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"Update 11/15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs." -- that should serve as a hint about the overall

"Update 11/15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs." -- that should serve as a hint about the overall quality of the article.

jawns 10y ago
Up until college, I had always heard the story of the Catholic Church persecuting Galileo as sort of the prototypical example of the church's attitude toward science. As a Catholic, I figured it was an episode where Galileo was clearly in the right and the Church was clearly in the wrong. In college, though, I discovered that many influential Catholics strongly reject the idea that Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church because the Church disagreed with his theory or felt it threatened to undermine its teachings: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy tl;dr - It's more complicated than the typical anti-Catholic narrative suggests. The episode was primarily a clash of personalities (Galileo was a jerk and insulted thin-skinned Vatican officials who misused their power to punish him), rather than a dispute about science, or even a dispute about the intersection of science and religion.
- b_emery 10y ago
  ... which reminds me of another favorite place in Rome, Campo di Fiori, wherein stands the statue of Giordano Bruno, who was indeed burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. The statue faces the Vatican, which is apparently not an accident.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Bruno was an astronomer, but was burned for heresy, not astronomy. Burning at the stake was indefensible; but at least it wasn't about science. (Something comparable happened to Hypatia, who was cruelly killed by a Christian mob not for practicing and teaching classical science, but for being pagan.)
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      It seems that your claim is that the astronomy had nothing to do with burning a man alive.... but there are many non-astronmer pagans not burned alive. Perhaps astronomy wasn't the only reason, but clearly the church was against any message, however scientific, that conflicted with their message. Scientists have this nasty habit of having evidence that complicates shutting them up while they live. EDIT - Grammar
      - danielam 10y ago
        You offer a damning yet vague accusation (an easy one since slandering the Church is acceptable and even respectable today), but no argument. Since Bruno was mentioned, it must be noted that he didn't have any evidence for his claims, but what made him a heretic were claims that were radically anti-Christian, not idle speculation about the stars. (I should also mention that both Galileo and Kepler didn't exactly have the kindest words for Bruno.) Another good one: it is popular opinion that the Church viewed heliocentrism as a heretical position, sometimes followed by mentions of passages in the bible that talk about sunrises or sunsets or how it demotes Man's place in the cosmic order. Again, all that this demonstrates is ignorance -- ignorance of history, ignorance of the nature of science and the history of science and ignorance of the history of the bible and the nature of the texts within it. The "us vs. them" story of the enlightened forces of science battling the big, bad, evil Church is comical and stupid and the currency of people poorly educated on the subject. It's an easy narrative to hold to especially when it reaffirms what one wants to believe. It's all too common that people think it's okay to slander anyone you don't like or disagree with.
        cutler 10y ago
        Where's your evidence that the Catholic church did not consider the heliocentric view heretical?
        throwaway1892 10y ago
        Where's your evidence that the Catholic church did consider the heliocentric view heretical?
- manachar 10y ago
  History is almost always more complicated than people's narratives. Narratives are a model. Some are more accurate than others, but ultimately all of them are just models which simplify history (sometimes in verifiably false ways).
  - crpatino 10y ago
    History that is not only innacurate, but conveniently presents the author's least preferred side as gratiously Evil? We have a word for that: propaganda.
- SmokyBorbon 10y ago
  It's simple. The scientic consensus was that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo thought the sun was the center of the universe. The Church allowed supported Galileo and repeatedly gave him permission to pursue his theory but forbid him from speaking about it without proof. Unable to obtain proof because his theory was wrong, Gallileo wrote a book making fun of the Pope and got his ass thrown in jail. People who think the Catholic Church is anti-science think so put of ignorance. They see how American protestants conduct themselves and assume catholics are more extreme versions of them. However, many of their beliefs including those related to evolution and creation first appeared in protestantism in the 19th century. Catholics in the 1st and 2nd centuries, for example, were writing about how the days in Genesis represent unspecified time periods, not literal days.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Except the standard narrative is fairly honest, if reductionist. Of course the details are far more interesting, but I find there's this new historic revisionism that's trying to whitewash Catholic history and its fairly repugnant. Look at your comment. Putting in qualifiers like Galileo was a jerk and those selfless Vatican officials were just a little "thin-skinned" is making excuses to promote a pro-Church narrative and to blame Galileo. You are aware we are discussing the Inquisition here which, if we include the entire church all through Europe, led to the deaths of over 125,000 people. This wasn't some protocol slight taken overly-wrongly, but an active system of censorship, oppression, imprisonment, and mass murder Galileo was on the receiving end of. I hate when the "Oh, there's more to this story" attitude is used to defend the wrong narrative. I see it all the time on the internet. Edison is on par with Hitler for some reason, Lincoln is a war mongering criminal for going against the peace loving Confederate states, etc. The larger narrative is dismissed for smaller details that are presented in a way to distract or contradict the larger narrative. Its purposely viewing the trees and ignoring the forest. Sadly, its a popular way for disingenuous people to promote their views.
  - bonzini 10y ago
    Not really, there were actual problems with the Copernican system, mostly because it still required epicyclics. The favored system at the time was the Tychonic system, and what actually allowed heliocentrism to prevail was Kepler's introduction of elliptical orbits. Some of Galileo's points, for example his explanation of tides in term of heliocentrism, were downright wrong---which is fine, but trying to mix theology and astronomy, which he did, and putting the pope's theory in the mouth of a character called "Simple" were not the best political moves.
    - cygx 10y ago
      The audacity of a layperson to quote Augustine!
