In 1616, officials of the Roman Inquisition, which is an institution in the Catholic Church responsible for eradication of heresies, warned Galileo to stop preaching the Copernican model as truth. At the same time, his book On the Revolution of Celestial Spheres was placed on the list of Index of Forbidden Books. Galileo, however, was steadfast in his belief and tried to enlighten the church about scientific truth as opposed to “revealed” truth. It was an exercise in vain and it eventually led to his downfall.
In 1623 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a friend of Galileo and a patron of the arts and sciences, was elected pope and assumed the name Urban VIII. Believing that a friend was at the helm of the church, Galileo mustered courage and wrote the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. Though he claimed Dialogue was neutral, it was in fact a veiled polemic in favor of the Copernican model. He had to face the Inquisition again in 1633. This time he was charged with “vehement suspicion of heresy.” After a short but swift deliberation, a guilty verdict was pronounced. Out of compassion for an old friend, the pope spared Galileo the fate of Giordano Bruno, a contemporary scholastic philosopher and Copernican astronomer, who was burned at the stake. Instead he was condemned to a life under house arrest in Florence where he died as a blind man in 1642.
Did the two trials of Galileo diminish his stature as a scientist and thinker? If we confine ourselves to the few decades following the trials, the answer is yes. In 1758, the church regretted for not accepting the truth in science, and lifted the ban on most of Galileo's works supporting Copernican theory. In the 20th century several popes acknowledged the great work of Galileo. In October 1992, Pope John Paul II took the extraordinary step to revoke the condemnation, saying that “the denunciation was a tragic error,” but fell short of admitting the mistake of the church. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI, who condones heresy, admitted “understanding of the laws of nature could stimulate appreciation of God's work.”
After three and a half century, how are Galileo and Urban VIII remembered? Galileo is called the “father of modern observational astronomy.” Urban VIII is known as an authoritarian pope, a champion of nepotism. Galileo is admired for his unflinching devotion to seek the truth. The pope is known for his efforts to establish the Barberini Dynasty he crowned his nephew as the Prince of Palestrina. There is an epigram about Urban VIII: What the barbarians did not do the Barberini's did. Among other things, Galileo has a space probe named after him; Urban has nothing of importance named after him. Galileo's bust adorns the halls of hallowed institutions all over the world; Urban's bust erected after his death was destroyed by angry crowd.
The greatness of a person never goes unrecognized. Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time described Galileo as “perhaps more than any other single person who is responsible for the birth of modern science.” Albert Einstein considered him the father of modern physics. Even Pope Pius XII described him as one of the “most audacious heroes of research.”
The church may have silenced Galileo's voice, but it could not crush his conviction that science is independent of religion. He did not budge an iota from the credo, which in his own words is: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” He also lamented, “It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.”
While under house arrest, he completed his other major work on the science of motion which was published in 1634 as Mathematical Discourses and Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences. It was a precursor to Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion which unlocked the secrets of nature and revealed the mysteries of the Universe.
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