So much I never knew about Galileo and the Church - very interesting reading. ( )

Galileo is one of the scientists I have always head about in school, especially my physics class. It figured it was about time I learned more about him. What struck me was the number of inventions he worked on in the quest for making a name for himself. In that age, the goal was to get the best teaching job, but only the best paid enough to live on (kind of like today?). The real money was in inventions. Galileo was always working to impress the local politicians in an effort to get commissions. He worked on so many different things, I have lost count. Of course, his most famous was the telescope. But, I was surprised to find out that he actually wasn't the first. A Flemish man was, but when Galileo heard he was in Venice to sell it to the city, he had a friend detain the man a day while he frantically finished one and presented it first. The council fell for it and the Flemish man went home in ruins, the patent being awarded to Galileo.

Galileo was by nature a very showy man, who had to do everything with great bravado. He never missed a chance to show off, which is why he supposedly conducted his gravitational experiments from the top of the tower in Pisa. It was necessary for him to try and get as much attention as possible because he was always had money troubles. His family sucked him dry, from his musician brother that regularly sent his wife and children to live with him to his two sister's dowries that he got saddled with paying. Even his mother demanded money from him. It was this and a household of servants, workers and hangers-on that forced him to always be looking for the next best paying job.

It was this need for the next job that got him into trouble with the Vatican. His views on the Copernican theory of a sun-centered solar system was at direct odds with the accepted Earth-centric view held by the Catholic Church. While he was in Venice, he had protection by the city-state from the Inquisition. Against all his friend's warnings, he left Venice for Florence to be the resident scientist to the Prince. That was just what the Pope was waiting for and it wasn't very many years later that Galileo was summoned to Rome to recant. After many years of political wrangling, he ended up being banished and not allowed to see anyone or do any more writing. He was lucky to be spared the Papal prison or the heretic's death, but the ordeal robbed him of his health and abilities to do what he so wanted to do.

Very interesting book to put a lot of things in perspective beyond Galileo. This was the time when the Pope was cracking down on the Reformation and fighting wars with the "heretics" in Northern Europe. I enjoyed getting this period more firmly fixed in my mind. Good book. ( )