What caused Galileo to be accused of heresy?
Answering "Why was Galileo accused of heresy?"Professor Galileo Galilei was an astronom, in his time a great one, honoured and busy researching facts about the planetary system around our sun, he made a great invention to learn more about that. Great teachers in one special sector have done a lot to know "anything" of their resort: they are learning on theit 1 topic. But, as the people are, this does not make them knowing anything else in the same degree. But people think so and ask them about other things, if they became famous ones. If the research they are learnt for is expensive, they need this "fans" to get the money - and he became a famous, popular man - and rich enough.In his time we speak of was the beginning of the 17th century, 30-years war not only on the battle fields but in the verbal fightings, too. The ones made decisions on this land is mine, all my subjects have to believe "this!" - and their enemies told another religion, only for to make the difference fact. The folks had to follow, sometimes very quick in changing all. There was a third movement, now wishing no spaecial religion but doing on their researches.In this situation Prof.Galileii went with those who cursed the Roman Catholic church in their near, Italia, but did not decide to follow instead of this another church. He hold with those who wrote polemic "letters" on the market places against some preachers words, that each word in the Holy Bible is unchangeable "truth" - even those words which are not laws or witness about an event, but ancient praises, frame-stories.His papers made the simple people crazy, speaking in an very aggressive sound about some "mistakes" - and this was not science, not valuable by research and labour but pure polemic in the name of science - the folks took it so as if said: "if one point in the Bible is told "false" the whole tradition is not holy - look: all the professors are laughing about that pope and all his teachings about sin or not thing might be wrong. And they laugh, but there doesn't come a thunder on them!"Not all the professors "laughed" in this way, and this thesis of Galilei was not the first - about the sun being surrounded by the earth, while the eye of a human makes us think, that the earth stands and the sun comes and goes. There is no "error" and no "mistake" if a socalled "doxology" praises G*D for having created that what we see. There isn't told, how HE did arrange this.But Prof.Galilei let the people think it a problem of belief and "truth" - a lot of others made the same and similar "jokes" - a lot of polemic preachers fighted them as silly.Then came the day the "Holy inquisition" made a research on Mr.Galilei and accused him for teaching heresy - because of this result, that he had gone much too far in his polemics and his followers left any confidence in their own church and risked their eternal life by not further wishing to follow the 10 comandments- This was, what happened, in short. - It was a bit more complicated, what they, the accusators, spoke. But this was fact - perhaps he himself didn't feel or wish this, he preached revolution and it was not, that he explained, how it comes, that we see a sun coming and going while this sun is in the middle of an circle the earth goes around her once in 1 year and rotates daily. Other astronomers found this, too. There is no dogma, to say this in poetic feeling or that in a scientifical formula. But he mixed that up as if it were impossible for him, a professor, to ask a professor of theology, to know this. It was wrong to offend the Holy Book and the church.The problem of Prof.Galilei was really not to find out that the earth ist running around the sun or being a ball - (against imaginations that the earth is a plate and the sun comes and goes over and under or around us human beings) which other people in his times knew, too, even inside the Vatican and in other universities- his heresy began with his publishing these pure astrophysical things - running around on the market places and distributing cheap popular-papers ("Flugblaetter"), connecting the thesis with it, that the Holy Bible "tells a nonsense" and the church "is not teaching a wisdom and truth, but silly errors like that...".This was an unfriendly act and had no real connection, the one with the other what he told.To tell a religious truth was not his job and he did not study about that, to know this as exactly as he learnt and knew the physical relations between material bodies.His religion was not based on an idea whether suns run around earthes or the contrary - his heaven would not been promised that it would become so if it is not here so.And, severe: He was the famous and highly paid and honoured science-man - and not Mr.Everybody sitting in a meadow and playing with apples as if they are globes, because he was a High School teacher in his own science.There were teachers in his science to speak about such things, and others in his time, who learnt the same things as he, they came to the same results, because this discipline is looking, combining and drawing the line of thoughts, defining one fact to found the other - without any "hurrray!"