ROME—The Galileo controversy would not be so important were it not so misunderstood.

It is a popular myth that runs something like this: One day in the early 17th century, astronomer Galileo Galilei was looking through his telescope, doing his mathematical calculations, when suddenly he discovered that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

This was an amazing discovery, for almost everyone at that time thought the Earth was the center of the universe, most notably the Catholic Church. Galileo then explained his discovery to the Church, which warned him to cease discussing his discovery and renounce it because it was contrary to Scripture.

But as he persisted in his assertions, the myth runs, the Church tortured him to keep him silent.

The truth, of course, is not nearly so simple, but the myth serves those who insist science and faith are incompatible.

A newly discovered letter showing the Pope's concern for Galileo supports the fact that what has been furthered as history about the astronomer's torture by the Church is actually more like a caricature.

One important factor often overlooked is that Galileo was a genius who considered himself one of the greatest astronomers. He was, unfortunately, prone to arrogance—a man who enjoyed point-scoring and making people look ridiculous, traits that were eventually bound to result in clashes with authorities.

Galileo “managed to alienate almost everybody with his caustic manner and aggressive tactics,” writes Catholic author (and Register columnist) George Sim Johnston in an essay titled “The Galileo Affair.” He insisted on “ramming Copernicus down the throat of Christendom.”

The geocentric model was the prevailing one until Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus pronounced the heliocentric (sun-centered) theory. As Johnston notes, human nature “does not easily shuck off an old cosmology to embrace a new one that seems to contradict both sense and tradition.”

But Galileo's insistence on the new model gave Church authorities “no room to maneuver,” he writes. “They either had to accept Copernicanism as a fact [even though it had not been proved] and reinterpret Scripture accordingly, or they had to condemn it.”

But it was not so much the Church hierarchy who tired of Galileo's impertinence as fellow scientists and academics. In an interview in August with an Italian magazine, Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the successor of the Vatican office at the center of the Inquisition), said those who opposed Galileo “were above all the philosophers, especially those of the peripatetic school of Pisa, who were inspired by Aristotle, and they started to bring sacred Scripture into play.”

The archbishop, drawing on the findings of a commission set up by Pope John Paul II to settle the controversy once and for all, said that for many years the Church supported Galileo, who was a Catholic. “He had great success among the Roman cardinals,” the archbishop asserted in the interview. “In fact, all of them wanted to look at the sky through his famous telescope.”

The geocentric theory was endorsed by Aristotle and given mathematical plausibility by Ptolemy. Certain passages in Scripture seemed to agree with it. Johnston said Galileo's aggressiveness eventually forced Cardinal Robert Bellarmine to challenge him to prove his theory “or stop pestering the Church.” Allegedly on Galileo's request, the Church issued a certificate forbidding him to “hold or defend” heliocentrism—a document whose validity is questioned to this day.

Sixteen years later, Galileo incurred the disfavor of his ally Pope Urban VIII after the Pope was made to look silly in the astronomer's thesis Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems. This and a violent attack by Galileo on a respected Jesuit astronomer led to a trial before the Inquisition in Rome. Galileo was by then aged and sick.

At the trial, the dubious certificate forbidding him not to “hold or defend” heliocentrism was used against him, though he was never shown it, and Galileo was condemned by the Holy Office as “vehemently suspected of heresy.”

He was sentenced to abjure the theory and keep silent on the subject for the rest of his life, which he did, Johnston said, “in a pleasant country house near Florence.”

It is true, however, that the Church threatened a very ill man with torture. But again, contrary to popular belief, Galileo was not tortured and, according to Johnston, “both he and the inquisitors knew that the threat of torture was pure formality.”

According to Archbishop Amato, he “resided some 20 days in the Holy Office; his room was the apartment of the attorney—one of the highest officials of the Inquisition—where he was assisted by his own servant.”

More interestingly are the contents of a Vatican letter recently discovered by Swiss professor Francesco Beretta. It recorded Pope Urban VIII's concern that the case be speedily resolved given the astronomer's frail health.

Archbishop Amato says the discovery of the letter, together with the commission's investigation in which Pope John Paul II said the Church should always be mindful of “the legitimate autonomy of science,” means the case is now “closed.”

Even so, the National Secular Society of Britain remains dismissive of the commission and the newly found letter. “The Vatican is attempting to rewrite inconvenient history on several fronts at the moment, and this is one of them,” spokeswoman Muriel Fraser said. “I don't think anybody who knows the whole story will be convinced by this.”

“The real point is that the Church was threatening a very ill man with torture,” she continued. “It took great courage for Galileo to let proceedings go as far as an arrest before he recanted, since the horrors of the Inquisition were known to everyone.”

But according to Michael Sharratt, author of the book Galileo: Decisive Innovator, Archbishop Amato is “right to insist that the caricature of obscurantist Church authorities torturing a progressive scientist who had proved them wrong is just that—a caricature.”

Sharratt believes we have learned that one “cannot demand of a scientific theory the sort of conclusive proof that both Aristotle and Galileo himself thought attainable. The most one can ask of a theory is that it should be seriously and solidly based.”

“The archbishop recognizes that it is now available,” Sharratt said, “and that the Church's discernment of how a theory relates to the faith cannot make impossible demands of science.”

But Sharratt believes the case cannot be closed. “There may always be new things to learn from it,” he said. “The past two decades have shown that John Paul, his commission and the congregation are open to such learning.”

Another expert in the Galileo case, professor Mario Pesce of the University of Bologna, agrees with the archbishop that science and faith are “two wings by which the Christian can fly to God.”

The important thing, he said, is that both theologians and scientists regularly exercise “an accurate self-critique” of their work.

“What we have to learn from the case of Galileo,” he said, “is humility and patience in solving the continuous cases of conflict between science and theology.”

Edward Pentin writes from Rome.