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Except the thing is, Galileo's model was not supported by science. They had neither a proper theoretical model for deriving it (Newton's and Kepler's work on gravity and celestial movement, which came after Galileo), nor did the Galileo's model agree with available observational data. From the point of view of scientists of that age, his model was more like a crackpot theory. Which turned out ok, but only much later. So if anything, Galileo's story is about the Church being on the side of science, not against it.
- arjie 10y ago
  I've been hearing this sort of thing a lot lately and it has just reinforced, in my mind, that the Catholic Church at the time was a pretty repugnant institution (though this is not nearly the worst of its actions). All of your clarifications only reinforce the belief that Galileo was in the right and the Catholic Church was in the wrong. Abusing power to persecute someone because you were insulted doesn't exactly move someone closer to being right. One could make the argument that at the time it was normal to persecute someone because they insulted you and I don't want to get into that whole debate about moral relativism, but that's not the defence you've brought up. I mean, ultimately they convicted him of heresy for his claims. It's not like they were "We condemn you to house arrest for being a dick!". They were like "We condemn you to house arrest for heresy since you claimed the Earth goes around the Sun!". And on top of that they go and repudiated his ideas. So not only did they say that the claim was false, they also said that it was such a terrible claim that it qualified for one of the highest kinds of crimes (heresy). There's no need for anti-Catholicism here.
  - bonzini 10y ago
    Galileo did mix theology and astronomy in unhealthy ways, too. This perhaps does not justify house arrest, but there is really more than one side, more often than not.
    - arjie 10y ago
      I'm not familiar enough to criticize that claim, though I think I recall Popper saying that this was just the means by which science existed at the time. Epistemology hadn't developed to the degree that it has today. Still, it's a valid criticism of his ideas. I did not mean to imply that there isn't another side. Only that the gulf between poor ideas (and invective) and persecution leading to conviction on grounds of heresy (and its attendant results) is so large that it is not meaningful to defend the actions of the Catholic Church on the basis that someone was impolite in their discourse with its leaders.
      - danielam 10y ago
        No one is saying that house arrest was the wrong move for the administrators who sentenced him to make. The problem is with the way you frame Galileo's house arrest (again, in the papal apartments, which by the standards of the day, when witches were being burned in Northern Europe, was mild). You are still working from within a paradigm characterized by the false dichotomy of Science vs. the Church, or enlightened Science vs. the Church as tyrannical, monolithic overlord. To say Galileo was persecuted for his ideas is saying too much; what do we make of those who actually were and are persecuted? Galileo had been announcing his ideas and squabbling with opponents for decades before it came to house arrest, with at least two discernible periods of conflict. The motive was by and large more personal than theological (and certainly not scientific). Even the idea that theological disagreement would land you on the pyre is flatly wrong. A counterexample of that is Aquinas whose ideas were condemned by the bishop of Paris. Aquinas was canonized 50 years after his death and declared a doctor of the Church two centuries later. He remains one of the most important thinkers of the Church, in philosophy and in history. The strategy of casting oneself as a victim is a tried and tested method of gaining a politically useful yet illusory moral high ground with which to bludgeon your opponent, and the Church has no shortage of enemies.
anigbrowl 10y ago
You'd be a fool to expect book-level accuracy from blog posts. Even I mix Giordano Bruno up with Galileo sometimes, it's not a deal breaker.
baldfat 10y ago
I also was going to make a similar post. Theology was the mother of all learning and Churches were the center point of science. This is why the Church produced so many philosophers and scientist. THIS IS WRONG and a Myth that Galileo was persecuted by the church. > After all, the Church rather infamously persecuted Galileo in the 17th century for suggesting that the Earth is not, in fact, at the center of the cosmos, and that, by extension, Church doctrine relating to God’s orderly plans for the world were inherently flawed. Decent quick read on Galileo myth that the church was fighting science. It had a lot more to do with competing scientific claims and more specifically the attack of Aristotle. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/04/17/galileo-and-the-myth-that-wont-go-away/#44dc5fcd2202 http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/04/17/galileo-a...
- b_emery 10y ago
  "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." Roman inquisition was run by the church, they found him guilty for disagreeing essentially. Seems pretty clear. Regardless, the church has a long history of: appeals to authority, discouraging debate, irrational attachment to previous ideas, and overly complex hypotheses (e.g. God) - all of which counter the methods of science. While the role of the church in the evolution of 'science' has certainly been complex, it's not much of a stretch to say that the church has a history of fighting the essential components of the scientific method.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    > - all of which counter the methods of science. Of the 21st Century Scientific Method? Are you also going to look down at the Greek Philosophers? Their method was also wrong. You are judging history with a 21st Century mindset and that isn't fair to Newton or Copernicus (Who's myth is also bigger then Galileo). Heck medicine was still doing blood letting during the founding of United States. > it's not much of a stretch to say that the church has a history of fighting the essential components of the scientific method. That is such a wrong statement and has been debunked by the fact that science was propelled through and by the church. The VERY fact that this article list all the scientific / Astronomical features in Catholic Churches Sorry I was in the process of getting a PhD in Historical Theology and not a Pro Catholic shill. * Francis Bacon was really the founder of the modern Scientific Method, correct? Did you read his other book? Like his translation of 7 Psalms from the Bible or his many essays and books regarding Theology? Science and Theology didn't clash like people would like to say and I actually say the reverse we are ahead of the technology curve because of the Church, Mosques and Synagogues. This war we see from extremism is actually a very modern creation.
pfortuny 10y ago
What the HECK! Thanks for thr info. Skipping it entirely.
SilasX 10y ago
Yeah I'm kinda bothered by the frequency of the Atlas Obscura submissions.
CamperBob2 10y ago
Yes, it should. When they get something wrong, they issue a correction. That's a sign of high quality.

