Wednesday 13 February 2019

GALILEO GALILEI TO TRIAL AGAINST THE INQUISITION

Galileo Galilei
February, 13 1633. Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition. This trial changes the History. It is a fight between a man and a great power, a fight between reason, logic and knowledge against Inquisition.

February, 13 2019. The History repeats. A new fight between democratic ideas and dark forces, which want to keep their power over population, economy and politic power, is happening.

The Grandma wants to talk about the great figure of Galileo Galilei, a man who changed the line of the History. Before talking about Galileo, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice (Grammar 3).

More information: Present Time 2

The Galileo affair, in Italian Il processo a Galileo Galilei, was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610, culminating with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633 for his support of heliocentrism.

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus, published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.

More information: Famous Trials

Galileo's initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical.

Galileo with some students
Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.

Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth. In 1632 Galileo, now an old man, published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which implicitly defended heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him vehemently suspect of heresy, sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642.

Galileo's contributions caused difficulties for theologians and natural philosophers of the time, as they contradicted scientific and philosophical ideas based on those of Aristotle and Ptolemy and closely associated with the Catholic Church. In particular, Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus, which showed it to circle the Sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter, contradicted the geocentric model of Ptolemy, which was backed and accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, and supported the Copernican model advanced by Galileo.

More information: UCLA

Tommaso Caccini, a Dominican friar, appears to have made the first dangerous attack on Galileo. Caccini arrived at the Inquisition's offices in Rome to denounce Galileo for his Copernicanism and various other alleged heresies supposedly being spread by his pupils.

On February 19, 1616, the Inquisition asked a commission of theologians, known as qualifiers, about the propositions of the heliocentric view of the universe.

The papal Congregation of the Index preferred a stricter prohibition, and so with the Pope's approval, on March 5 the Congregation banned all books advocating the Copernican system, which it called the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture.

The Trial of Galileo
With the loss of many of his defenders in Rome because of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, in 1633 Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world.

Galileo was interrogated while threatened with physical torture. Galileo was found guilty, and the sentence of the Inquisition, issued on 22 June 1633, was in three essential parts:

-Galileo was found vehemently suspect of heresy, namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the center of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to abjure, curse, and detest those opinions.

-He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life.

-His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

According to popular legend, after his abjuration Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase Eppur si muove (
and yet it moves), but there is no evidence that he actually said this or anything similar.

After a period with the friendly Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena, Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1642, under house arrest. He continued his work on mechanics, and in 1638 he published a scientific book in Holland.



The sun, with all those planets revolving around it 
and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes 
as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Galileo Galilei

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