And Yet It Moves

Galileo Galilei, astronomer and natural philosopher

You are the most famous scientist in Europe, the man who turned a telescope to the heavens and saw the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the mountains of the Moon. Your Dialogue, published last year with what you believed was papal approval, argued persuasively for the Copernican heliocentric model. But Pope Urban VIII, once your friend and admirer Maffeo Barberini, now sees the book as a personal betrayal. He believes you mocked him by putting his arguments into the mouth of Simplicio, the fool of the dialogue. You are old, ill with arthritis and hernia, and have been dragged from Florence to Rome in winter. The Inquisition's machinery grinds slowly but thoroughly.

The heart of Catholic Christendom, where the Counter-Reformation has tightened its grip on all knowledge. The Holy Office of the Inquisition holds court in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Rome is a city of marble facades and whispered conspiracies, where cardinals wield more power than kings and a single word from the Pope can reshape the world. The intellectual ferment of the Renaissance clashes with the Church's insistence on doctrinal purity. Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems has been banned, and its author summoned to answer for heresy.