Galileo's condemnation: The real and complex story

In 1612, Galileo put his verbal attacks on Aristotle into print with the Discourse on Floating Bodies. In 1613, with the publication of his letters on sunspots, Galileo continued supporting Copernicanism and attacking Aristotle. He also ridiculed a Jesuit scientist, Christopher Scheiner, in a priority battle over sunspots. This polemic brought a growing reaction from the Jesuits at the influential Collegio Romano.

In spite of warnings in 1615 from high-placed friends in Rome, Galileo persisted in promoting Copernicanism (22). He appeared to be deaf to their pleas. The Tuscan Ambassador in Rome, Piero Guicciardini, hosted Galileo in early 1616 and witnessed his single-minded drive for Copernicanism, now bolstered by Galileo's new theory that the tides proved that the earth moved. Guicciardini wrote to the Grand Duke about Galileo: "He is passionately involved in this fight of his and does not see or sense what it involves, with the result that he will be tripped up and will get himself into trouble, together with anyone who supports his views. For he is vehement and stubborn and very worked up in this matter as it is impossible, when he is around, to escape from his hands (23)." If the Ambassador's assessment is correct, and assessments were what he was expected to do well, then Galileo appears not as a disinterested scientist, but as a zealous advocate, so obsessed with Copernicanism, that he was blinded to both scientific objectivity and political realities.

The Injunction

The whole affair eventually came to a head. Among others, Tommaso Caccini, a Dominican monk, accused Galileo of contradicting the Scriptures. This was in a 20 March 1615 deposition to the Congregation of the Holy Office (or Inquistion) in Rome. These accusations brought him under examination by the most influential person in the Vatican after the pope, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. Galileo was aware of this and sent the Cardinal his own deposition.

The Inquisition's investigation of the charges turned up nothing serious. The consultant who examined a supposedly heretical letter reported that it did not depart from Catholic doctrine. Other lines of investigation also turned up nothing. The Inquisition asked a committee of eleven experts to examine Galileo's ideas (24).

Bellarmine had taken action on his own. He apparently consulted with Jesuit astronomers who correctly informed him that, while Galileo had shown Ptolemy's system was wrong, he had not proven that Copernicus' was right. Also, Galileo's discoveries had not eliminated Brahe's geocentric system, and some of the Jesuits were favoring it (25). Bellarmine then received the report from the committee of eleven consultants. They were of the unanimous opinion that Copernicanism was wrong philosophically as well as theologically erroneous. Here was something to act on.

On 25 February 1616, Pope Paul V ordered Bellarmine to warn Galileo to back off from his Copernican views. The next day Bellarmine called Galileo to his house and apparently gave him an injunction. It appears that, with others present, Bellarmine warned Galileo, in the name of the pope, not to hold, or defend the opinion that the sun is the center of the universe and that the earth moves.