Author: Brandon A. Weber / Source: Big Think
- It was found in the Royal Society Library in London after at least 250 years
- The letter indicates how Galileo censored himself a bit in order to fly more under the radar, but it didn’t work
- The Royal Society Journal will publish the variants of the letters shortly, and scholars will begin to analyze the results
Heresy?
Credit: The Royal Society
The original letter in which Galileo argued against the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church has been rediscovered in London.
The idea that the planets, including Earth, revolved around the Sun was first proposed by Copernicus in 1543. It was a radical departure from the religionist world view of the time, and when Galileo confirmed this via his own observations, it caused quite a bit of consternation from the folks who led the Catholic Inquisition, as well as the Catholic Church itself. The church, you see, held strongly to the Earth-centered universe at the time, and to contradict their beliefs was straight-up heresy.
When a letter, dated December 21, 1616, was first sent to mathematician Benedetto Castello with his proofs of the Copernicus heliocentric (sun-centered) model and the assertion that scientific research should be free from theological doctrine, it was forwarded to the Catholic Church, which labeled the letter “heresy,” declared it an attack on the church, and blasted what it perceived as…
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