Catholic Church Condemns Copernicanism

February 1616

The Roman Inquisition, prodded by conservative theologians, declared the proposition that the Earth moves around the Sun formally heretical. Cardinal Bellarmine summoned Galileo and warned him, politely but firmly, to abandon the Copernican hypothesis as anything more than a mathematical convenience. Galileo bit his tongue, though he would keep thinking, writing, and building arguments for another sixteen years.