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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) explaining his theories about the solar system.
DeAgostini / Getty Images
A long-lost letter, written by Galileo Galilei, reveals the 17th century astronomer's effort to soften his public position against the Catholic Church's doctrine that the sun revolves around the Earth. The letter, discovered at the Royal Society of London, seems to solve a four-century-old mystery about Galileo's original language on celestial matter.
The recently rediscovered document, which had been misplaced in the catalog of the Royal Society Library, shows that Galileo himself had made modifications to his original text, in order to protect himself from the wrath of the Inquisition.
Thanks to his telescopic experiments, Galileo found evidence to support the Copernican model. On December 21, 1613, he wrote to his friend Benedetto Castelli, a mathematician at the University of Pisa in Italy, about his discoveries. He argued that passages in the The Bible mentioning astronomical events could not be taken literally and Copernican theory was not necessarily incompatible with the Bible.
Due to the controversial nature of the letter, copies were distributed and one was sent to the Inquisition in Rome in 1615. Shortly after, Galileo wrote to a cleric friend claiming that the letter sent to him Inquisition had been modified to amplify the heresy. Galileo's claims. He joined what he said was the original and asked his friend to forward it to the Vatican.
The two surviving versions of Galileo's letter confounded subsequent scholars, who did not know who represented the astronomer's original text. But in August 2018, Salvatore Ricciardo, historian of postdoctoral sciences at the University of Bergamo in Italy, visited the library of the Royal Society and browsed the catalog online when he found an entry for the letter that Galileo had written to Castelli . Although the date mentioned in the catalog was October 1613, Ricciardo reviewed the document and quickly understood its importance.
"I thought," I can not believe that I discovered the letter that virtually every Galileo scholar thought was desperately lost. " Ricciardo told Nature. "It seemed even more incredible because the letter was not in an obscure library, but in the library of the Royal Society."
Ricciardo co-wrote an article about his discovery, which will be published in the Journal of the Royal Society Notes and records.
Signed "G.G.", the letter contains text and additions scratched, and the writing experts confirmed that it was Galileo's writing. Under the corrections, the text is the same as in the version sent to the Inquisition, suggesting that Galileo was seeking to edit the text itself and create a less controversial version. In one example, Galileo originally wrote that some biblical passages were "false if we rely on the literal meaning of the words," but he wrote "false," and wrote "is different from the truth".
Despite these efforts, the Inquisition warned Galileo in 1616 to stop expressing support for the Copernic model. He also retired On the revolutions of the celestial spheres of circulation and banned from other books on the heliocentric model.
Sixteen years later, Galileo publishes his book Dialogue on the two major global systems, who exposed his theories of the universe, including arguments for the Copernican model. Although he claimed to write hypothetically, the Inquisition did not buy it and called Galileo to be tried in Rome. In 1633 he condemned him for "vehement suspicion of heresy" and banned his book. His prison sentence was commuted, but he spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest.
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