Science and Religion series — “The Galileo Affair, Part 2: Galileo”
In this fifth essay in our Science and Religion series, Fr Jonathan Jong continues with the story of the Galileo affair, focussing on his two clashes with the Inquisition in 1616 and 1632.
Here’s a story often told:
Sometime in the 17th century, Galileo taught that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which is obviously true. Refusing to believe him because it made them feel cosmically insignificant, the Church authorities tried to silence him. They even refused to look through his telescope when he offered it to them to see for themselves. Ultimately, they banned his books and sentenced him to imprisonment.
Before we too on, let’s put two aspects of this story to rest. First, the phrase “centre of the universe” implies a privileged and honoured location now. But we should remember that in the Middle Ages, it was Hell that was in the centre of the Universe, being in the centre of the Earth: heaven, on the other hand, was beyond the spheres. Furthermore, there is no documentary evidence at all that humanity’s dislocation from the dead centre of space featured in any arguments for or against heliocentrism.
Second, the idea that some people refused to look through Galileo’s telescope is quite misleading. The accusation goes back to Galileo himself, who wrote to several people—including Kepler—about obstinate Aristotelians. There are three individuals who could plausibly be said to have refused to look through a telescope. The first is the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Clavius. There was, at the time, hearsay that Clavius dismissed Galileo’s observations as artefacts of the instrument. If he did say this, he would have been wrong, but it was not a stupid criticism: 17th century telescopes are not what they are now, and were prone to distortions because lenses were not ground very well. In any case, Clavius did look through a telescope and could not see what Galileo reported, until Galileo himself taught him how better to build and use the instrument [1]. After that Clavius, and others at the Collegio Romano—the Jesuit college in Rome—publicly confirmed Galileo’s observations. The second is Cesare Cremonini, professor of philosophy at Padua. It seems that he too looked through the telescope, though not to check Galileo’s observations: he said to Paolo Gualdo—a priest, and friend of Galileo’s—that it gave him a headache. Admittedly, he would’ve been a very prejudiced observer anyway. The third is Giulio Libri, professor of philosophy at Pisa, who may well have flatly refused: he died very shortly after the telescopic discoveries were first made. Now, of the three who plausibly refused, two were university professors: the third, Clavius, is the closest of the three to being in the Catholic hierarchy, and he did look and then looked again, eventually confirming Galileo’s findings. The idea that “the Church” refused to examine the evidence does not itself stand up against the evidence.
And with that, here’s one telling of the Galileo affair, with a bit more context than popular and pithy version provides. No one really comes out of it looking good, but perhaps not for the well-trodden reasons.
+++
In 1609, Galileo heard that the Dutch had invented a device through which one could see distant objects enlarged. Galileo then proceeded to build himself one, and pointed it at the Moon. Aristotelians asserted that the Moon was a smooth sphere, without blemish: Galileo now knew they were wrong. A blow against Aristotelianism was de facto one against the Ptolemaic system. This pleased Galileo who was, by now, increasingly convinced that Ptolemy was wrong and Copernicus was right. He was well on his way already by 1597, as he revealed in a letter to Kepler [2]. The more he saw through the telescope, the more certain he was. He saw moons—at first he thought they were stars—orbiting around Jupiter, for example, which told him that the Earth was not the only thing around which things revolved, and that not everything revolved around the centre (or even the eccentric) of the universe. In 1610, Galileo also received a letter from his student and friend Benetto Castelli, a Benedictine astronomer. Castelli wondered in this letter whether the telescope would reveal whether Venus had phases, like the Moon does. If so, then Ptolemy had to be wrong: his model did not permit such a phenomenon. When he saw the phases of Venus it was, as far as Galileo was concerned, the death knell to Ptolemaic geocentrism.
Galileo’s drawing of the Moon.
None of this is to say that Galileo had proven Copernicanism. Tycho Brahe’s system (described in the previous post) could also accommodate all these findings: both the Tychonic and Copernican systems “saved the phenomena”, and there was no easy way to adjudicate between them. Nevertheless, Galileo felt triumphant, and one could hardly blame him for the feeling.
It took time for other astronomers to believe Galileo’s observations, and for good reason. The spyglass was a new invention, and not easy to produce. Galileo was particularly skilled at building them. As I have already mentioned, others had tried to build their own, and failed to see what Galileo saw. Eventually, sometimes with Galileo’s help, they managed to build more reliable instruments. Even so, they were subject to distortions.
