Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), of Pisa, Padua and Florence, who turned the new telescope on the sky in 1609 and found the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus and the mountains of the moon — and with them a case for Copernicus that the Aristotelians could not answer. The theological question that came with it, how Scripture is to be read where a demonstration contradicts the plain sense of its words, is the subject of his one sustained piece of theological writing. He was tried in 1633 and spent his last nine years under house arrest at Arcetri.
Galileo’s defence of the Copernican opinion against the charge that it contradicts Scripture, written to Christina of Lorraine, mother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1615 — the year before the Congregation of the Index condemned the doctrine. Its argument is that Scripture accommodates itself to common speech and was given to teach how one goes to heaven, and not how heaven goes, so that where a demonstration is certain the interpreter, not the astronomer, must give way. Circulated in manuscript in Galileo’s lifetime and first printed in 1636; this is Thomas Salusbury’s English of 1661, the first.
Some years since, as Your most Serene Highness well knoweth, I did discover many particulars in Heaven that had been unseen and unheard of untill this our Age; which, as well for their novelty, as for certain consequences which depend upon them, clashing with some Physical Propositions commonly received by the Schools, did stir up against me no small number of such as professed the vulgar Philosophy in the Universities; as if I had with my own hand newly placed these things in Heaven to obscure and disturb Nature and the Sciences: who forgetting that the multitude of Truths contribute, and concur to the investigation, augmentation, and establishment of the Arts, and not to their diminution, and destruction; and at the same time shewing themselves more affectionate to their own Opinions, than to Truth, went about to deny, and to disprove those Novelties; of which their very sense, had they but pleased to have intentsly beheld them, would have rendered them thorowly assured. And to this purpose they alledged sundry things, and published certain Papers fraughted with vain discourses; and which was a more gross errour, interwoven with the attestations of the Sacred Scriptures, taken from places by them not rightly understood, and which did not any thing concern the point for which they were produced Into which errour perhaps they would not have run, if they had but been advertised of a most profitable Document which S. Augustine giveth us, concerning our proceeding warily, in making positive determinations in points that are obscure and hard to be understood by the meer help of ratiocination; where treating (as we) of a certain natural conclusion concerning Celestial Bodies, he thus writes:1 But now having evermore a respect to the moderation of pious Gravity, we ought to believe nothing unadvisedly in a doubtful point; lest we conceive a prejudice against that, in favour to our Errour, which Truth hereafter may discover to be no wise contrary to the Sacred Books either of the Old or New Testament.
It hath since come to pass, that Time hath by degrees discovered to every one the truths before by me indicated: and together with the truth of the fact, a discovery hath been made of the difference of humours between those who simply and without passion did refuse to admit such like Phaenomena for true, and those who to their incredulity had added some discomposed affection:2 For as those who were better grounded in the Science of Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy, became satisfied upon my first intimation of the news; so all those who stood not in the Negative, or in doubt for any other reason, but because it was an unlookt-for-Novelty, and because they had not an occasion of seeing a sensible experiment thereof, did by degrees come to satisfie themselves: But those, who besides the love they bore to to their first Errour, have I know not what imaginary interess to render them disaffected; not so much towards the things, as towards the Author of them, not being able any longer to deny them, conceal themselves under an obstinate silence; and being exasperated more than ever by that whereby those others were satisfied and convinced, they divert their thoughts to other projects, and seek to prejudice me some other wayes: of whom I profess that I would make no more account than I have done of those who heretofore have contradicted me (at whom I alwaies laugh, as being assured of the issue that the business is to have) but that I see that those new Calumnies and Persecutions do not determine in our greater or lesser Learning (in which I will scarce pretend to any thing) but extend so far as to attempt to asperse me with Crimes which ought to be, and are more abhorred by me than Death it self: Nor ought I to content my self that they are known to be unjust by those onely who know me and them, but by all men whatsoever. They persisting therefore in their first Resolution, Of ruining me and whatsoever is mine, by all imaginable waies; and knowing how that I in my Studies of Astronomy and Philosophy hold, as to the Worlds Systeme, That the Sun, without changing place, is situate in the Centre of the Conversion of the Celestial Orbes; and that the Earth, convertible about its own Axis, moveth it self about the Sun: And moreover understanding, that I proceed to maintain this Position, not onely by refuting the Reasons of Ptolomy and Aristotle, but by producing many on the contrary; and in particular, some Physical pertaining to Natural Effects, the causes of which perhaps can be by no other way assigned; and others Astronomical depending upon many circumstances and encounters of new Discoveries in Heaven, which manifestly confute the Ptolomaick Systeme, and admirably agree with and confirm this other Hypothesis: and possibly being ashamed to see the known truth of other Positions by me asserted, different from those that have been commonly received; and therefore distrusting their defence so long as they should continue in the Field of Philosophy: for th[…]se respects, I say, they have resolved to try whether they could make a Shield for the fallacies of their Arguments of the Mantle of a feigned Religion, and of the Authority of the Sacred Scriptures, applyed by them with little judgment to the confutation of such Reasons of mine as they had neither understood, nor so much as heard.