Photo: The Royal Society
Italian historians from University of Bergamo found in archives of Royal Society of London a letter of Galileo Galileo, with help of which he deceived church and took away suspicions of Holy Inquisition. This is reported in journal Nature.
Galileo’s adherence to heliocentric system of world led to appearance of many ill-wishers and attracted attention of Inquisition to scholar. In 1613, Galileo wrote a famous letter to his disciple, Abbot Castelli, defending heliocentric model of solar system. Galileo wrote that Holy Scripture refers only to salvation of soul and in scientific matters is not authoritative:
«No dictum of Scripture has such a coercive power as any phenomenon of nature has», he asserted.
The letter was published in open sources, which led to a wave of denunciations to Inquisition.
In order to improve his reputation, Galileo went to stealth. He announced that this letter was written by his opponents with a view to blacken the name of the scientist. In parallel, he prepared a new version of letter, which researchers found. If he originally wrote that some provisions in Bible are «false if one follows the literal meaning of words», then in new version he called them «different from the truth». Many other statements have also been replaced by softer synonyms. He sent letter through Roman priest to Vatican.
Nevertheless, self-censorship ultimately did not save Galileo – in 1633 an inquisition process took place in Rome, after which scientist was sentenced to life imprisonment, which soon was replaced by house arrest and life-long supervision of Inquisition.
Earlier Journalist reported that scientists named a new sensational reason for Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.
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