Caleb White

History of Modern Europe

Jonathan Couser

4/17/24

Galileo’s Faith After Accusations of Heresy

Religious persecution has occurred for many different reasons over the years, almost

always involving someone speaking out or going against the grain, then being vilified and often

prosecuted and/or killed. After publishing a book on his findings in 1610, the astronomer Galileo

Galilei was subsequently scrutinized by the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Urban VIII for

supporting the Copernican heliocentric system. Copernicus said that the planets, including Earth,

orbit around the Sun, which in his model was the center of the universe. At the time it was

considered heresy to suggest any idea but the Ptolemaic system was accurate, as that was what

had been believed for so long. Galileo fought for his rights and ideology for many years, trying

to prove he was no heretic and that his ideas about the celestial plane were separate from

anything spoken about in the Bible. Despite the trouble the Roman Catholic Church put him

through, Galileo was not secretly an atheist and did not harbor disdain for Christianity as a

whole.

Certainly many who lived at the time of Galileo’s findings being released would say that

the man hated Christianity, indeed, he was on trial with the potential for terrible punishment if he

were to be found guilty of continuing to believe in the Copernican theory of the universe. Galileo

faced torture or death if he did not renounce his statements and more importantly, prove that his
written works were not heresy. Most people would do anything it takes to avoid such a fate, and

hence it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that he entirely lied about his care for Christianity and

added extra disclaimers that otherwise would have been left out. During this time of

investigation, Galileo tried to rally support from people who had influence and had shown

interest in his research previously. One such individual he sent an essay to was the Grand

Duchess Christina of Tuscany, hoping she would understand him and give her good word about

him to Pope Urban. This letter shows what Galileo is willing to say to someone who isn’t

necessarily going to burn him at a moment's notice, giving more insight into where his

sentiments may have laid, making this letter highly useful for analysis.

Despite all of this, Galileo still does his very best to pad most of what he says throughout

his letter to the Duchess and is understandably highly defensive of what he was intending to

mean. It is clear he doesn’t want to allow his opinions to be up for much interpretation. In one

such instance he states the goal behind sharing his findings about the stars, then pads it in the

sentence after:

“My goal is this alone; that if, among errors that may abound in these considerations of a

subject remote from my profession, there is anything that may be serviceable to the holy Church

in making a decision concerning the Copernican system, it may be taken and utilized as seems

best to the superiors. And if not, let my book be torn and burnt, as I neither intend nor pretend to

gain from it any fruit that is not pious and Catholic.”

We see here a great case where he specifically says he does not want to gain anything that

is against his beliefs, due to the potentially risky nature of the line before. To this day an

argument is made that if Galileo lived in a different place or time, he would have been an atheist
or at least less involved with Christianity. Of course, it is impossible for us to know for sure what

Galileo thought, but we can look at his writings, particularly those around the time of his

prosecution, to try and find some clues. In that excerpt, he effectively says ‘Curse me if I am

wrong!’ which, in a society as religiously tied as his, is a rather serious statement. Yes, he could

have lied, but this is a letter to his previous supporter, the Grand Duchess Christina, so needing

to have such a bold lie isn’t really going to make or break his case to her.

A highly important takeaway to consider here is the ways that Galileo speaks about God,

the Bible, and the Church in this letter, and to notice the differences between them. The passage

speaks about the Bible and how it has been simplified, which makes it omit certain direct

descriptions:

“Now the Bible, merely to condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure

some very important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities extremely

remote from (and even contrary to) His essence.”

To argue against Galileo’s faith, it would be easy to look at this quote and say that he is

suggesting God does not possess all of the attributes the Bible gives him and that this is Galileo

suppressing his feeling that God might not have any power, or even exist at all. But that is a far

reach; Galileo here says not that God isn’t in control of these things, but simply that the Bible

does not dive deep enough to get into the intricacies of His relationship with celestial bodies. His

real trouble comes from interpretations of the Bible, when people tried to fill in the blanks

regarding many things such as the sky. Galileo correctly was trying to say that higher-ups of the

church had been saying for many years that the Earth was the center of the universe because the

Bible said so. Indeed, passages from the Bible make vague reference to the Earth not moving and
the sun being something that can be ‘commanded’ but all of these various notes from scripture

can easily be written off as metaphors or simplifications- exactly what Galileo was trying to

suggest, not something as wild as a hidden atheism.

