The Truth About the Inquisition, Galileo & the Flat Earth Myth | Dr. Thomas Madden | Last Call Ep 11
Matt Fradd | 24 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qy5pV1u2U
3:45 Four arguments.*
The one he considered most secure was a mistake, but the argument if not the fact is replicated by Magellan.
5:25 "which is true"
You just made the bans of 1616 and renewed because applied to Galileo, 1633, applicable to you.
Besides, you don't believe the Sun is centre of the Universe, you believe it's centre of the Solar System, which is a further departure from classical Christian Cosmology.
Galileo, unlike Bruno, didn't do that, as I recall. He still believed the Universe had an identifiable centre and a periphery in the sphere of the fix stars.
5:36 You're forgetting that in order to not get censored, Copernicus waited to the death bed and even than just stated it as a hypothesis, to make calculations easier, not as a fact about the universe.
6:28 St. Robert Bellarmine actually did have other objections than purely scientific ones.
And I think his proposal to Galileo, if any, was not "look at the sky more carefully, we don't see the Copernican model" but "you know, Tycho and Copernicus give us the same visual effect on the sky, what about Tycho Brahe?"
6:46 I think you are getting this from the Pro-Heliocentric side in 1822.
Father Olivieri could say this kind of things, because noone in Rome could check, the archives were in Paris where Napoleon I had stolen them to.
"Tutti i francesi, sono ladroni?
- Non tutti, mai buona parte"
7:28 Sorry, but he was in fact not free to promote Heliocentrism as science, as physical fact rather than mathematical shorthand, since the theology by Dominicans involved Joshua's miracle and Sun and Moon ceased to move.
Not Earth. Sun and Moon.
Galileo's theological and unacceptable response was "non-overlapping magisteria" ...
8:01 Howeversomuch Galileo may have been a jerk, the Inquisition doesn't give people abjurations and lifelong house arrest for that.
He was given that for doctrine, not character.
And as "Simplicio" took an argument that the Pope, while still a cardinal, had used, it is significant the Pope (who could be insulted) abstained from being among the judges, and his relative, among them, abstained from voting.
The argument, by the way, is this: God could create the world any way He wanted, and God could make the world look anyway He wanted. Now, on some level, this could be considered a sceptic argument, namely if the world looked Heliocentric. But as it looks Geocentric, it's an appeal to God's honesty.
8:26 It doesn't mean just he had to spend time at home, rest of his life.
It means he had to abjure.
The Dialogo is what he was being judged on. It's fiction, not everything said in it is his own view. It's as if Dan Brown would have been given an opportunity to abjure the Bloodline of Jesus theory after writing The da Vinci Code making him vehemently suspect ...
8:33 While his villa was different to a dungeon, like Liparic Islands are different from Siberia, he was denied social life, except with his spiritual caretakers and very close, including a daughter who was a nun.
An author whom Stalin didn't like could go to Siberia and hard work. One whom Mussolini didn't like to Liparic Islands, and a state pension while he was there. Both would be denied normal social interaction with their previous surroundings.**
- Roddy Cavin
- @roddycavin4600
- If Galileo had written anywhere else in Europe at that time belittling the countries monarch and remember Urban viii was an absolute monarch, he would have been at best beheaded or in some states hanged drawn and quartered. I think he got away with it quite well.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @hglundahl
- @roddycavin4600 You are confusing apples and oranges.
First, the argument by then cardinal Barberini was given in private by the not yet then Pope Urban VIII.
The character Simplicio was not a politically transparent insult to the monarch as such, it was a privately wounding way of dealing with old discussions.
BUT second, there is a juridical difference between trial by the Inquisition and trial for political treason. Galileo was tried for heresy, not for treason or rebellion.
- Roddy Cavin
- @hglundahl Yes, in Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), the character Simplicio was widely understood to be a caricature of Pope Urban VIII, who was formerly a patron of Galileo. By naming the character Simplicio—meaning "simpleton" in Italian—and having him spout the Pope's own arguments, Galileo heavily insulted him, leading to the infamous 1633 heresy trial.
Yes, in 1632, during the reign of Charles I, insulting the king could absolutely lead to execution, or at the very least, severe, life-altering punishment
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @roddycavin4600 "was widely understood to be a caricature of Pope Urban VIII"
Where do you get "widely" from?
"Yes, in 1632, during the reign of Charles I, insulting the king could absolutely lead to execution"
That's England, not the Papal States.
But certainly, in such a case Charles I would not have reapplied "de haeretico comburendo" and make it a heresy trial.
10:19 "they are basing everything on the Bible"
Or so they claim.
"and on the literal word of the Bible"
And Catholics are supposed to have been different?
Remember, it''s we who literally take Jesus' word for being (when communing) in a position to munch on God's Human Body. See Lizzie Reezay's excellent video on the verb "trogo" ...
Seriously, the very first book on Heliocentrism, a few years before Copernicus "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" was by his Lutheran (and criminal) disciple Georg Joachim Rheticus. From the printing press in 1540, according to Sungenis it made it directly to the Index Librorum.
Hannam tried to back up the claim of Catholic "non-literalism" by saying Scholastics took the Earth to be round "despite" Four Corners. Well, in languages other than Germanic ones, many of them, probably formerly though not currently Slavic ones too, "terra" or "eretz" would refer not just to the body in / under Heaven, but also to the surface feature that's dryer than seas. And it has, literally, four outer corners.
* Aristotle against a Flat Earth. ** Again, it's a punishment, not for being a jerk, but for what he suggested.