+++
At the end of the 4th century CE, Augustine expressed a principle for interpreting Scripture that held sway for many centuries; the principle is found, for example, in Thomas Aquinas’s discussion of the second day of creation in the Summa Theologiae (I q68 a1). In his The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine describes a situation in which a Christian encounters a non-Christian who is well-versed in science, knowing much about the motion and orbit of stars as well as about animals, shrubs, and stones. This non-Christian holds her beliefs as certain on the basis of reason and experience. It would be reckless and incompetent, Augustine goes on to say, to interpret Scripture in such a way as to contradict her scientific knowledge. Now, this is not an unambiguous rule: Augustine does not tell us how certain the scientific knowledge should be, for example. How much evidence do we need for a scientific theory before it should be allowed to affect our reading of Scripture? Augustine does not say; nor does Aquinas. Nevertheless, the context of Augustine’s argument assumes that Christians might be too reluctant to change their interpretations in light of scientific knowledge: it is those who stick to their interpretations in the teeth of scientific knowledge that he chastises.
Fast forward a millennium or so. On October 31 1517, the Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, publishes his Disputation on the Power of Indulgences or Ninety-Five Theses. In 1522, he publishes a German translation of the New Testament, followed by the apocryphal and Old Testament books in 1534. This is nine years before Copernicus publishes Revolutions in 1543. The Protestant Reformers encourage the faithful to read their Bible, and to interpret it for themselves. They end up regretting some of the results of this encouragement, but never mind that for now. In response, the Council of Trent clamps down on biblical interpretation. In fourth session of the Council in 1546—three years after Revolutions—says that no one may interpret Scripture “contrary to the sense which Holy Mother Church…has held and does hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers”.
What does this have to do with Galileo? Well, in 1613, Galileo received a letter from his friend and former pupil, Benedetto Castelli, a Benedictine mathematician [3]. In it, Castelli describes a dinner with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Galileo’s own patron. In the course of dinner, the possibility of the Earth’s motion came up, and Castelli argued that it was indeed possible for the Earth to move. Cosimo Boscaglia, a philosopher, disagreed, citing—among other things—biblical reasons. After dinner, the Grand Duke’s mother, Christina called Castelli back for more debate. Castelli thought Galileo should know.
In response, Galileo wrote to Castelli, setting forth arguments he would eventually expand into his 1615 Letter to Christina. In these two letters, Galileo cited the Augustinian principle, and sought to re-interpret the story in the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua. The story tells of a battle between the Israelites and the Amorites. In the midst of battle, Joshua prays for the Sun to stand still, and lo, “the sun stopped in midheaven, and did not hurry to set for about a whole day”. This is meant to have conferred some military advantage to the Israelites, but I’m not very sure how. Anyway, the standard interpretation of this story is that Joshua’s prayer stopped the Sun from revolving around the Earth. Galileo disagreed, saying that it was referring to a cessation in the Sun’s rotation on its axis. The Sun’s rotation, Galileo went on to explain, causes the rotations of the planets, including the Earth (It doesn’t, by the way.). Therefore, it’s stoppage also causes the Earth to stop rotating, and this gives the appearance of the Sun’s not hurrying to set.
There are four things to note about Galileo’s interpretation here. First, it seems to take the miracle absolutely seriously: so those trying to find a naturalistic hero in Galileo will need to turn elsewhere, or at least to read him as being sarcastic. (We will turn to his sarcasm later.) Second, Galileo is wrong about the cause of the planetary rotation. This reinterpretation of Scripture is therefore based on a scientific error. Third, Galileo is violating the decree of the Council of Trent above. The Tridentine decree has almost nothing to do with science—it is a response against the Reformation—but there it is. Earlier, Copernicus had also offered alternative interpretations of Scripture, and did not get into trouble for it: one difference is that Copernicus died three years before Trent. Fourth, it’s not obvious that Galileo has fulfilled Augustine’s criteria for Scriptural interpretation. Whether he has depends on how we understand the question concerning certainty above. As I wrote in a previous post, heliocentrism—or more to the point, geokineticism, the idea that the Earth moves—was by no means proven beyond anything like reasonable doubt at this point. Things had improved in Copernicus’s favour, however. Galileo’s observations by telescope of the Moon’s surface suggested that the celestial bodies were rather like Earth, contra Aristotle, upon whom Ptolemy’s system was based. His observations that Jupiter had moons (or “stars” as he called them) showed that things could and did revolve around things other than the Earth. His observation of the phases of Venus was also problematic for Ptolemy’s model, though it can be accounted for by a geocentric model and certainly could have been by Tycho Brahe’s mixed model, mentioned in the previous post in this series. None of this amounts to demonstration of heliocentrism over geocentrism.
