
The first astronomer to publicly support Galileo's findings was Johannes Kepler, who published an open letter in April 1610, enthusiastically endorsing Galileo's credibility. It wasn't until August 1610 that Kepler was able to publish his independent confirmation of Galileo's findings, due to the scarcity of sufficiently powerful telescopes.
Cosimo Boscaglia
Cosimo Boscaglia (c. 1550 – 1621) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Pisa in Italy. He is the first person known to have accused Galileo of possible heresy for defending the heliocentric system of Copernicus, in 1613.
Galileo's Daughter
Virginia Galilei (1600–1634) was Galileo's first child, born in Padua, Italy. Galileo never married the mother of his three children, meaning they were all born illegitimate. With little prospect of marriage for his two daughters due to their illegitimacy, Galileo sent Virginia and her sister, at the age of thirteen and twelve respectively, to live in the San Matteo Convent, Arcetri, for the rest of their lives. Virginia adopted the veil in 1616, changing her name to Suor Maria Celeste.
Deism
The 17th century saw a remarkable advance in scientific knowledge, the scientific revolution. The work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo set aside the old notion that the earth was the center of the universe. These discoveries posed a serious challenge to biblical and religious authorities, Galileo's condemnation for heresy being an example. In consequence the Bible came to be seen as authoritative on matters of faith and morals but no longer authoritative (or meant to be) on science.
Vincenzo Gamba
Vincenzo or Vincenzio Gamba (1606–1649), later Vincenzo Galilei (1619), was the illegitimate son of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and his mistress Marina Gamba (1570–1612). Vincenzo was legitimated by his father in 1619. Like his grandfather Vincenzo Galilei, the younger Vincenzo became a lutenist.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Galileo replied with a long letter giving his position on the relation between science and Scripture. By 1615, with the controversy over the Earth's motion widespread and increasingly dangerous, Galileo revised this letter and greatly expanded it; this became the "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina". The letter circulated in manuscript but was not printed until much later, when the Inquisition had condemned Galileo. It appeared in Strasbourg in 1636 with both Italian and Latin text, as seen in the top right image. It was suppressed in Catholic jurisdictions, as were all works of Galileo at that period which dealt with that subject.
Letter to Benedetto Castelli
This presented Galileo with a dilemma - if he did not respond, he effectively conceded that the biblical text confirmed the Aristotelian view despite the fact that the Church had no firm position on the Copernican question; on the other hand if he tried to engage in arguments based on scripture, he allowed himself to be drawn into a field where the Church regarded its authority as absolute. Indeed an earlier venture into this form of argument by Galileo had been stopped by the Church. In the manuscript for "Letters on Sunspots" (1613), he argued that "flaws" in the Sun demonstrated that the heavens were not immutable, as had previously been thought. A paragraph in which Galileo supported this by claiming that the scriptures supported the mutability of the heavens was removed by the Inquisition censors.
History of physics
The Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was the central figure in the Scientific revolution and famous for his support for Copernicanism, his astronomical discoveries, empirical experiments and his improvement of the telescope. As a mathematician, Galileo's role in the university culture of his era was subordinated to the three major topics of study: law, medicine, and theology (which was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo, however, felt that the descriptive content of the technical disciplines warranted philosophical interest, particularly because mathematical analysis of astronomical observations – notably, Copernicus' analysis of the relative motions of the Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets – indicated that philosophers' statements about the nature of the universe could be shown to be in error. Galileo also performed mechanical experiments, insisting that motion itself – regardless of whether it was produced "naturally" or "artificially" (i.e. deliberately) – had universally consistent characteristics that could be described mathematically.
Science and technology in Italy
The scientist Galileo Galilei is called the first modern scientist. His work constitutes a significant break from that of Aristotle and medieval philosophers and scientists (who were then referred to as "natural philosophers"). Galileo’s achievements include improvements to the telescope, various astronomical observations, and initial formulation of the first and second laws of motion. Galileo was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but was a founder of modern science.
Christoph Scheiner
When Scheiner went to Rome in 1624, friends asked him to write about his solar observations. At last he had time for mathematical books, among them Galilei’s "Il saggiatore", which contains Galileo's work on sunspots. This was similar to Scheiner's own work (unsurprisingly, since both were observing at the same time) but led to allegations from both of plagiarism by the other, and to a deep enmity between the two scientists.
In 1629 and 1630, Scheiner observed a series of mock suns (parhelia) and haloes, including a complex display on 24 January 1630. These were described in his book "Parhelia", which had a profound influence on the work of Rene Descartes and later on Christian Huygens. His observations also included an eclipse on 8 April 1633. 
On 22 June 1633, Galilei received his sentence and had to renounce his claims, despite the protest sounding even from the Aristotelian side. Scheiner’s influence on the trial cannot be proven. The trial files merely contain a small note mentioning that he had opposed the Copernicans. At the time of the trial, Scheiner was still in Rome, staying at the seminary for future priests.
Scheiner wrote three of his books in Rome: "Rosa Ursina sive Sol" (Bracciano, 1626–1630), on sunspots, which served as a standard work for research work on the sunspots for a long time. "Rosa Ursina sive Sol" contains four books. In the first part, Scheiner discusses the question of priority of discovery in regard to sunspots. The second part not only describes telescopes, different kinds of projection and the helioscope but also compares the optics of the telescope to the physiological optics of the eye. In the third book, Scheiner presents a comprehensive collection of the data from his observation of sunspots. Book 4 consists of two parts: the first part deals once again with solar phenomena like sunspots and sun flares, the sun’s rotation period of 27 days and the inclination of its axis of rotation. In the second part, Scheiner mentions numerous passages and quotations from the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers and philosophers to prove that his geocentric view is in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. 
Scheiner published "Pantographice", about the pantograph which he had invented as early as 1603, and finally in 1632/1633, Scheiner published his last work "Prodromus", a pamphlet against the heliocentric theory which was published posthumously in 1651.
Galileo Galilei
Despite being a genuinely pious Roman Catholic, Galileo fathered three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba. They had two daughters, Virginia (born in 1600) and Livia (born in 1601), and a son, Vincenzo (born in 1606).
Santa Maria sopra Minerva
On 14 September 1628, by papal decree, the convent of Minerva was designated as the seat of the Congregation of the Holy Office. It thus became the place where the tribunal of the Roman Inquisition set up by Paul III in 1542 held the Secret Congregation meetings during which the sentences were read out. It was in a room of the Minerva Convent on 22 June 1633 that the father of modern astronomy Galileo Galilei, after being tried for heresy, abjured his scientific theses in favour of the Copernican theory.