The Fickle Finger of Fate

Galileo's Finger

We have probably all heard of how the scientist and astronomer Galileo was tried and eventually excommunicated for saying that the earth orbitted the sun rather than the other way around. It is a more complex story than is usually told, but it wasn't until 1992 that the church relented, more than 350 years after the fact. Hey, these things take time.

Now a curious Roman Catholic practice is on prominent display in the city of Florence’s history of science museum, recently renovated and renamed to honor Galileo. Modern-day supporters of the famous heretic are exhibiting newly recovered bits of his body — three fingers and a gnarly molar sliced from his corpse nearly a century after he died — as if they were the relics of an actual saint. The bones were taken from his skeleton in a Masonic rite in the 18th century, then the rest was put in a tomb in a church. Does this sound like something from a Dan Brown novel. The director of the musuem says “He’s a secular saint, and relics are an important symbol of his fight for freedom of thought.”

We humans are strange creatures, aren't we? The lasting legacy of Galileo is not a few fragile bones in a museum, and ultimately what threatened the religious establishment has been a gift to the world.

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