Now, Galileo doesn’t get into a lot of trouble for this. In 1616—over 70 years after the death of Copernicus—the Congregation of the Index decides that Revolutions should be suspended pending corrections. This trouble seems to have been precipitated not by only by the increasing prominence of Galileo’s work, but perhaps even more by Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite priest and philosopher who had in 1615 published a pamphlet defending Copernicanism, with arguments quite similar to Galileo’s own in his letter to Castelli and his open letter, then in progress, to Christina. Galileo ends up not publishing the latter until much later, perhaps due to the negative attention Foscarini’s publication brought to the subject.
Foscarini was investigated by the Congregation of the Inquisition under Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, and someone had also sent them a copy of Galileo’s unpublished but circulating manuscript of his letter to Castelli (more on this later). Both men—Foscarini and Galileo—were warned not to defend Copernicanism as a physical reality, which did not stop them from teaching it as a useful model for predicting the movements and locations of celestial bodies. Notably, Galileo was given the warning privately and personally by Bellarmine: he was not given an official personal injunction (though this aspect of the plot will thicken later too).
Cardinal Bellarmine [4]—now St Robert Bellarmine—is an interesting figure. He was a Jesuit and was in the 1590s, Rector of the Collegio Romano, which would later confirm Galileo’s telescope observations. By this point, Bellarmine was already an Inquisitor: he is remembered, for example, for his part in the condemnation of Giordano Bruno, often wrongly described as the first martyr of science. He was condemned for his theological heresies about the Trinity, Jesus, Mary, the Eucharist, and other doctrines. (This is not to excuse the Inquisition. It’s abhorrent that anyone would be burned at the stake for heresy, whether theological or scientific.) Bruno also happened to be a Copernican of sorts—if one squints—which I’m sure did not help Galileo’s case.
Anyway, despite his reputation in the Bruno case, it seems that Bellarmine took a gentler view when it came to Galileo and Copernicus than did his theological consultants and perhaps even than Pope Paul V. The theological consultants deemed heliocentrism “formally heretical”, but the Inquisition did not go that far. Pope Paul wanted to declare Copernicanism “contrary to the Faith”, but this didn’t happen either. On orders from the Pope, Bellarmine spoke to Galileo informally, telling him to “abandon” Copernicanism, on pains of a formal injunction from the Inquisition. It’s not clear what Bellarmine meant by “abandon”, but it’s possible that he meant something weaker than what the Pope intended, which was for Galileo to stop teaching, defending, and even discussing Copernicanism. Upon Galileo’s request, Bellarmine even issued him a certificate stating that Galileo had only been informally warned and not formally and personally condemned. We can also see Bellarmine’s greater tolerance in what he wrote to Foscarini: he advised him that it would be prudent to speak of Copernicanism suppositionally—that is, as a hypothesis—rather than to affirm its truth. This implies that he could still speak of Copernicanism. Unlike Galileo however, Foscarini was officially censured and his pamphlet, unlike Copernicus’s Revolutions, was “completely prohibited and condemned” by the Index, which might go to show that it’s not Copernicanism that’s the problem but a particular interpretation of it. Why Foscarini seems to have been dealt with more harshly than Galileo is less clear, but may have had something to do with the influence of Galileo’s patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
The Index ended up only suspending rather than prohibiting Revolutions: “revise and resubmit” or “with minor corrections”, as we say nowadays. This softer verdict seems to have been influenced in part by Galileo’s friend, one Cardinal Maffeo Barberini. They’d met in 1610 or so, and in 1611 there were at another of the Grand Duke’s dinners. This time, Galileo was debating Lodovico delle Columbe about floating bodies: Barberini took Galileo’s side in this matter.
+++
Something should be said about how Galileo got into trouble. Having basically decided in the 1540s that Copernicanism—as a hypothesis and predictive model—was benign, the Church began to revisit the issue in about 1570. Clavius, the Jesuit astronomer already mentioned above, had written critical things about Copernicanism’s biblical difficulties, among other more scientific objections (see previous post for more about those). For the most part, Jesuit schools were happy to teach and use Copernicanism as a practical device, while increasingly wanting to distance themselves from commitment to Copernicanism as a true description of reality. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the Jesuit Collegio Romano publicly confirmed Galileo’s telescope observations when many astronomers were still wary of the newfangled device.
