Galileo's new letter shows his attempt to foil the Inquisition – Quartz

When astronomer Galileo Galilei had problems with the Catholic Church over his theories of the universe in the 17th century, he did not have the advantage of using his public relations to master it. He took matters into his own hands and gave himself up to an old-fashioned trick.

A letter recently discovered by Galileo shows how the scientist tried to get rid of the Inquisition. In an exclusive report for Nature, Alison Abbott explains that historians browsing the Royal Society's archives have uncovered evidence that Galileo had edited his own words to appear less critical of the Church.

The story begins in 1613, when Galileo wrote a famous letter defending the heliocentric model of the solar system, according to which the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun. This theory had been proposed in 1543 by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in his book On the revolutions of the celestial spheres, published on his deathbed. In the years following Copernicus' death, Galileo invented a powerful telescope and studied the sky itself, finding evidence that the theory was true.

This went against the doctrine of the Church, according to which the Earth was the center of the universe – not the Sun. But in Galileo's letter of 1613 to his friend, the mathematician Benedetto Castelli, he asserted that the heliocentric model was not in contradiction with the Bible. Rather, "he argued that the rare references in the Bible to astronomical events should not be taken literally, because the scribes had simplified these descriptions so that they could be understood by ordinary people," Abbott explains. Nature.

Unfortunately, the Church was rather interpreted literally at the time. So, when the Inquisition got a copy of the letter to Castellini in 1615, transmitted by the Dominican brother Niccolò Lorini, Galileo had reasons to worry.

Here's where our boy Galileo gets deliciously sneaky, according to new evidence, discovered by historians Salvatore Ricciardo, Franco Giudice and Michele Camerota in a forthcoming article for the journal of the Royal Society. Notes and records.

It seems that Galileo has moved forward and has written a different, a more delicate version of his letter from 1613 to Castelli. He then asked a friendly cleric in Rome, Piero Dini, to pass it on to the Vatican, claiming that his enemies in the Church had tampered with the original letter to make it doubtful.

Among the main changes Galileo made to the Castelli letter, Abbott explains:

In one case, Galileo described some Bible proposals as "false if we rely on the literal meaning of the words". section, he changed his reference to the scriptures "hiding" his most basic dogmas, to the weaker "veiling".

Unfortunately, the Church was finally not so easily appeased. In 1616, the Inquisition ordered Galileo to abandon his defense of the heliocentric model. But in 1632, Galileo published the Dialogue on the two major global systems, in which he compared the proofs of the Copernican system with the evidence of the Church's earth-centered theory. (A hypothesis about the theory that came out on top.)

The Inquisition put Galileo on trial. He was convicted of "strong suspicion of heresy" in 1633, having sought to defend himself by asserting that his defense of the Copernican system was only an intellectual exercise. He lived under house arrest until his death nine years later.

Nevertheless, the discovery provides insight into Galileo's ingenuity in trying to navigate the political climate of his time while advancing scientific understanding. As Monty Python said, "no one expects the Spanish inquisition." But Galileo expected the inquisition of the Roman Inquisition and tried to escape it.