Galileo Condemned by the Inquisition

June 22, 1633

After a humiliating trial in Rome, the sixty-nine-year-old astronomer was forced to kneel and abjure the Copernican doctrine he had proved. He was sentenced to indefinite house arrest near Florence. Tradition says he muttered, as he rose, eppur si muove and yet it moves. The condemnation became the defining parable of the conflict between science and religious authority.