Galileo Galilei was a person who made immense contributions to science throughout his life. However, despite his genius nature, as all intelligent people, who contradicted the Bible, he had a grave conflict with the Catholic Church, which provoked the Inquisition against him. His struggle with the hegemony of the Catholics of the seventeenth century was legendary. The career of Galileo Galilei suffered because he had an ideological conflict with the church, which is why he could not express his opinions freely.
Firstly, Galileo had never wished for a career in astronomy and precise sciences. Moreover, Galileo attended a monastery school and wanted to become a doctor to please his father, who had great expectations for his son. However, during the years in monastery, the future scientist understood that he had no interest in biology, whereas mathematics and philosophy seemed far more interesting to him (Gatttei). The longing for the precise sciences made him switch subjects at the school, where Galileo had been studying hard for years. Despite all the lengths and hardships he had to endure, Galileo left university without getting an appropriate degree and instead turned to private tutoring. He wrote his first treatise, Cosmography, which used the traditional works of Aristotle and Ptolemy, who put the Earth in the center of the universe (Findlen and Marcus, 334). Galileo used his first book to teach his students astronomy and learn about the cosmic bodies.
During the next years, he had been working as a mathematics professor in the university, where he started disproving the Aristotle’s theory he supported beforehand. Unfortunately, these beliefs were quite unpopular during that time, which is why the contract he signed at university was not renewed later. However, Galileo continued his work; he conducted thousands of experiments, scientific observations and studies (Gatttei). These experiments led the scientist to create a devise that made distant objects seem closer – the telescope.
Since Galileo now possessed a powerful scientific weapon, he could do anything. He started from discovering mountains on the Moon, Jupiter’s satellites, and countless stars never seen before because of the lack of appropriate equipment. His discoveries along with his mathematical mind put him ahead of the seventeenth’s century people. Then, he found something that would drastically change the course of his career. To be more precise, around the time of Galileo’s discoveries, Nicolaus Copernicus published a work, where he argued that it was the Sun at the center of the universe instead of the Earth (Zik and Hon, 340). Astonished by this work, Galileo conducted his research and in 1609 he published Kepler’s Astronomia Nova, where he supported the original claim of Copernicus (Gatttei). This decision, however, completely changed his life and worsened his relationship with the Catholic Church.
His work attracted praise and much criticism at the same time. The theory of heliocentrism was not accepted by the Catholics, since it completely disproved everything they tried to force onto the minds of gullible people (Root, 2018). Since the Church at that time held an immense amount of power, they could remove the person, who contradicted the ‘canonical’ beliefs. Despite the fact that some Churches, such as Jesuits, openly supported Galileo, it could not help him in the coming war with the most powerful force of the seventeenth century. The Catholic Church refused to accept Copernican model, despite all the evidence presented both by Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei.
Galileo was frustrated that the presented evidence was ignored by the Church, but he also was a stubborn person and refused to back down. He fought the people, who supported the geocentric theory with his knowledge and evidence, which only further provoked the attention of the Catholic Church. Therefore, his provocative behavior left him alone, since Jesuits refused to support his rather aggressive demeanor. Consequently, the Catholic Church decided to close the Galileo’s Affair, which only worsened the struggle the scientist had to endure. Roman Catholic Inquisition accused Galileo of heresy and started to investigate his works, which the scientist defended like his own child.
As expected, Inquisition tried to protect the authority of the Catholic Church, which is why they wanted to break the astronomer and make him suffer. They announced that Copernican theory contradicted the Holy Bible, which is why it was considered a heresy. Therefore, the Church ordered Galileo to stop his support of the ‘evil heresy’ and they have also banned his work along with the works of Copernicus. Instead of getting acknowledgment and positive fame, Galileo had met failure in the hands of tyrannical Church.
