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Originally Posted by George
In astronomical matters, there was not that much negativity until around 1616, six years from this time frame. Copernicus had no problems with how the Church saw his anti-Geocentric book written over 50 years before the time of Galileo.
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You don't think that the fact that ol' Nicky was dead before it was published might have anything to do with that, do you? Or the little disclaimer that the printer added to the work might have diffused any potential objections? And according to
Wikipedia, Galileo got into hot water with the Church for endorsing the idea:
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
After 1610, when he began supporting heliocentrism publicly, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture" in February 1616,[8]
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You'll note that from that quote it appears he was catching heat from
some members of the Church before he was first ratted out to the Inquisition. It doesn't specify
when they started in with the opposition, exactly, but I don't think its unreasonable to conclude that it was certainly possible that he was hearing grumblings from them by 1613, which would have been in the time frame of these observations.
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But the clergy took pride in knowing the truth. To their credit, IMO, they wasted little time dumping their most beloved Aristotle/Ptolemy/Thomist model as soon as they confirmed the phases of Venus. They were not all that dumb to not adopt the Copernican model since it predicted that stars would demonstrate stellar parallax, and that finding did not come for centuries. [It was still better than the Tychonic model they adopted, but gravity was not well understood or appreciated at the time.]
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But, as the above Wiki quote shows, they were
not above harassing Galileo for advocating the idea. Don't forget that since he had two children outside of wedlock by this point, Galileo would have been considered a bit suspect by a number of people. Nothing like tipping over someone's worldview to get them
really riled up about you.
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If you find any jail terms due to astronomical viewpoints, I'd be interested.
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So you don't consider Galileo's house arrest to be considered "jail time" or "due to astronomical viewpoints"? Interesting. Don't forget that the things which could get one arrested for were somewhat arbitrary, and
not completely codified into law.