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There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio

Donetha Groover
Perspectives

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The title of this paper is a quote from Shakespeare. Even though Hamlet is talking to
Horatio, it could be used for Galileo and the pope. Funny thing is, either one of them
could of said it to the other. In the 1600s Pope Urban VIII put Galileo on trial for heresy.
Galileo was found to be a little guilty. By that I mean that he was sentenced as being
highly suspect of heresy, put on house arrest (although still allowed to visit his
daughters and have guests visit him), and ordered to say psalms three times a week for
three years. However, was Galileo guilty?
First let us talk about what heresy is, then we can determine if Galileo was guilty of it.
According to St. Thomas, heresy is "a species of infidelity in men who, having professed
the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas"(Knight, 2014). There are actually four different
degrees of heresy. They range from outright heresy, to suspicion of having an opinion
that could be heresy. So if heresy is a Christian having an opinion that differs from, or
corrupts the dogma of the Catholic Church, then Galileo is guilty. He held to the belief
that the earth moved around the sun, not the other way around.
Galileo so fervently believed this that he was willing to go against the Church and
continued to expound his theories when ordered to stop. He tried to argue that he was
just laying out ideas, and not endorsing any of them. This argument was not sufficient
in the Catholic Churchs eyes. Considering the fact that there had already been one
person burned at the stake for holding to the Copernican thoughts of the heliocentric

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universe Galileo should have been more cautious. Instead he continued to poke the

bear in the eye and was found guilty as well (Pettersen, 2008, p 18).
Even if we believe Galileo to be guilty of heresy, does that mean his ideas and
theories were wrong? Was he wrong to challenge views that could be demonstrated to
be incorrect? I think that would be a resounding no. Galileo did have permission from
the Church to look into the facts about how the universe works, and the relationship
between the Earth and Sun (Mills, 2009). Unfortunately what he found, and the
conclusions he came to were not the ones that the Church wanted. Galileo managed to
make correct observations with pretty primitive technology and further human
understanding of the universe.
It is the responsibility of every human to question and learn. Sometimes that means
going against commonly held beliefs and traditions. Honestly I think that the Catholic
Church just found Galileo guilty to save face and prove that they still had authority. The
lightness of his sentence leads people to the conclusion that really Galileo was right and
the Church knew it, but did not want people to realize it. So was Galileo guilty of
heresy? Yes. Was it good that he spoke out, challenged misconceptions, and brought
scientific thinking forward? Once again, yes. The Bible shows the way to go to heaven,
not the way the heavens go. Galileo

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References
Knight, K. (2014). Heresy. Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07256b.htm
Mills, C. G. (2009, August 21). Was Galileo Guilty? Retrieved from
http://www.academia.org/was-galileo-guilty/
Pettersen, M. S., Purnell, F., & Carnes, M. C. (2008). The trial of Galileo: Aristotelianism, the
"new cosmology," and the Catholic Church, 1616-1633. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &
Company.