Many call Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) the father of modern science. In 1613, he was one of the first users to point the recently invented telescope (1608, in the Netherlands) toward the heavens. Galileo would improve on the telescope and invent one more powerful—one which let him see the moon’s surface, sunspots, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons, and the stages of Venus. His research led to many advances—a recent NASA article highlighted how his work “laid the foundation for today’s modern space probes and telescopes.”
Yet the religious establishment was set on their view of the heavens—an Aristotelian view that theorized the earth was the universe’s center. Seventeenth-century science, religion, and politics were about to collide.
Important Events in Galileo’s Life
Galileo entered the University of Pisa at 16 to study medicine but switched to mathematics. He exited University before receiving a degree yet still chaired the mathematics departments at the University of Pisa and then Padua (1589-1610).
Galileo was a practicing Catholic, though he didn’t always live virtuously. He fathered three children out of wedlock with the same woman—a boy and two girls, and his daughters would become nuns.
Galileo built his first telescope in 1609, discovering “stars” (moons) orbiting Jupiter. Seeking favor from the powerful Medici family (Cosimo II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany), Galileo proposed the moons of Jupiter be named the “Medician Stars.” The whole event made Galileo an Italian celebrity.
Cosimo II appointed Galileo a House of Medici astronomer and philosopher, a platform that gained him notoriety. His discovery of the moon’s craggy surface defied the belief that it was perfectly smooth. Many believed that God would create nothing less than perfect heavenly spheres—meaning the moon and other planetoids and moons were pure and perfect orbs.
Galileo generated further controversy when he opposed Aristotle’s belief the earth was the center of the universe, publicly opposing the widely held beliefs of scientists and theologians of the time. The Catholic church was not happy.
In 1633, Galileo was called before the Roman Inquisition, a vehicle instituted by Pope Gregory IX in 1231 to ferret out and mete punishment to heretics. Galileo waffled on his assertion of geocentrism, calling it unintentional. The Inquisition convicted Galileo of “vehement suspicion of heresy.” Threatened with torture, Galileo recanted his findings.
What Was Galileo’s Theory?
What we now know for a fact was declared unbiblical by most Western Christians at one time—the sun is the center of the solar system. Galileo’s theory was called heliocentrism, which opposed the church’s accepted belief the earth served as the center of the universe. The accepted view was called geocentrism and went back to Ancient Greek philosophers—most famously, Aristotle claimed the sun revolved around the earth.
In 1616, Galileo proposed a theory about tides. He wrote the essay “Discourse on the Tides” in letter form to Italian Cardinal Alessandro Orsini. He argued that the motion of the earth’s tides resulted from the earth’s rotation and its revolution around the sun. Galileo rightly conjectured the tides were evidence of the earth’s motion.
Why Did Galileo Get in Trouble with the Church?
The Holy Roman Empire was a vast realm with theological underpinnings when Galileo lived. Therefore, the beliefs of the church were considered commands within its borders. Although a believer in God, Galileo was also a staunch supporter of science and its role in revealing the beauty of God’s creation.
The Roman Catholic church had previously backed the Aristotelian idea that the earth was the center of the universe. Among other things, the Catholic church believed in geocentrism because it implied the earth is special and powerful—that God put the earth at the universe’s center.
When Galileo theorized the sun was the center of the universe and not the earth, the Roman Catholic church felt betrayed and publicly ridiculed. Pope Urban VIII recognized and possibly feared the profound changes coming due to Galileo’s assertions—both in society and the church’s traditional teaching. To add even greater insult to the church, Galileo insisted the “book of nature was written in the language of mathematics and not in biblical terms.”
The times for the Catholic church were turbulent. Martin Luther had sparked the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The recent Council of Trent in 1563 paved the road of the Catholic church’s Counter-Reformation by refuting and condemning Protestant beliefs. The papacy was reeling and ready for anything that suggested rebellion or would contest their authority.
Galileo was first summoned by the Roman Inquisition in 1616. He was not questioned, but the Inquisition warned him not to promote his heliocentric belief.
Galileo was not the only one affected by this controversy. The same year he was summoned, the Catholic church banned a book by Copernicus advocating for his belief that the sun is the center of the universe. Copernicus agreed to edit the book and present the theory as a hypothesis. Copernicus posited the sun as the center of the universe late in life (1543) because he feared torture by the church.
Galileo had a friendly relationship with Pope Urban VIII, as the Pope had been his patron. Gaining an audience with a pope was huge. For Galileo to have had six hour-plus meetings with Pope Urban VIII was rare indeed. Galileo made his case for a heliocentric universe, yet promised to present heliocentricism as a hypothesis, not a factual discovery. The Pope permitted Galileo to publish works on the Copernican theory as long as Galileo honored his promise.
Galileo did not hold to his compromise and presented his discovery as fact. In 1632, Galileo made his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems public. Joe McKeever shares, “Galileo wrote a book in which he created three characters and had them discuss the matters he wanted to put before the world. One man represented his antagonists, the second presented Galileo’s views—without ever mentioning his name—and the third moved the discussion along.”
Galileo was known for brash opinions and for speaking out when others opposed him. Many saw how he depicted the antagonist in his Dialogue as a caricature of Pope Urban VIII.
Pope Urban VIII severed the patronage due to Galileo’s impertinence. He convened an Inquisition to try Galileo for heresy. At the time of the “Galileo Affair,” as it was called, ten cardinals presided. Galileo was found guilty, and his sentence was handed down in three parts:
1. The cardinals found Galileo “vehemently suspect of heresy,” calling his view contrary to Scripture and commanded him to “abjure, curse, and detest” his opinions.
