Despite extensive study of the Galileo affair in recent years, there are still some important documents relating to the case which have received little attention in the English-speaking world. In his translation of Thomas Campanella's Apologia pro Galileo, Richard J. Blackwell presents for the first time in English a reliable and highly readable translation of this important and neglected work. Campanella, the maverick Dominican, sought to head off the confrontation between Galileo and the theologians by defending Galileo's right to develop, debate, and publish his ideas freely. By making available at last a well-documented English version of this treatise--one in which the theological dimensions of the dispute receive their clearest presentation yet--Blackwell makes a worthy contribution to a heightened awareness of the doctrinal issues in the Galileo affairs. Written in 1616 while Campanella was imprisoned by the Inquisition, the Apologia pro Galileo was banned in Rome at the time of its publication in 1622, therefore having little influence on the outcome of the Galileo case. However, then as now it stands as an important document calling for intellectual freedom as related to the Galileo case in particular, and as a plea for intellectual freedom in general.

Although recent works on Galileo’s trial have reached new heights of erudition, documentation, and sophistication, they often exhibit inflated complexities, neglect 400 years of historiography, or make little effort to learn from Galileo. This book strives to avoid such lacunae by judiciously comparing and contrasting the two Galileo affairs, that is, the original controversy over the earth’s motion ending with his condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633, and the subsequent controversy over the rightness of that condemnation continuing to our day. The book argues that the Copernican Revolution required that the hypothesis of the earth’s motion be not only constructively supported with new reasons and evidence, but also critically defended from numerous old and new objections. This defense in turn required not only the destructive refutation, but also the appreciative understanding of those objections in all their strength. A major Galilean accomplishment was to elaborate such a reasoned, critical, and fair-minded defense of Copernicanism. Galileo’s trial can be interpreted as a series of ecclesiastic attempts to stop him from so defending Copernicus. And an essential thread of the subsequent controversy has been the emergence of many arguments claiming that his condemnation was right, as well as defenses of Galileo from such criticisms. The book’s particular yet overarching thesis is that today the proper defense of Galileo can and should have the reasoned, critical, and fair-minded character which his own defense of Copernicus had.

A collection of papers to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Dialogue

A translation of Thomas Campanella's Apologia pro Galileo. Blackwell's introduction provides background information relating Campanella and his apologia to the Galileo affair. Extensive notes identifying Campanella's use of sources and the persons he mentions in the Apologia are included.