The Galileo Affair ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The Galileo Affair ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The affair of Galileo was not played out in the atmosphere of inquisitorial terror that some writers have imagined; one cannot even say that the high ecclesiastical authorities posed systematically as enemies of scientific progress. How did the Church react in face of perils she could not ignore? The secular arm, whose aid she had the power to invoke, provided her with a formidable weapon of coercion and repression, and of this she made full use…