Crime of Galileo [Hardcover]

Giorgio De Santillana (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1955

"In the gallery of what might be called the martyrs of thought, the image of Galileo recanting before the Italian Inquisition stirs the minds of educated modern men second only to the picture of Socrates drinking the Hemlock. That image of Galileo is out of focus . . . because it has been distorted by three centuries of rationalist prejudice and clerical polemics. To refocus it clearly, within the logic of its own time . . . de Santillana has written The Crime of Galileo, a masterly intellectual whodunit which traces not the life but the mental footsteps of Galileo on his road to personal tragedy."—Time

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 339 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1ST edition (December 1955)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226734838
• ISBN-13: 978-0226734835
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,771,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Galileo vs. Academia, June 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crime of Galileo (Paperback)

A great book! It appears that Galileo is not the perfect icon, after all, for atheistic, modern day academia. The book shows how academia itself, with complete indifference for truth, erupted against Galileo in an effort to protect cherished allegiances to long held Aristotelian philosophies and misguided ideas. It demonstrates how academia was primarily responsible for the inquisitions and suppressions filed against Galileo, and how they used rhetoric and demagoguery to incite church authorities to become involved. "Those he feared," according to the author, "were the professors," not ecclesiastical authorities (p 8). And "like Galileo, Copernicus had foreseen resistance not at all from the Church authorities but from vested academic interests"(p 16). "It was not ... religious convictions that stood in the way but simply ... Aristotelian conditioning and ... fear of scandal" (p 104). The author supports his case with a thorough and chronological review of the letters and legal records of the time.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most useful book on Galileo so far, June 2, 2002

By 

Nick "Nick" (Bloomington, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime of Galileo (Paperback)

If you're just looking for a casual read then perhaps Dava Sobel's 'Galileo's Daughter' or Arthur Koestler's 'The Sleepwalkers' would be more entertaining. But this is where Koestler gets most of his information so why not go straight to the source?
Giorgio de Santillana is obviously a terrific Galileo scholar, making reference to original documents held in the Vatican and other worthwhile resources which put this book on the forefront of academic debate (despite its age).
Santillana's line, that the inquisition was moved to action by Aristotelians (many of whom were Dominicans or Jesuits), though not universally accepted, is well argued. The fact that Pope Urban VIII had been one of Galileo's closest supporters and even opposed the censoring of Copernicus when he was Cardinal Maffeo Barberini makes Santillana's the most plausible explanation. To argue that all the church authorities were adamantly opposed to the Copernican cosmology is to ignore this fact. Though one must also allow for the petulant character of Urban who did not like having his instrumentalist views put into the mouth of a simpleton. These are the two factors which conspired to have Galileo tried for heresy and not simply the scriptural objections.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting Indeed, February 24, 2010

By 

Nicholas Bourqui (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Crime of Galileo (Paperback)

Giorgio di Santillana was Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) when this book was written in December 1953.

This is an in-depth, scholarly study. Something of a master artist with words, Di Santillana brings his characters vividly to life, and follows the machinations of Galileo's enemies with the keen instinct of a political scientist. His view is that "both the authorities and the scientist had the mutual impression of being ambushed, and in neither case was it true. The ambush, in so far as there was one, had been carefully laid by third parties, who carefully exploited the critical situation of the times."

In the previous half-century, following the Reformation, the Catholic church had set up the Roman inquisition and the Index of banned books to prevent "innovators" from putting forward new interpretations of scripture, as the Protestant reformers had done. Against this background, Galileo asserted that certain biblical passages, including those apparently denying that the earth moved, should be understood "figuratively".

There are about 220 footnotes, some lengthy and extended, and containing fascinating and little-known material. The narrative also uses many direct quotations, so that these 17th-century figures - articulate, expansive, often extremely considered and thoughtful - speak to us in their own words. Only 3 pages are given to the first 46 years of Galileo's life, so that effectively the book starts in 1610, when Galileo's telescopic discoveries had suddenly brought him to public prominence. One of the 16 chapters is devoted to Roberto Bellarmine, the cardinal who in 1616 laid on Galileo the "command" not to hold or defend the heliocentric theory. Chapters IX and X recount how in 1630, as Galileo sought a licence to print his "Dialogue", something abruptly changed behind the scenes: Urban VIII, who over many years had shown him signs of unmistakable warmth and friendship, became persuaded that Galileo had actually deceived him and possibly even mocked him in the "Dialogue". The author clearly has some sympathy with this pope, who was distracted with the 30 years war: "...troubles piled up for him... such as would have given a lesser man a nervous breakdown..."

Alongside this book, I read other accounts of Galileo's life by Ronan, Reston, Fr. Brodrick, and Shea and Artigas. They tell the same story, and I found nothing that I could call bias in any of them, yet even within this small group we see some very different opinions on the cast of characters, It is probably a good thing to read several accounts. "The Crime of Galileo" is a superior book, and a good place to start.