"Update 11/15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs." -- that should serve as a hint about the overall quality of the article.

jawns 10y ago

Up until college, I had always heard the story of the Catholic Church persecuting Galileo as sort of the prototypical example of the church's attitude toward science. As a Catholic, I figured it was an episode where Galileo was clearly in the right and the Church was clearly in the wrong. In college, though, I discovered that many influential Catholics strongly reject the idea that Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church because the Church disagreed with his theory or felt it threatened to undermine its teachings: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy tl;dr - It's more complicated than the typical anti-Catholic narrative suggests. The episode was primarily a clash of personalities (Galileo was a jerk and insulted thin-skinned Vatican officials who misused their power to punish him), rather than a dispute about science, or even a dispute about the intersection of science and religion.

b_emery 10y ago
... which reminds me of another favorite place in Rome, Campo di Fiori, wherein stands the statue of Giordano Bruno, who was indeed burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. The statue faces the Vatican, which is apparently not an accident.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Bruno was an astronomer, but was burned for heresy, not astronomy. Burning at the stake was indefensible; but at least it wasn't about science. (Something comparable happened to Hypatia, who was cruelly killed by a Christian mob not for practicing and teaching classical science, but for being pagan.)
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    It seems that your claim is that the astronomy had nothing to do with burning a man alive.... but there are many non-astronmer pagans not burned alive. Perhaps astronomy wasn't the only reason, but clearly the church was against any message, however scientific, that conflicted with their message. Scientists have this nasty habit of having evidence that complicates shutting them up while they live. EDIT - Grammar
    - danielam 10y ago
      You offer a damning yet vague accusation (an easy one since slandering the Church is acceptable and even respectable today), but no argument. Since Bruno was mentioned, it must be noted that he didn't have any evidence for his claims, but what made him a heretic were claims that were radically anti-Christian, not idle speculation about the stars. (I should also mention that both Galileo and Kepler didn't exactly have the kindest words for Bruno.) Another good one: it is popular opinion that the Church viewed heliocentrism as a heretical position, sometimes followed by mentions of passages in the bible that talk about sunrises or sunsets or how it demotes Man's place in the cosmic order. Again, all that this demonstrates is ignorance -- ignorance of history, ignorance of the nature of science and the history of science and ignorance of the history of the bible and the nature of the texts within it. The "us vs. them" story of the enlightened forces of science battling the big, bad, evil Church is comical and stupid and the currency of people poorly educated on the subject. It's an easy narrative to hold to especially when it reaffirms what one wants to believe. It's all too common that people think it's okay to slander anyone you don't like or disagree with.
      - cutler 10y ago
        Where's your evidence that the Catholic church did not consider the heliocentric view heretical?
        throwaway1892 10y ago
        Where's your evidence that the Catholic church did consider the heliocentric view heretical?
manachar 10y ago
History is almost always more complicated than people's narratives. Narratives are a model. Some are more accurate than others, but ultimately all of them are just models which simplify history (sometimes in verifiably false ways).
- crpatino 10y ago
  History that is not only innacurate, but conveniently presents the author's least preferred side as gratiously Evil? We have a word for that: propaganda.
SmokyBorbon 10y ago
It's simple. The scientic consensus was that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo thought the sun was the center of the universe. The Church allowed supported Galileo and repeatedly gave him permission to pursue his theory but forbid him from speaking about it without proof. Unable to obtain proof because his theory was wrong, Gallileo wrote a book making fun of the Pope and got his ass thrown in jail. People who think the Catholic Church is anti-science think so put of ignorance. They see how American protestants conduct themselves and assume catholics are more extreme versions of them. However, many of their beliefs including those related to evolution and creation first appeared in protestantism in the 19th century. Catholics in the 1st and 2nd centuries, for example, were writing about how the days in Genesis represent unspecified time periods, not literal days.