-results forever. The use is, to learn more, on and on, their job is to prove any result they find, and then to add the next question. They have their market writing books and meeting each another.Belief is another topic and way, it results on witness of people who saw and heard in their times historical events, they, too, added one to the other, thought about and told the results. Only one sector of this, what came in tradition of the believers is written in the Holy Bible. The Bible tells in the language and knowledge of those witnesses of theit events, and they did not think in words of his time about things which are not relevant for the question what happens with our life and what follows after our death, and WHO is our G*D - HE came not in the way of research, proof and decision to our knowledge - people met some events and the one told this to the next, it started as a community deciding to follow the rules of THIS G*D - we did not know more of HIM as those rules and a pact, what will happen, if we do these laws - and what will happen if not.In these laws nobody can find a sentence that is is need for those laws, that the sun goes around the earth or the earth has to be a plate or the elefant has to be green coloured...But Mr.Galileo Galilei - maybe - now fighted only some popular preachers from the more poetic school, those who told on the market places eagerly stories and, clever or silly as the single preacher was, some of them fell so deep in love to the poetic parts of the Bible, when king David was singing praise to The Creator and similar textes, and in the eyes of men the sun does "come" in the morning and "go" in the evening, seems to be a ball, and the stars seem to stay in different sphaeres - and this is a physical truth, too, that our eyes sees this so - in relation to our directly receiption to live in those pictures around a human body who sees this so.The poetic singer feels good in the knowledge, that our G*D made this all in eternity - the great and the tiny, HE gave some proofs, what HE could make to happen- but HE loves and likes us, this is the belief and His laws shall help us to live just and friendly, the rich and the poor together in one earth under one sky and later to be together in the heaven with only the good people which hurt nobody in eternity. This is hope - is love - is belief that we got it in our religion. The preachers would say: this is a truth, the whole book, was given to us from our G*D just "so", as written. This is not "full of errors and mistakes" - looking through a telescope is not the same as hearing loving words.(- But surely, they, the preachers near the professor Galilei, didn't say exactly so in my words, that's clear, they felt offended and fighted re-offending, I assume.)A science about stars or physical bodies might be a tool to solve this or that problem in future, but it is not more, it is not the help, if we fear to die but longed to have more existence between our beloved ones, and still need a really good joy we long for since our birthtime because we had no good days in this llife - or a reason to believe in mankind's possibilities to keep peace between rich and poor in the society of men on the fundament of some justice in the authority of mercy and equality of men in the house of 1 FATHER.Therefore his heresy was the way he told it to the simple people, who could not know what "happened", and then going around to tell them: if a poet in the Bible sings in his joy something about "6 days" of creation or about anything - a Mr.Galilei knows "other facts as results from mathematic", the total Holy Book could only be telling more "false" things, if this one is in any part written in other words as his formulas.Besides:in that time Mr.Galilei (*1564-1642^) lived in the time of his processing with the inquisitors in his own villa, in a nice residence, in the periphery of Rome, with its pools, light, gardens and flowers, he could see his visitors and friends there, not a day hungry, he was a rich one, as before, it was only forbidden to go out of the house and teach, or to write again such polemic papers or books. In his case was no tortur used because this was enough of "tortur" for him, that he had to stay in this house near Rome and to tell nothing on a marketplace until he makes his peace with his own church.Just the popes in his time were very interested in sciences and had a lot of respect against teachers of the High Schools of their times. This time is called Renaissance.But if he would not finish to make political revolution against the belief of the people and the institution of his own church, and her teaching that a Holy Book is really"holy" (="don't touch this, my heart lies in it!") in the church - but his anger was based on only his own most fresh knowledge in one or two points which might change tomorrow when he