Galileo and the history of the Catholic ChurchIn the history of the Catholic Church, no episode is so contested from so many points of view as the condemnation of Galileo. The Galileo case, for many, demonstrates that the Church abhors science, refuses to abandon obsolete teachings and is clearly not infallible. For the most convinced Catholics, the episode is often a source of embarrassment and frustration. In any case, it is undeniable that Galileo's life triggered a definitive change in scientific thinking throughout Europe and symbolized the struggle between science and the Catholic Church. In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres.” Popular opinion is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. However the concept is as old as the ancient Greeks. This work was entrusted by Copernicus to Osiander, a staunch Protestant who thought that the book would most likely be condemned and, accordingly, the book would be condemned. Osiander then wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory that would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism, a theory that was not intended to be a definitive description of the heavens - something of Copernicus. I didn't mean it. The preface was unsigned and everyone believed it to be the author's. The fact that Copernicus believed that the heliocentric theory was a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. This was due, not only to the preface, but also to the fact that he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the idea that the planets must move in a circle because this is the only perfect form of movement. At the time, the geocentric theory, supported by A...... middle of paper...... of mechanics. By then he was an old man and was blind. He died in 1642, the same year Isaac Newton was born. There is no doubt that Galileo was unjustly punished; even three of the inquisitors decided not to sign the punitive document (even if one of them for purely political reasons) considering it too harsh. However, for that period he was quite lucky. It could have been much worse. Galileo's struggle with the Catholic Church is the essence of the problems people had in introducing new ideas into the world. This was a time period during which people were often killed for what they believed by the state or church. Perhaps by not directly killing Galileo the Church demonstrated that times were starting to change, or perhaps not. However, the episode will undoubtedly go down in history as a turning point in science and religious thought.