Sentencing the Heretic

by Richard Peacock

In 1633, the astronomer Galileo was ordered to stand trial before Pope Urban VIII on formal charges of heresy. His crime was proposing that the Earth moved around the Sun, and not the other way around. Since the Bible taught that the Earth was stationary and not in motion at all, this enraged the Church, which promptly convicted Galileo and sentenced him to house arrest. And, if the world was like a musical, this is just what his sentencing hearing might have sounded like.

Sentencing the Heretic

The year is 1633,
And you are Galileo Galilei,
You've been brought here by Church decree
To answer for your heresy!

Mad man! Devil! That's what we'll call you
Unless you change your tune.
How dare you scare us with these letters
Which spell the Church's doom?

This little idea of yours,
Where the Earth goes round the Sun,
Can't you see the fallacy?
Don't you see your argument's done?

For if this wan hypothesis
Were ever really proved,
Then the Bible would be wrong in Psalms,
Where "the Earth cannot be moved."



I will denote your telescope
Is quite a clever machine,
You've seen the moons of Jupiter
And even Saturn's rings*.

But despite that brilliant tinker toy,
You've incurred the Church's wrath.
For who are you to dare declare
That nature is based on Math?

How I pity you, Galilei,
You could have been our best.
But as you insist on your beliefs,
I must place you in house arrest.

Guards! Take away this stumbling block!
Banish him from these lands!
He has not in mind the thoughts of God,
But just the reasoning of man.

*Though Galileo was the first to observe Saturn's rings with his
rudimentary telescope, he believed they were moons rather than
planetary rings.

The Multiverse is written by Richard Peacock, who generally doesn't know what he's talking about, and will gladly sacrifice scientific accuracy for the sake of a rhyme. Send rhyming complaints to richard@amateurscientist.org.