More trouble came when the Dominicans got involved. The Dominicans enjoyed their heyday in centuries past, with luminaries like Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in their ranks. More recently, however, the Jesuits had climbed up to the intellectual elite, and enjoyed patronage typically given to that elite. Even their cautious support for Copernicanism was an obvious target to attack. Three Florentine Dominicans in particular seemed to be out to get Galileo personally. Raffaelo delle Colombe preached at least two sermons in 1613 and 1615 criticising Galileo’s views, not only about heliocentrism per se, but also about sunspots. His brother was Lodovico delle Columbe, which whom Galileo argued publicly earlier. Tommaso Caccini [5]—an ambitious man, who sought to be the Order’s next Aquinas, but possessed a mediocre intellect—also preached a sermon directly attacking Galileo in 1614: he is said to have begun with a quote from Acts 1.11—”"Ye Men of Galilee, why stand you gazing up in heaven?"—taken entirely out of context. This anecdote should be taken with a grain of salt: its earliest attestation is from the latter 18th century. Incidentally, although the sermon had some supporters, it also garnered complaint and censure. Luigi Maraffi, Caccini’s superior extended an apology to Galileo. Incidentally, Caccini had previously sought Cardinal Maffeo Barberini’s patronage, but failed: recall that Barberini took Galileo’s side against Lodovico delle Columbe. The Preacher General of the Dominican Order was also enraged, and issued an apology to Galileo. Finally, it was Niccolò Lorini who forwarded a copy of Galileo’s letter to Castelli to the Inquisition in 1615.
Until very recently, scholars strongly suspected that the version of the letter Lorini sent had been doctored, either by him or by someone else, probably with malicious intent. The Inquisition had only found a small handful of remarks to be objectionable—about the physical reality of Copernicanism and about new biblical interpretations—and in the copy of the letter that Galileo submitted to them, those remarks were absent. Galileo claimed fraud. We are now pretty sure that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. In 2018, a postdoctoral researcher found a copy of the letter in the Royal Society, and it seems to be Galileo’s original. In it, the offending sentences are there, but they were also crossed out and edited: Galileo wrote what Lorini accused him of, but also toned himself down.
+++
The Counter-Reformation crackdown on biblical reinterpretation and, probably to a lesser extent, the rivalry between Jesuits and Dominicans provide some historical context for the Galileo Affair. Personal factors also played a role, as we saw with Cassini, somehow dim-witted and machiavellian at the same time. Galileo’s own acerbic personality and tendency toward mendacity did not help either. But let us now focus on the role that Europe’s political situation may have played in all this.
Things were fairly calm for Galileo after 1616, released with a private wrist slap and a warning. But things were about the get rough for Europe and the Church more broadly. The Thirty Years’ War began in 1618. Historians estimate that 450,000 people died in combat, and up to 12 million from disease and other side effects of war. At the beginning of 1632 things were really bad: violence was escalating, and the Pope was heavily criticised for this mess. Speaking of the Pope, it was no longer Paul V, but Urban VIII, who was none ofter than Maffeo Barberini. [6]
Barberini’s election to the papacy in 1623 pleased Galileo, and other academics too: Barberini was himself an intellectual, and widely known to be liberal, who supported and even patronised the arts and sciences. Barberini was, as we have already seen, an admirer of Galileo’s. He supported Galileo in a debate; he influenced the softening of the Inquisition’s judgement on Copernicanism; he even once wrote a poem praising Galileo. When Galileo visited him in the spring of his election, Urban VIII granted him not one or two, but six papal audiences. Urban VIII was not himself a Copernican, but—like Bellarmine—was tolerant of discussion on the topic. He seemed to have been sceptical that the issue could ever be settled definitively either way: this was also Bellarmine’s view. This belief in the unverifiability of Copernicanism was convenient for them, because it meant that they did not have to reinterpret scriptural passages like the one in Joshua 10. In 1624, Urban VIII assured Galileo that he could continue writing about Copernicanism, so long as he didn’t argue that it was a true description of physical reality. There is also evidence that Urban VIII’s favour helped Galileo out of trouble. When his book The Assayer was accused in 1624-5 of containing heretical doctrines—atomism, in this case—the Inquisition basically just dismissed the accusations.
