The Galileo affair was an early 17th century political, religious, and scientific controversy regarding the astronomer Galileo Galilei's defence of heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth revolves arou
Photomontage of the Galilean moons. Galileo viewed these moons as a smaller Copernican system within the Solar System and used them to support heliocentrism.
Christian painting of God creating the cosmos (Bible Moralisee, French, 13th century)
The Council of Trent (1545–63) sitting in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. The Roman Inquisition suspected Galileo of violating the decrees of the council. Museo Diocesano Tridentino, Trento.
Pope Paul V (1552–1621), who ordered that the inquisitorial commission's 1616 judgement be delivered to Galileo by Cardinal Bellarmine (Caravaggio)
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. The publication of Copernicus's model in his book De revoluti
Galileo affair
…moons of Jupiter. With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Galileo's opinions were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the…
"Toruń portrait" (c. 1580)
Copernicus's Toruń birthplace (ul. Kopernika 15, left). Together with no. 17 (right), it forms Muzeum Mikołaja Kopernika.
Copernicus's maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger
Collegium Maius at Kraków University, Copernicus's Polish alma mater