Fraudulent Proceedings, Vengeful Court Sentence and Humiliating Retract: Galileo Case

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight historical aspects of Galileo trials, in the field of sociology of science, reflecting the atmosphere of intrigue and religious intolerance then current. Although the theme Galileo affair has already earned numerous approaches authors around the world, including Brazil, with the vast work of Pablo Rubén Mariconda, it is not exhausted. Will merit focus some aspects concerning relationships between scientific production and social and political constraints when the state was merged with the Catholic Church and social elites were influenced by it. The article also brings copy of an opening paragraph written by Galileo in which he reports difficulties to show geographical references on the “hell” as described by Dante Alighieri and translated into Portuguese Galileo’s sentence and abjuration implemented on the basis of the original copy written in the seventeenth century.