The Case of Galileo: A Closed Question?

Preface

       After the publication of my work Galileo: Per il Copernicanesimo e per la Chiesa, published by the Vatican Observatory in 1993, friends suggested that I prepare a shorter version of it, aimed at a wider, nonspecialized public. In the following years, however, I was busy with the translations of the book into several languages, among which the English version , Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church, appeared in 1994, with a third edition in 2003. It was only towards the end of this period that I was able to prepare a shorter version, which appeared in Italian with the title Il caso Galileo (2003) and is now presented in its English translation. This work follows in its main lines the text of the above-mentioned third English edition, except for the first part, which has been completely restructured. The very numerous and long notes have been eliminated , and the most important incorporated in the text in an abridged form. Further improvements have been introduced, taking into account the third Italian edition of my original book, which appeared in March 2010. All this will help, I hope, to give to the cultivated reader a better understanding of the complex philosophical, theological, and scientific factors that played such a decisive role in the origin and in the following development of the Copernican issue, with Galileo’s drama at its center. Furthermore, it will show how difficult was the long road that brought the Catholic Church to a final admission (even though a very cautious and not fully satisfactory one) of its responsibility for the whole Galileo Affair. xi Fantoli-00FM_Layout 1 1/19/12 2:34 PM Page xi I wish to express here all my gratitude to Father George V. Coyne, S.J., who while still director of the Vatican Observatory, wrote the Presentation of the book on the occasion of its first publication in Italian, and was subsequently able to find the time to translate this work into English, as he had already done on the occasion of all my previous works. I am also extremely grateful to Professor Wilbur Applebaum and to Naomi Polansky for their very generous, patient, and accurate review of the English text, and the many precious suggestions they have made concerning it. Last, but not least, my thanks go also to the University of Notre Dame Press, for the decision to publish this book, a decision that highly honors me. Finally, let me add a brief note about citations in the text. I did not want to overburden readers of this volume with the scholarly apparatus present in my other, fully annotated volume on Galileo. Thus references in this volume use a short form providing basic author and title information; fuller information for those sources can be found in the bibliography. Except where noted otherwise in the citations, translations from documents contemporary to Galileo have been made by Father Coyne. Victoria, British Columbia, December 2010 xii ✦ Preface Fantoli-00FM_Layout 1 1/19/12 2:34 PM Page xii ...