Defending himself later in the letter, Galileo talks about how the Bible is being

misinterpreted presumably by people like Pope Urban, and how if God didn’t tell them

specifically how the sky functioned, conclusions about the celestial bodies are in no way against

His word.

“Now if the Holy Spirit has purposely neglected to teach us propositions of this sort as

irrelevant to the highest goal (that is, to our salvation), how can anyone affirm that it is

obligatory to take sides on them, that one belief is required by faith, while the other side is

erroneous?”

This is a perfect argument against those who accused him; there is so little in the Bible

about the skies, and it does not matter for the sake of achieving the ultimate goal of gaining

access to Heaven. Galileo says the stars, moon, sun, and planets are separate from Heaven, and

therefore up to interpretation. It makes very little sense why the Catholic church would care so

passionately about this issue, but it was absolutely due to the pope and others in the church not

wanting to admit the traditional ideas they promoted were wrong, so they inevitably point fingers

at the Bible as the definitive astrological book, which it most certainly is not. Also, when looking

at this passage and the context before and after it, it is hard to find any wording or statements

where Galileo has an undertone of disdain for God or the religion in general, but simply his

frustration with the incredibly stubborn people who ruled over him. This is a common theme

throughout this letter- you can tell he doesn’t want to say anything too bad about anyone, but
because he knows the Grand Duchess is likely to understand where he is coming from, he tells

her about his frustrations, which he certainly wouldn’t air in person.

“Hence I should think it would be the part of prudence not to permit anyone to usurp

scriptural texts and force them in some way to maintain any physical conclusion to be true, when

at some future time the senses and demonstrative or necessary reasons may show the contrary.”

These moments of Galileo’s impatience with the unwavering Pope and other authorities

are what make it even possible to hold the case that Galileo might not be in support of the

religion as a whole. But it is very important to specifically take note of who Galileo refers to. He

never says the Bible is wrong or flawed, just that it doesn’t cover everything in existence. He

never says God, Jesus, or any other Biblical figure is anything less than what the church believes,

even in this letter that was not to be seen by prosecutors, but rather a supporter.

An important piece to remember when analyzing Galileo’s writing here is that he was

advocating for a correct concept, or at least more correct than the preexisting concept. The

Copernican system may have been wrong about the location of the center of the universe, but it

was accurate in the idea of the earth and planets circling the sun. The point here is that Galileo

didn’t need to lie at all here, he knew that Copernicus was more accurate than the Ptolemaic

system and that he was being accused of something that is rather inconsequential, really. So

based on this we know that Galileo was not incorrect or lying in other areas besides his feelings

on organized religion. Indeed the man was likely very dissatisfied with the existing leaders of the

church, but we still fail to see evidence of any anti-Christian sentiments here.

In all of his struggles, Galileo did not lose faith in what he believed, only in those who

imposed their ideas upon it. During April of 1633, he was sentenced to house arrest for the
remainder of his life by Pope Urban, narrowly avoiding more violent fates. The Pope formally

convicted him of believing “that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move

from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world.”

Neither side was actually correct in this 23-year affair, as we know with modern

understandings. Galileo finally passed away in Florence in 1642, his findings never having been

accepted in time to free him. He remained a practicing Catholic, with both of his daughters

having become nuns, and did not make any more bold claims about the world. If he lived in a

later time, Galileo may have been able to continue making discoveries, possibly even realizing

that the sun was not the center of the universe either. Regardless of this, his faith did not waver

and he was not an atheist in secret, but just a man who was right at the wrong time.
 Citations

Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History.

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/galileo-tuscany.asp. Accessed 20 Mar. 2024.