Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition Or Critical Dialogue?

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, May 26, 1995 - Religion - 303 pages
This book questions the traditional "grand narratives" of science and religion in the seventeenth-century. The known contradictions between the documents of Galileo's "trials" are reread as expressions of the contradictory nature of the Counter Reformation Church. Looking back at the formative years of Tridentine Catholicism demystifies its monolithic and coercive tendencies. Being torn between different cultural orientationsNthe Dominicans' and the Jesuits'Nthe Church was unable to crystallize a coherent attitude towards Galileo's science.
 

Contents

1633
53
The Doctrinaire Phase
73
A Traditional Intellectual Elite
93
An Alternative Intellectual Elite
110
Freedom and Authority in Jesuit Culture
129
The Thomist Boundaries of Jesuit Education
151
A Struggle for Theological
171
From
201
Copernicanism and the Jesuits
213
The Cultural Field of Galileo and the Jesuits
240
The Dispute on Sunspots
256
Epilogue
293
Copyright

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