orting the doctrine of Copernicus. It had been argued against the said system that, if it were true, the inferior planets, Venus and Mercury, between the earth and the sun, should in the course of their revolution exhibit phases like those of the moon, and, these being invisible to the naked eye, Copernicus had to change the false explanation that these planets were transparent and the sun's rays passed through them. But with his telescope Galileo found that Venus did actually exhibit the desired phases, and the objection was thus turned into an argument for Copernicanism. Galileo was tried by the Inquisition for his writings discussing the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. In June 1633, Galileo was condemned to life imprisonment for heresy. His writings about these subjects were banned, and printers were forbidden to publish anything further by him or even to reprint his previous works. Outside Italy, however, his writings were translated into Latin and were read by scholars throughout Europe. Galileo remained under imprisonment until his death in 1642. However he never was a real prisoner for he never spent any time in a prison cell or being treated like a criminal. Instead he spent his time in fancy apartments. The rest of the time he was allowed to use houses of friends as his places of confinement the, always comfortable and usually luxurious. ...
