The trial of Galileo
The Inquisition convicts him of heresy and he spends his last years under house arrest.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Summoned to Rome in 1633 over his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo is made to abjure the Copernican view and sentenced to indefinite house arrest. The case was tangled up in papal politics, his own combativeness, and the fact that he had put the pope's argument in the mouth of a character named Simplicio. It became the emblematic conflict between science and religious authority — a framing that is partly justified and much simplified.