Galileo's letter, in which he first spoke out in support of the Copernican model, was found in the catalog of the London library.
At the end of the summer, historian Salvatore Riccardo from the University of Bergamo flew to London to find notes in the margins of Galileo Galilei's works in London libraries, and accidentally discovered a letter written by the famous scientist himself. Previously, the document was considered irretrievably lost. In it, Riccardo found the most significant evidence to date that at the beginning of his conflict with the Catholic Church, Galileo tried to gently reformulate his statements about the rotation of the Earth and the Sun, which attracted the interest of the Inquisition to the scientist.
At the end of December 1613, Galileo wrote a seven-page letter to his friend, mathematician Benedetto Castelli. In it, he first spoke out in support of the Copernican model of the universe, according to which the Earth revolves around the Sun. Galileo wrote to Castelli that with regard to the movement of heavenly bodies one should rely on the data of scientific observation, and not on the teaching of the Church: "Not a single dictum of Scripture has such a coercive force as any natural phenomenon has."
In the 17th century, it was customary to copy and distribute personal letters - this was also the case with Galileo's letter to Castelli. One of the spears fell into the hands of the Dominican monk Niccolo Lorini, an informant for the Inquisition. Lorini sent the document to Rome (now a copy is kept in the Vatican Secret Archives).
Galileo later claimed that Lorini deliberately changed the text of the letter to accuse the scientist of heresy, and showed a different version of the document with more streamlined wording. Until now, historians were not sure which of the two versions was originally sent.
The document found in London put an end to centuries of controversy. There are many blots and corrections in the text that soften the tone of the statements. Analysis of the handwriting confirmed that they were made by the author himself. However, the corrections did not save Galileo: the version of the letter sent to the Vatican (apparently corresponding to the original) served as one of the reasons for starting the process. In 1616, heliocentrism was recognized as a dangerous heresy, and after 16 years Galileo was accused and sentenced to imprisonment, later replaced by house arrest, under which the scientist spent the rest of his life.
Riccardo and his colleagues examined a letter from Galileo found in London. The results of the study are being prepared for publication in the journal Notes and Records, the site of the journal Nature reports briefly about the find.
Ksenia Malysheva
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