Free thought; Modernism (Christian theology) -- Catholic Church; Religion and science; Teaching, Freedom of
On June 22 _the final verdict_ was rendered: it told the defendant: “Thou
art convicted by the Holy Congregation of being suspected of heresy, to
wit, to have held for true, and believed in, a false theory, contrary to
Holy Writ—which makes the sun the centre of the orbit of the earth,
without moving from east to west, and which lets the earth, on the other
hand, move outside the centre of the world, and to have believed that an
opinion may be considered probable and be defended, though it had been
expressly declared to be contrary to the Scripture.” _Galileo_ was
declared suspect of heresy, because, in the opinion of the judges, he had
assumed that a doctrine in contradiction to the Scriptures might be
defended. _Galileo_ retracted by oath. That upon retraction he arose and
exclaimed, stamping with his foot, “_Pur si muove!_” (“and yet it does
move!”) is a fable. He was sentenced to be jailed in the Holy Office. But
already the next day he was allowed to go to the palace of the Grand Duke
of Tuscany and to consider that palace his prison. Soon after he departed
for Siena, “in the best of health,” according to the report of the Tuscan
ambassador, _Niccolini_, and there took up his abode with his friend the
Archbishop _Piccolomini_. After a lapse of five months he was allowed to
return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence, where he remained, with the
exception of occasional visits to Florence, till his death. Two of his
daughters were nuns in the nearby cloister of S. Matteo. His literary
activity was not suppressed by the surveillance of the Inquisition. His
lively and fertile mind, cut off from polemics, turned to the completion
of his researches in other directions. His lively intercourse with friends
and disciples, of whom many belonged to various Orders, proved beneficial
to him. In the year 1638 he published his “Dialogue on the New Sciences,”
which he rightly pronounced to be his best effort, and by which he became
the founder of dynamics. His productiveness continued until he became
blind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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