Galileo's Discoveries

On August 13,1600, an astronomer by the name of Giordano Bruno was condemn to death in Rome by burning for his belief that the Earth revolted around the sun (Sobel 4). Little did Galileo know at the time he would have to defend himself from persecution by the Catholic Church for his views on the universe as well. Later Galileo would become the spoke person for the heliocentric model (Kinkel 4). Galileo began to work on his own telescope in 1609 designed after the one Hans Lippershey patented in 1608 (Winschel 14). He designed his telescope to magnify an object up to one thousand time it original size (14). He was recognized for discovering that the moon was not smooth as people believed it was, but had mountains and deep valleys with a rocky surface (McMullin 215). The next big discovery was the four moons of Jupiter
After he was tortured, he was sent back the Inquisitors for more questions. This time they produced a copy of what was said when he was reprimanded by Cardinal Bellarmine which was Galileo the nail in his coffin (27). But even the courts were leery of a document without signatures and all witness to the document were dead or not found, left the court in a quandary (28). If they acted on that unofficial document, the church would be judged for using such an unreliable source to condemn a man (28). He was found guilty of “vehement suspicion of heresy” (31). The court had ten judges but only seven votes were cast for guilt the other three were not case at all (Winschel 38). He was sentence to prison and had to recite the seven penitential Psalms once a week, although, shortly after his trail his sentence was commuted (38). He was to be kept under house arrest. He left for his home in Florence where he went blind, but he still wrote and worked (38). He died with the last sacraments and in the bosom of the church on January 8, 1642