Galileo agreed and confessed that he had given stronger arguments to the heliocentric proponent in his dialogue than to the geocentric champion. But he insisted that he did not do so because he himself believed in heliocentrism, Kelly said. Rather, he claimed he was simply showing off his debating skills. Galileo was never tortured, however. The pope decreed that the interrogation should stop short with the mere threat of torture.
He died in In his later years Galileo insisted on the truth of the geocentric solar system, Kelly said. Jessica Wolf December 22, On April 12, , aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat The space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space.
Piloted by astronauts Robert L. Crippen and John W. Young, the Columbia undertook a hour space flight of 36 orbits before successfully Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4, rounds In Cambodia, the U. Navy conducts its evacuation effort, Operation Eagle.
On April 3, , as the communist Khmer Rouge forces closed in for the final assault on the capital city, U. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. How could the law reach him when he had acted with such care? The water in which Galileo found himself soon became even deeper.
The special commission's report to the Pope outlined a series of indictments against Galileo. On September 15, the Pope turned the matter over to the Inquisition.
Eight days later, the General Congregation declared--in what would come as a shock to Galileo--that he had violated the so-called injunction against teaching, holding, or writing about Copernican theory. On October 1, , the Inquisitor of Florence showed up at Galileo's house with a summons to present himself to the Holy Office in Rome within a month. In despair, Galileo expressed regret for involving himself with the Copernican cause: "I curse the time devoted to these studies in which I strove and hoped to move away somewhat from the beaten path.
I repent having given the world a portion of my writings; I feel inclined to consign what is left to the flames and thus placate at last the inextinguishable hatred of my enemies. He declined urgings to escape to the Venetian territory and instead asked that proceedings against him be moved to Florence. His request was denied: the Pope insisted that the old man, weak and ill though he was, make the two-hundred mile wintertime journey to Rome.
On February 13, , Galileo completed his twenty-three day trip to Rome and took up lodging in the Florentine embassy. It was not a good time. The Grand Duke reported that Galileo "for two nights continuous On April 8, Niccolini informed Galileo that he would stand trial before ten cardinals.
A more difficult chore for Niccolini was to break the news to him that the merits of his case--as a practical matter--had been decided already; all he could do was submit. Four days later, Galileo officially surrendered to the Holy Office and faced Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition, and his assistants. Firenzuola informed Galileo that for the duration of the proceedings against him he would be imprisoned in the Inquisition building.
After putting Galileo under oath, the Commissary deposed Galileo concerning meetings he held with Cardinal Bellarmine and other church officials in Galileo seemed to have trouble remembering who might have been present with Bellarmine on that fateful February day seventeen years earlier, as well as exactly what restrictions--if any--had been placed upon him.
Firenzuola told Galileo that he had been commanded to "neither hold, defend, nor teach that [the Copernican] opinion in any way whatsoever. After a series of questions concerning the licensing of the Dialogue , Galileo signed his deposition in a shaking hand. Three counselors to the Inquisition, driven especially by Galileo-hating Melchior Inchofer, prepared a seven-page evaluation of the Dialogue. The report concluded that in the book Galileo taught, defended, and showed that he held Copernican theory, and that--while claiming to discuss world models hypothetically--he gave the Copernican model "a physical reality.
Weeks past as internal debates raged over what the Inquisitors should do with their old scientist. Finally, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, a moderating influence on the panel of ten judges deciding Galileo's fate, persuaded the Commissary to meet with Galileo and convince him to admit error in return for a more lenient sentence. In a letter written by the Commissary and not discovered until , Firenzuola described his April 27 discussion with Galileo: "I entered into discourse with Galileo yesterday afternoon, and after many arguments and rejoinders had passed between us, by God's grace, I attained my object, for I brought him to a full sense of his error, so that he clearly recognized that he had erred and had gone too far in his book.
Some historians have seen Galileo's decision to admit error as a "final self-degradation. He was an intelligent man who had taken heavy risks to force an issue and to change a policy for the good of his faith.
He had been snubbed; he had nothing to do but pay the price and go home. The scientific truth would take care of itself. The trial by the Congregation moved to its conclusion. Several of the ten cardinals apparently pushed for Galileo's incarceration in prison, while those more supportive of Galileo argued that--with changes--the Dialogue ought to continue to be allowed to circulate. In the end, a majority of the cardinals--rejecting much of the Commissary's agreement with Galileo--demanded Galileo "even with the threat of torture The grand play ran its course, with the Pope insisting upon a formal sentence, a tough examination of Galileo, public abjuration, and "formal prison.
Galileo obliged, so as not to risk being branded a heretic, testifying that "I held, as I still hold, as most true and indisputable, the opinion of Ptolemy, that is to say, the stability of the Earth and the motion of the Sun.
I am here in your hands--do with me what you please. On the morning of June 22, , Galileo, dressed in the white shirt of penitence, entered the large hall of the Inquisition building. He knelt and listened to his sentence : "Whereas you, Galileo, the son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine As a salutary penance we impose on you to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for the next three years.
And we reserve to ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off, the whole or part of the said penalties and penances. This we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, order and reserve by this or any other better manner or form that we reasonably can or shall think of.
So we the undersigned Cardinals pronounce. Following the reading of the sentence, Galileo knelt to recite his abjuration :.
I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, Redirecting to: www. Close this pop-up window to remain on this page.
In fact, Lorini's letter appears more charitable than he in fact was. He would stop at almost nothing to destroy the "Galileists," as is shown from his alteration--in certain key places--of the text of Galileo's Letter to Castelli.
For example, where Galileo had written: "There are in Scripture words which, taken in the strict literal meaning, look as if they differed from the truth ," Lorini substituted: " which are false in their literal meaning.
Many things about the entry are suspicious. It appears in the Inquisition file where one would expect the actual Bellarmine injunction if it existed to appear. Moreover, the entry appears on the same page as the entry for the previous day--and every other report, legal act, and entry in the entire file begins at the top of a new page.
It is widely believed by historians that the reported injunction of Galileo was "a false injunction": the injunction never happened, but a false report was maliciously planted in the file by one of Galileo's enemies.
Seventeen years later, Galileo would stand before the Inquisition charged with violating an injunction that was, in all likelihood, never issued against him.
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