To hold the power, the Catholic Church initially possessed, they had stuck to traditionalism because of the grave Protestant Reformations occurring throughout the Europe. Therefore, they did not need a man, who openly contradicted everything the Church had been presenting to the people as the truth. The Church allowed discussing the two theories only in hypothetical sense and not as the truth. Galileo waited for the controversy to subside to continue his researches, because as of that time he was considered an enemy to the Catholic Church, a heretic.
Seven years after the initial scandalous event, it appeared that luck was on the side of Galileo, since his long-time friend Cardinal Barberini was elected to become the next head of the Catholic Church. The news made Galileo lose his mind, since, as he believed, the long struggle would end for him, as his friend would help him in openly supporting the heliocentrism (Evans, 26). The news made him work on his new book, where he dared to compare the two theories. However, this time he received the permission to write it on the condition that heliocentrism would be presented as a hypothetical theory.
Nevertheless, Galileo disregarded his promise and presented a book consisting of a series of dialogues, which the scientist and his impartial scholar argue about two theories. Galileo Galilei even dared to present the man, who supported geocentrism as a simpleton, which was reflected in his name – Simplicio (Gatttei). He printed his work with pride, believing that his long struggle had finally been over and soon enough he would be able to openly discuss the loved theory and would continue the studies in that field. However, what he did not realize was that the Catholic Church would never forget or forgive such insults.
With his book, Galileo had openly crossed the line and dared to question the power of the Church, which would have its dire consequences. The scientist was condemned by the Church and offended the only person who could have helped him in his unreliable state – the pope. Previously, before allowing him to write the book, the pope specifically asked to include pro-geocentric arguments, which Galileo ignored, isolating himself from the help. Therefore, to save the reputation of the Catholic Church, they had to make their intentions clear and showcase that no one is allowed to openly criticize Church’s dogmas. His Dialogue was forbidden to sale and the Galileo was once again presented to the public as heretic.
At the time of the second trial, Galileo had been an old person, who suffered from lots of health conditions. The accusers tried to make him confess, however, he did not give in to the pressure and denied the accusations presented. The Inquisition threatened to expose him to tortures for him to admit that he is wrong. He declined and stuck to his rules, reminding that his Dialogue book was initially approved by the pope and the Church. However, as his health continued to deteriorate, Galileo was forced to comply and he told what the investigators wanted to hear.
The struggle for the old scientist continued, as he tried to make the Inquisition take pity of him, but there was no remorse within the Churches’ hounds. Thus, Galileo was convicted of heresy and was forced to publicly refuse from his words, accepting the geocentric system as the only truth. The Dialogue was condemned to become one of the forbidden books. Galileo’s struggles and punishment continued, since the Catholic Church gave him a life sentence, which was later changed for house arrest. However, despite slowly going blind, Galileo continued his work and wrote one more book, which summarized his researches in different fields.
To conclude, Galileo Galilei was a person, who contributed into the development of scientific researches, which brought him the conflict with the Catholic Church. He had several major confrontations with the Church and its unquestionable authority in the Rome. Because of that, he was called a heretic and his works were prohibited. He could not support a theory, that would prove to be true and which the Catholic Church was forced to support almost three hundred years after Galileo’s death.
References
Dan Evans. “The Saint Necessity (Baal vs. Galileo).”The Antioch Review, vol. 76, no. 1, 2018, pp. 22–35. JSTOR. Web.
Findlen, Paula, and Hannah Marcus. “The Breakdown of Galileo’s Roman Network: Crisis and Community, Ca. 1633.”Social Studies of Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 2017, pp. 326–352. JSTOR. Web.
GATTEI, STEFANO, editor. On the Life of Galileo: Viviani’s Historical Account and Other Early Biographies. Princeton University Press, 2019. JSTOR. Web.
ROOT, ANDREW. Exploding Stars, Dead Dinosaurs, and Zombies: Youth Ministry in the Age of Science. 1517 Media, 2018. JSTOR. Web.
Zik, Yaakov, and Giora Hon. “History of Science and Science Combined: Solving a Historical Problem in Optics—the Case of Galileo and His Telescope.”Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 71, no. 4, 2017, pp. 337–344. JSTOR. Web.