Galileo Galilei

In 1616, Galileo Galilei 1614 wrote a letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, the letter was written when he was being criticized for his teaches that were against the Catholic Church. Galileo writes this letter to for those to understand his own views on science and religion. Though the church see these actions are heretical for the reason that it goes against the word of the bible. Galileo  seeks to show that his observations and writing does not represent heresies against the Catholic Church by explaining that even if the Bible were to be wrong there to could be another meaning to what its saying. Therefore, the Catholic Church believed Galileo actions to be heretical in a way, but he demonstrates that his observations and writing does not represent heresies against the church by explaining that even if the Bible were to be wrong there could be another meaning to what it is trying to say and people are misunderstanding it.

The Catholic Church believes that Galileo observations and writings to be heretical for it is against the Bible. Galileo believes that the Sun does not moves at that the earth actually revolves around it, but the Catholic Church sees this as being heretical because Bible says that the earth is in the center. One will see this when Galileo states in his letter, “The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still” (Galileo, Letter to the Duchess, paragraph 6). For the reason that the Galileo observations and writing are against the bible, the Catholic Church decided that what he beliefs to be heretical.

Galileo attempted to demonstrate to the Duchess that his observations and writings did not represent heresies against the Catholic Church by explaining that Bible may be misinterpreted in ways. Galileo wrote about on how many people will not deny that the bible is profound and he brought up that there are contradictions to words in the Bible, one will recognize when Galileo states in writing, “nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse… Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible” (Galileo, Letter to the Duchess, paragraph 6). One is able to see that Galileo uses these ideas to help prove to the Catholic Church that he is not committing heresies. Therefore, Galileo tried to demonstrate to the Duchess that his observations and writings do not represent heresies against the Catholic Church by explaining that Bible may be misinterpreted in ways.