The political winds had changed by 1630, for Urban VIII and for the Tuscan aristocrats, and therefore for Galileo. Not only was there a war between Protestant states and Catholic ones, but there began to be infighting on the Catholic side. The French and the Spanish were quarrelling over territory. Urban VIII took the side of the French and the Tuscans favoured the Spanish. This led to some tension in the relationship between Rome and Tuscany. During this time, Galileo had finished writing his Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea, which he often referred to as Dialogue on the Tides for short. As the title suggests, it was an imagined dialogue—a la Plato’s Socratic dialogues—between a few men discussing Copernicanism. He wanted it to be printed in Rome, and so he sent it to the Roman censors. The broader political situation did not appear to affect things much yet: his meeting with the Pope and others were encouraging, and things were moving ahead pending some light edits. It was suggested to Galileo that he tone down the stuff on tides and rename the book, Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which broadened its scope.
Galileo thought that tides—the ebb and flow of the sea—was evidence for the Earth’s motion, like water sloshing about a moving container. He had ridiculed the idea that tides were caused by the Moon, which we now know is true. Rome’s reservations about this argument was that it bordered too closely on defending Copernicanism as a true physical description of the world. But were it not for Roman censorship, Galileo’s most famous book would have been predicated on a major factual error. This is deliciously ironic.
The Pope also wanted to see a particular argument in the book, about the inscrutability of divine action. Galileo was arguing that the tides were caused by the motion of the Earth; but it is possible that the tides only look like they’re moved by the Earth’s motion whereas in fact God may have other hidden ways of causing the tides. This is the idea that Urban VIII wanted Galileo to include. And include it he did, but into the mouth of Simplicio, the clear loser of the dialogue. With these edits, Galileo sent it back to the Roman censors, and then plague broke out in Tuscany. This made communication between Tuscany and Rome difficult. So, instead of dealing with Roman censors, Galileo asked that Florentine censors be allowed to handle the edits. Rome agreed to this, but for a small section of the book.
Between 1630 and 1632, when the book was finally published, the Thirty Years’ War took a turn for the worse for the Catholic states and therefore for the Pope. The Spanish demanded more aid from Rome—politically and financially—and Urban VIII was widely perceived as failing to supply these. They also wanted France punished, as they were allied with the Swedes, one of Spain’s enemies. Urban VIII maintained his French sympathies, but also worried that if he denounced the French, they would break with Rome just as the English had. Urban VIII’s position was weak. In March 1632, the Spanish ambassador to Rome published a scathing attack, saying that he was to blame for the sufferings of Catholic Europe. This served to embolden other critics. At one point, the Pope was even accused of being a Protestant!
Sales of Galleo’s Dialogue began in February 1632. When the Pope saw the end product, he was furious. He felt ridiculed, and betrayed by his friend, whose Tuscan patrons had earlier antagonised him during the Spanish-French debacle. Even if he were not personally aggrieved by Galileo, having been accused of Protestantism—a heresy, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned—Urban VIII could not risk being seen as sheltering another heretic. Dialogue was too Copernican by a country mile. By July, sales of the book had been suspended. Galileo was summoned to Rome.
The proceedings of Galileo’s second trial looks very different depending on whether we consider things publicly or privately. Publicly, Urban VIII had Dialogue specially and independently examined by those unfriendly toward Galileo. Privately, he had his nephew oversee the examination and kept Galileo’s Tuscan patrons updated of the process: this was not usually done in cases before the Inquisition. Publicly, Galileo was called to Rome for interrogation. Privately, he was not sent to detained in prison—the usual thing—but stayed in the Tuscan embassy. Publicly, Galileo was threatened with torture; he was never tortured. Publicly, Galileo was sentenced to prison; this was immediately commuted to house arrest. There was not even a trial as such: the Inquisition sought a settlement with Galileo. This way, Urban VIII looked tough against heretics, while not appearing to punish Tuscany via their court philosopher.
(Historically inaccurate) painting of Galileo in prison, ca. 1643. Attributed to Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
Galileo accepted the settlement; declared that he had inadvertently argued to forcefully for a physical interpretation of Copernicanism; and spent the rest of his life in house arrest. He was even allowed to move to be closer to his physician. He is often said to have said—accounts differ as to when—“And yet it moves”, contradicting his recantation of Copernicanism. There is no good evidence for this, but it is very likely that he believed it, even if he never said it. Galileo died in 1642. His friends had him buried quickly and secretly in the Basilica of Santa Croce. Urban VIII—evidently still aggrieved—refused to let them build him a tomb.