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Except the standard narrative is fairly honest, if reductionist. Of course the details are far more interesting, but I find there's this new historic revisionism that's trying to whitewash Catholic history and its fairly repugnant. Look at your comment. Putting in qualifiers like Galileo was a jerk and those selfless Vatican officials were just a little "thin-skinned" is making excuses to promote a pro-Church narrative and to blame Galileo. You are aware we are discussing the Inquisition here which, if we include the entire church all through Europe, led to the deaths of over 125,000 people. This wasn't some protocol slight taken overly-wrongly, but an active system of censorship, oppression, imprisonment, and mass murder Galileo was on the receiving end of. I hate when the "Oh, there's more to this story" attitude is used to defend the wrong narrative. I see it all the time on the internet. Edison is on par with Hitler for some reason, Lincoln is a war mongering criminal for going against the peace loving Confederate states, etc. The larger narrative is dismissed for smaller details that are presented in a way to distract or contradict the larger narrative. Its purposely viewing the trees and ignoring the forest. Sadly, its a popular way for disingenuous people to promote their views.
- bonzini 10y ago
  Not really, there were actual problems with the Copernican system, mostly because it still required epicyclics. The favored system at the time was the Tychonic system, and what actually allowed heliocentrism to prevail was Kepler's introduction of elliptical orbits. Some of Galileo's points, for example his explanation of tides in term of heliocentrism, were downright wrong---which is fine, but trying to mix theology and astronomy, which he did, and putting the pope's theory in the mouth of a character called "Simple" were not the best political moves.
  - cygx 10y ago
    The audacity of a layperson to quote Augustine!
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Except the thing is, Galileo's model was not supported by science. They had neither a proper theoretical model for deriving it (Newton's and Kepler's work on gravity and celestial movement, which came after Galileo), nor did the Galileo's model agree with available observational data. From the point of view of scientists of that age, his model was more like a crackpot theory. Which turned out ok, but only much later. So if anything, Galileo's story is about the Church being on the side of science, not against it.
arjie 10y ago
I've been hearing this sort of thing a lot lately and it has just reinforced, in my mind, that the Catholic Church at the time was a pretty repugnant institution (though this is not nearly the worst of its actions). All of your clarifications only reinforce the belief that Galileo was in the right and the Catholic Church was in the wrong. Abusing power to persecute someone because you were insulted doesn't exactly move someone closer to being right. One could make the argument that at the time it was normal to persecute someone because they insulted you and I don't want to get into that whole debate about moral relativism, but that's not the defence you've brought up. I mean, ultimately they convicted him of heresy for his claims. It's not like they were "We condemn you to house arrest for being a dick!". They were like "We condemn you to house arrest for heresy since you claimed the Earth goes around the Sun!". And on top of that they go and repudiated his ideas. So not only did they say that the claim was false, they also said that it was such a terrible claim that it qualified for one of the highest kinds of crimes (heresy). There's no need for anti-Catholicism here.
- bonzini 10y ago
  Galileo did mix theology and astronomy in unhealthy ways, too. This perhaps does not justify house arrest, but there is really more than one side, more often than not.
  - arjie 10y ago
    I'm not familiar enough to criticize that claim, though I think I recall Popper saying that this was just the means by which science existed at the time. Epistemology hadn't developed to the degree that it has today. Still, it's a valid criticism of his ideas. I did not mean to imply that there isn't another side. Only that the gulf between poor ideas (and invective) and persecution leading to conviction on grounds of heresy (and its attendant results) is so large that it is not meaningful to defend the actions of the Catholic Church on the basis that someone was impolite in their discourse with its leaders.
    - danielam 10y ago
      No one is saying that house arrest was the wrong move for the administrators who sentenced him to make. The problem is with the way you frame Galileo's house arrest (again, in the papal apartments, which by the standards of the day, when witches were being burned in Northern Europe, was mild). You are still working from within a paradigm characterized by the false dichotomy of Science vs. the Church, or enlightened Science vs. the Church as tyrannical, monolithic overlord. To say Galileo was persecuted for his ideas is saying too much; what do we make of those who actually were and are persecuted? Galileo had been announcing his ideas and squabbling with opponents for decades before it came to house arrest, with at least two discernible periods of conflict. The motive was by and large more personal than theological (and certainly not scientific). Even the idea that theological disagreement would land you on the pyre is flatly wrong. A counterexample of that is Aquinas whose ideas were condemned by the bishop of Paris. Aquinas was canonized 50 years after his death and declared a doctor of the Church two centuries later. He remains one of the most important thinkers of the Church, in philosophy and in history. The strategy of casting oneself as a victim is a tried and tested method of gaining a politically useful yet illusory moral high ground with which to bludgeon your opponent, and the Church has no shortage of enemies.

