A350-Galileo_Confession.txt Graham L. Kendall Modified 6/26/2002 http://www.grahamkendall.net/ Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com I am found on IRC Efnet/Undernet/Dalnet as glk === http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileoaccount.html http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/9579/confess0.html http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/depositions.html http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/05/galileo-myths-and-facts.html http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/depositions.html I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei of Florence, being 70 years old [...], swear that I have always believed, believe now and, with God's help, will in the future believe all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach and teach. But since, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the sun is the centre of the Universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the centre of the same and that it moves, and that I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatsoever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine; and after having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to Holy Writ, I wrote and published a book in which I treat this condemned doctrine and bring forward very persuasive arguments in its favour without answering them: I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is of having held and believed that the Sun is at the centre of the Universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not at the centre and that it moves. Therefore, wishing to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith these errors and heresies, and I curse and detest them as well as any other error, heresy or sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. And I swear that for the future I shall neither say nor assert orally or in writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicions; and if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place in which I may be. ====== Certainly. The most credible source for the quotes is the Catholic Church. Here, for example, is their take on the matter, from the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Galileo: "[Galileo] was presently interrogated before the Inquisition, which after consultation declared the system he upheld to be scientifically false, and anti-Scriptural or heretical, and that he must renounce it. This he obediently did, promising to teach it no more. Then followed a decree of the Congregation of the Index dated 5 March 1616, prohibiting various heretical works to which were added any advocating the Copernican system. In this decree no mention is made of Galileo, or of any of his works. Neither is the name of the pope introduced, though there is no doubt that he fully approved the decision, having presided at the session of the Inquisition, wherein the matter was discussed and decided. In thus acting, it is undeniable that the ecclesiastical authorities committed a grave and deplorable error, and sanctioned an altogether false principle as to the proper use of Scripture." If you want the actual text of the orders, try Finocchiaro's _The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History_. (It is a bit more available than the original publication of the documents by the Catholic Church in 1850.) He reproduces the following text from the Inquisition's findings on Galileo: "They issued their report to the cardinals of the Inquisition in February 1616, in which they concluded that the claim that the Sun was immobile and at the center of the universe was: '. . . foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words and according to the common interpretation and understanding of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.' NB the first paragraph is Finocchiaro, the second quoted from the documents. Note that it matches (plus or minus a few elided phrases) the page you called "not credible". http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/reading/core4-04r03.htm This page has quotes from the order of the Congregation of the Index in 1616, and from the Inquisition's trial of Galileo in 1633 in which the original order of 1616 is noted: "...by the desire of his Holiness and the Most Emminent Lords, Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the sun, and the motion of the earth, were qualified by the Theological Qualifiers as follows: 1. The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures. 2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith." http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/galileo.html "The Holy Tribunal in Galileo's condemnation states: 'The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith.'" ---- "Galileo was summoned to Rome in 1633. During his first appearance before the Inquisition, he was confronted with the 1616 edict recording that he was forbidden to discuss the Copernican theory. In his defense Galileo produced a letter from Cardinal Bellarmine, by then dead, stating that he was admonished only not to hold or defend the theory. The case was at somewhat of an impasse, and, in what can only be called a plea bargain, Galileo confessed to having overstated his case. He was pronounced to be vehemently suspect of heresy and was condemned to life imprisonment and was made to abjure formally. There is no evidence that at this time he whispered, "Eppur si muove" ("And yet it moves"). It should be noted that Galileo was never in a dungeon or tortured; during the Inquisition process he stayed mostly at the house of the Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican and for a short time in a comfortable apartment in the Inquisition building. After the process he spent six months at the palace of Ascanio Piccolomini (c. 1590-1671), the archbishop of Siena and a friend and patron, and then moved into a villa near Arcetri, in the hills above Florence. He spent the rest of his life there. Galileo's daughter Sister Maria Celeste, who was in a nearby nunnery, was a great comfort to her father until her untimely death in 1634. Galileo was then 70 years old. Yet he kept working. In Siena he had begun a new book on the sciences of motion and strength of materials. There he wrote up his unpublished studies that had been interrupted by his interest in the telescope in 1609 and pursued intermittently since. The book was spirited out of Italy and published in Leiden, Neth., in 1638 under the title Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica (Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences). Galileo here treated for the first time the bending and breaking of beams and summarized his mathematical and experimental investigations of motion, including the law of falling bodies and the parabolic path of projectiles as a result of the mixing of two motions, constant speed and uniform acceleration. By then Galileo had become blind, and he spent his time working with a young student, Vincenzo Viviani, who was with him when he died on Jan. 8, 1642." **************************************************************************** http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1630galileo.html "We order that by a public edict the book of DIALOGUES OF GALILEO GALILEI be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once aweek the Seven Penitential Psalms, reserving to Ourselves the faculty of moderating, changing, or taking from, all other or part of the above-mentioned pains and penalties. "And thus We say, pronounce, declare, order, condemn, and reserve in this and in any other better way and form which by right We can and ought. ======= The Inquisition found Italian scientist Galileo Galilei guilty of "suspected heresy" for defending the Copernican heliocentric view of the world, in which the Earth and other planets are seen as orbiting around the sun. Despite his forced public repudiation of the heliocentric view, he was still sentenced to an unlimited period of house imprisonment. More about Galileo: http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/index.html == łTo assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin˛ - Cardinal Belleramine 1615, during the trial of Galileo ====== The Catholicss said that the doctrine of the motion of the earth was false. The Catholic Church, however, was not content with this. It promulgated a solemn formula of condemnation of all books---already written and yet to be written in the centures to come---that propagated similar scientific doctrines. These are the actual words: "Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et immobilitatem solis (All books forbidden which maintain that the earth moves and the sun does not). End A350-Galileo_Confession.txt