+++
More can and has been said about the Galileo Affair. I briefly alluded to Galileo’s own personality: he made himself many enemies through his arrogance and sarcasm, and this will not have helped him in a world that ran on social capital. (Indeed, the friends he did have—Barberini before his papacy; his Tuscan patrons before the Thirty Years’ War—helped him a great deal.) Documentary evidence from his second trial also suggests that there was some confusion over what happened at the first trial in 1616. One question concerns whether Galileo was issued a formal injunction. Pope VI ordered that he should be if he did not accept Bellarmine’s informal warning: Galileo did accept the warning, so the injunction should not have been issued. Bellarmine’s certificate to Galileo also suggests as much. But the Inquisition’s own records say that an injunction was issued directly after Bellarmine’s verbal warning. However, these records are irregular. The note was not—as it should have been—signed by a notary and by Galileo himself. It is also in an unusual place, written own the back of another document. It is possible that this note is a fabrication by yet another Dominican, Michelangelo Seghizzi, who was the Inquisitor responsible for issuing the injunction had Galileo been uncooperative to Bellarmine.
The second question is not about whether a formal injunction was issued, but about what it ordered if it was. Bellarmine told Galileo that Copernicanism could not be “defended or held”, by which he meant “could not be defended or held as physically true”. We have already seen that Bellarmine took a softer stance than others did on this. The suspect note in the Inquisition’s records stated that Galileo must not “hold, teach, or defend [Copernicanism] in any way”, which is obviously much stronger. This became a real problem for Galileo at his second trial, because it looked like Galileo hid this injunction from Pope Urban VIII and then explicitly violated it by publishing Dialogue. Unfortunately for Galileo, Bellarmine was dead by then and could not vouch for him.
The Galileo Affair was not not a clash between science and religion, but neither was it really a clash between science and religion. The intellectual crux of the debate was over the interpretation of Copernicanism. As a hypothesis and as a calculation method, the Church had little trouble with it. As a true description of reality, the Church did have trouble with it, and scientists (to use the term anachronistically) had another. The Church saw that it contradicted the received interpretation of scripture. Physicists and astronomers did not think it physically plausible, certainly in 1616, though Galileo’s own later physical work would help. As far as the Church was concerned, it—and not Galileo—would reinterpret Scripture if necessary, and the Church did not deem reinterpretation necessary because it did not deem Copernicanism sufficiently proven. Nor was it inclined toward reinterpretation in general, given its recent and ongoing difficulties with Protestantism. So, Galileo wanted the Church to interpret Scripture differently; the Church wanted Galileo to interpret Copernicanism differently.
This talk of “interpreting” a scientific theory might be puzzling to some, but it need not be. Consider, for example, quantum mechanics and its interpretations. Quantum mechanics itself comprises sets of mathematical axioms and equations. It can be physically interpreted in several ways. The most famous is the Copenhagen interpretation, which describes reality as indeterministic. But there are other interpretations, like David Bohm’s that remains deterministic or Hugh Everett’s that posits many worlds. It’s at the level of interpretation that the Church had trouble with Copernicanism.
Make no mistake: under no historical re-telling does the Church come out of the Galileo Affair as a promoter of free inquiry and speech. The Church had censors and an Inquisition. We do still have gatekeepers in science, in the form of peer-reviewers and editors, and those of us who fulfil these roles do tell scientists what they can and cannot say. We regularly reject papers that reject the dominant paradigm with insufficient evidence. We regularly order corrections to papers that make metaphysical claims—claims about causation for example—without warrant. But—thank goodness—no religious authority is involved in this. The Church also comes across as fickle and bureaucratically incompetent, manipulable by errant Dominicans with personal and political vendettas, prone to inconsistencies in paperwork, and so forth. This telling of the Galileo Affair should not be read as a defence of the Church as such. It is, however, a corrective against the simple story with which we began, in which the Church stamped on a scientific theory that made them feel cosmically insignificant.
Further reading
There are many, many books about the Galileo Affair. If I have a favourite, it is Richard Blackwell’s Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible. For this piece, the three sources I relied on the most were The Galileo Project at Rice University and:
McMullin, E. (2009). The Galileo Affair: Two Decisions. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 40, 191-212.
Miller, D. M. (2008). The Thirty Years War and the Galileo Affair. History of Science, 46, 49-74.