anigbrowl 10y ago

You'd be a fool to expect book-level accuracy from blog posts. Even I mix Giordano Bruno up with Galileo sometimes, it's not a deal breaker.

baldfat 10y ago

I also was going to make a similar post. Theology was the mother of all learning and Churches were the center point of science. This is why the Church produced so many philosophers and scientist. THIS IS WRONG and a Myth that Galileo was persecuted by the church. > After all, the Church rather infamously persecuted Galileo in the 17th century for suggesting that the Earth is not, in fact, at the center of the cosmos, and that, by extension, Church doctrine relating to God’s orderly plans for the world were inherently flawed. Decent quick read on Galileo myth that the church was fighting science. It had a lot more to do with competing scientific claims and more specifically the attack of Aristotle. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/04/17/galileo-and-the-myth-that-wont-go-away/#44dc5fcd2202 http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/04/17/galileo-a...

b_emery 10y ago
"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." Roman inquisition was run by the church, they found him guilty for disagreeing essentially. Seems pretty clear. Regardless, the church has a long history of: appeals to authority, discouraging debate, irrational attachment to previous ideas, and overly complex hypotheses (e.g. God) - all of which counter the methods of science. While the role of the church in the evolution of 'science' has certainly been complex, it's not much of a stretch to say that the church has a history of fighting the essential components of the scientific method.
- baldfat 10y ago
  > - all of which counter the methods of science. Of the 21st Century Scientific Method? Are you also going to look down at the Greek Philosophers? Their method was also wrong. You are judging history with a 21st Century mindset and that isn't fair to Newton or Copernicus (Who's myth is also bigger then Galileo). Heck medicine was still doing blood letting during the founding of United States. > it's not much of a stretch to say that the church has a history of fighting the essential components of the scientific method. That is such a wrong statement and has been debunked by the fact that science was propelled through and by the church. The VERY fact that this article list all the scientific / Astronomical features in Catholic Churches Sorry I was in the process of getting a PhD in Historical Theology and not a Pro Catholic shill. * Francis Bacon was really the founder of the modern Scientific Method, correct? Did you read his other book? Like his translation of 7 Psalms from the Bible or his many essays and books regarding Theology? Science and Theology didn't clash like people would like to say and I actually say the reverse we are ahead of the technology curve because of the Church, Mosques and Synagogues. This war we see from extremism is actually a very modern creation.

pfortuny 10y ago

What the HECK! Thanks for thr info. Skipping it entirely.

SilasX 10y ago

Yeah I'm kinda bothered by the frequency of the Atlas Obscura submissions.

CamperBob2 10y ago

Yes, it should. When they get something wrong, they issue a correction. That's a sign of high quality.