becomes to know another fact, additionally to the others he knew - then, indeed, it could happen, that the judges would decide, in that times, that he had to be burnt as a "dangerous heretic" because his polemic was bad for the peace between the simple people. This was a law he knew, a saecular.Only dramatic Romans or films add the "dark prisons, chains, pains and tortures" on his case. Let's tell a word on saecular inquisition of that times - this was not his case.It was the churches inteest to stop that torture-nonsense growing on, and the Jesuit Frederic Count of Spee began to fight it with clear arguments, in those same years.In his time - look at his birth-and-death-date around 1600 - the great European reformators hat done what they did, and the politic wished this to happen, and on the end of Galilei's life even the ugly 30-year's war was over, and the saecular judges and state-inquisitors put a lot of people in prisons and under tortures for "nothing", only if the accusation was arosed against somebody - just since the year of 1502 - fresh, the saecular reason for this was simply a new law of the emperor Maximilian - not of the church.They - not the church - believed actually in a huge lot of witchcraft, magical practises, daemons and dangers for the public welfare by such powers of simply poor people- and the Emperors "new" Law had gone back to late Emperor of Rome and believed in torture as a way to find out a truth in situations, where p.e. a simple possibility could not prove that this person "A" could have done what the accusator told he /she did. Maybe all witnesses saw this person in the city of "B" while the accusation told, that he had stolen the jewellery in the same hour in the city of "C". - Then this old Roman law ordered the "torture until this persons tells how he /she could do that" - and, surely, in a special degree of pain people tried themselves to find an idea, how - by daemons, devils, magical powers, witchcraft - and if this "could be" (plausible in any crazy way, and the traditional belief is really: that devils and demons are existing), only then the poor delinquents could come free from the torture - guilty or not, only to have a finish with the pains. Fact is: Nothing is believable, told under such circumstances. But this saecular-nonsense went on.Compare this to the case of Galilei - it is not similar, because he knew what he told, and the problem was not the earth or the sun or which of them goes around - in a belief, that G*D made all, it is the same great wonder, whether the sun goes around or the earth or the galaxies - the wonder was since the beginning, that such a GREAT G*D in interested in human conscience, love and justice, is interested to kow each of us. Why should a torture change a witness, whether a man had found or not a result while adding mathematic formulas?- Wrong or right - in such cases, if a person adding "6" to "5" found a resultat "18" or "65" - it is wrong as long as 1 = 1, or he is making a joke- this needs no tortures to find a way to make the error"plausible".If this delinquent says "adding 2 to 135 gives the result of 137" - ok- but if he permanently added:"and I tell You, people, these ugly bad people do hate people like me thinking he truth, and they themselves are not intelligent enough to add 135 to 2, You should believe them in no way anything they tell You!"- this is a very bad style, but needs no torture.Prof.Galilei did not hide anything, he was only a polemic man in that time, maybe he was angry with a single preacher or with some other thing he remembered an injustice in the name of church - maybe a politic reason, a elementary school teacher or someone in his family made him feeling so angry on his own church.- The only thing was: he should not mix up this with his job as an honorable high degree teacher. He had been a great researcher, had constructed a telescope (1609) in his best years - the first astronomical telescope of the world! - and the people who admired this made him a rich man- it was far under this niveau to go around with polemic cries on the market places.So he needed only the time to decide - without publishing anything - to remember that he had a real job to do, and that this job was not to change churches or Bibles or the peoples poetic beliefs.Later on, after he made this peace - he could teach again, and surely bad, his private polemic war went on around his "case", more than before. They made him a "martyr" of science.But Mr.Galilei (*1564-1642^) died 78 years old, in a normal way, nobody burnt him or broke him a leg in the name of a belief.When he was dead he even couldn't tell himself, that nothing so bad had happened to him in that process-time, and he only felt offended by this accusation to be a heretic (it was hertertic what he had done) - and the fear, what could happen to him, if he doesn't stop the polemic, only this was his pains - the fanatics between his fans told him "infallible" even in topics he did never think about....Each time a person repeats hi