2. The Inquisition remanded Galileo to imprisonment, but the following day lessened the sentence to house arrest, which Galileo endured for the rest of his life.
3. The Inquisition banned the Dialogues and forbade any of his writings to be published, including any future works.
What Happened to Galileo After the Heresy Trial?
Pope Urban VIII remained vexed at Galileo, and the sentence further infuriated him. Yet even though he could have ordered Galileo to be tortured, he stopped the consequences short of that, although the threat still loomed. By then, Galileo was aged and somewhat sickly, and the church usually showed grace to men in his condition. In their defense, the Catholic church ensured the sentence was extensively broadcast to the scientific community, with the cardinals declaring Galileo never believed in the heliocentric theory.
Galileo spoke in his defense later, maintaining that he had spoken the truth.
Galileo’s final years were spent under house arrest working on synopses of his earlier experiments. Hal Hellman of the Washington Post wrote, “As one of his punishments, for example, he was to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years.”
Galileo died in 1642 of natural causes. Even then, Pope Urban VIII rejected the notion of conceding. The grand duke of Tuscany wanted a funeral and statue erected at the church of Santa Croce (Florence). Pope Urban VIII decried the idea with an admonition it would be seen as a direct insult. Galileo’s body was secretly interred in the basement of a church bell tower for almost 100 years.
Three-hundred and fifty-nine years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II admitted the wrong and publicly apologized for the whole affair.
What Can Lessons for Us
Does Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic church teach us that the pursuit of science interferes with Christianity? This whole affair was more than just religion versus science. It’s not unheard of to have power struggles, even within a religious entity. The turbulent times meant the Catholic church found its authority threatened, which affected religious leaders and countries (like the Holy Roman Empire). The fight became personal when a leader saw Galileo’s writings as a personal attack. Dan Graves provides more details on how all these factors collided in his article below, which looks deeper at his Inquisition experience.
The lesson for all is the intermingling of politics, religion, and scientific research can cause friction. This can still happen today, and Christians need to be wise and recognize when power is becoming most important.
When scientific research and development (and its financial supporters) have healthy motives and a biblical worldview, it can be a great blessing. Science can give Christians greater awe and wonder at our Creator and His perfect design. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). There’s no denying that.
Galileo Before the Inquisition
By Dan Graves, MSL
Galileo was frustrated. A web of deceit and hatred had closed around him. As the sixty-nine-year-old man faced the Inquisition on this day, June 22, 1633, he hoped to get at least two changes in the statement his judges insisted he sign. “Do not make me say I have not been a good Catholic,” he pleaded, “for I have been one and will remain one no matter what my enemies say. And I will not say that I intended to deceive anyone, especially with the publication of my book. I submitted it in good faith to the church censors and printed it only after legally obtaining a license.”
The judges agreed. They rewrote the words of his “confession”—as they should have been. For, as Galileo knew, most of the men who were sentencing him held his same opinions—that the earth spun on its axis and orbited the sun.
With the new injunction before him, Galileo knelt and repeated the words demanded of him. He was strongly “suspected of heresy.” He had “held and believed that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth is not the center and moves...”
Galileo then signed another statement. “I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured [renounced], sworn, promised and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration and recited it word for word at Rome, in the convent of the Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633.”
This is one of the most famous trials in history. The church often takes all the blame for the fiasco of justice that took place that day in Rome. It had the unfortunate effect of branding the Roman Catholic Church as anti-science, when in fact famous Catholics of the Middle Ages (Grosseteste, Bradwardine, Oresme and others) had done much to advance and promote science. Galileo himself was a staunch Catholic.
There is no doubt the church was in the wrong. A commission formed by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s admitted as much. But was it fully responsible? There were, in fact, two other parties at fault.
One was Galileo himself. His vanity, sarcastic words, contempt for lesser minds and half-truths had earned him fierce enemies among the intellectuals of Europe—especially among the Jesuits. Galileo even fudged at least one experiment.
The second set of culprits were naturalists (the scientists of the day). Advocates of the pagan philsopher Aristotle resisted Galileo’s findings. The pope and cardinals would not have acted if dozens of these “scientists” had not said Galileo was wrong. Some hated Galileo, who had hurt their feelings. Others felt that Aristotle and the Bible should not be overturned without solid evidence. It did not matter that both Kepler and Galileo had shown that the Bible could be interpreted to agree with the new science. Their own eyes showed them that the sun, not the earth moves. Galileo could not provide hard evidence to the contrary. Solid proof for the earth’s movement around the sun was two hundred years away, when tiny shifts in star positions and subtle pendulum motions were finally measured.
Bibliography:
1. Gillispie, Charles Coulston. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York: Scribners, 1970-1980.
2. Hummel, Charles E. The Galileo Connection: Resolving Conflicts Between Science & the Bible. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1986.
3. Santillana, Giorgio de. The Crime of Galileo. New York, Time, Inc., 1962.
4. Saudée, Jacques de Bivort de la. God, Man and the Universe: a Christian Answer to Modern Materialism. New York: P.J. Kenedy, ca.1953, especially p.58ff.
5. Tobin, W. The Life and Science of Léon Foucault: the Man Who Proved the Earth Rotates. Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
6. Various encyclopedia articles.
(“Galileo before the Inquisition” first appeared on Christianity.com on May 3, 2010)
Photo Credit: Getty Images/GeorgiosArt
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