Why Galileo Wasn't Tortured

Almost everyone knows Galileo was tortured by the Inquisition for saying the Earth moves. He wasn't — not tortured, not excommunicated, and not imprisoned in any cell. He spent his house arrest at his own villa with servants, visitors and a library, and wrote his best book there. That's one of several things in this video that turn out to be nineteenth-century inventions rather than medieval history. Giordano Bruno was burned in 1600, but not for heliocentrism — which wasn't a heresy in 1600 and wouldn't be restricted for another sixteen years. Medieval Europeans knew the Earth was a sphere; the flat-Earth story comes from a novelist in 1828. And for six centuries the Catholic Church was the largest single funder of astronomy in the world, with cathedral floors used as precision solar observatories. The "war between science and religion" has a start date. It's the 1870s, and it was declared by two men with institutional grudges who wrote very confident books. Historians of science discarded the model decades ago. Everyone else kept repeating the poster. CHAPTERS 00:00 The man they burned in 1600 02:36 The claim: a thousand-year war 03:32 The flat Earth was invented in 1828 05:52 Galileo: what the record actually says 08:56 The two books that started it 11:48 When cathedrals were observatories 13:41 The honest part: real conflict 15:01 Why the story refuses to die 16:12 Back to Campo de' Fiori SOURCES AND FURTHER READING John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, 1874 Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1896 Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 1991 Ronald Numbers (ed.), Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion, 2009 J. L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church, 1999 Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno, 1993 David Lindberg & Ronald Numbers (eds.), God and Nature, 1986 This video argues against the conflict thesis. It does not argue that no conflict happened. Galileo was condemned, the Index was real, Bruno was burned alive, Servetus was burned by Calvin's Geneva, and organised creationism is a live force in American education. If you think I've got something wrong, the comments are open.