Galileo is the patron saint of the self-righteous. His conviction that the church should/would embrace new facts, abandon old doctrine, and even revise the Bible once he showed the church where he was right and it was wrong was naïve. His robust optimism ultimately transformed into an equally robust bitterness. Reading the history it seems that not all of his perceived enemies actually said 'no,' what they said was, 'not so fast.' He may have been completely unaware of these moderates who tried to protect him. He was an evangelist representing the "power of the truth." In that state of mind, he ruthlessly exposed the ignorance of professors, priests and bishops. His self-righteousness eroded the structure of support that might have protected him.

Galileo is a sympathetic character. First of all, he was right! He knew he was right! He could even prove it scientifically (sort of) - something most heretics can't do. But being right is small consolation when you scare the powers that be. In fact, it can be the ultimate crime if being right turns into being righteous.

Galileo had been controversial from the beginning. In his first teaching job in Pisa, he ticked off the Aristotelians by proving that two objects regardless of weight would fall at the same speed. They did not appreciate being proved wrong and his contract was not renewed. Then he got a job at the University of Padua. The liberal Medici-led society ignored his scandalous preference for Copernican theories because he was so valuable...his telescope revolutionized naval travel and dramatically improved observations of the heavens. And when Galileo discovered Jupiter and her moons -naming them the Medicean stars, the powerful Medeci family's support only increased. His usefulness and well-placed flattery was rewarded when he was relieved of time-consuming teaching duties and appointed court mathematician of Florence.

He laid low for a long time. In his early thirties (1597) when Kepler wrote Galileo a letter begging him to join the "powerful voices and shout down the common herd" by publishing his support of the Copernican theories, his answer was no. In 1600 he remained silent as Giordano Bruno, a fellow scientist, was executed by the Inquisition for scientific heresies such as a speculation about an infinite universe. He just wasn't willing to risk it...yet. As he aged, Galileo began to slowly increase his visibility. In 1611 (at 47 years) he brought a luminescent rock (barium sulphide) to Rome. Which doesn't seem like such a big deal, except that the glow from this rock threatened to deconstruct the belief that light and heat were the same... which led to speculations about minute particles that are penetrable. So? Innocuous on the face of it, these ideas were considered dangerously contradictory to the dogma of the church.

He was less admonished than he was strategically ignored. No one really wanted to waste such a valuable inventor and the truth was that some priest/scientists secretly agreed with him. If he would just lay low, they could protect him. While he might have been circumspect in public, it was in his correspondence with other scientists and priest/scientists that he freely expressed his thoughts and beliefs. Like an email dashed off without thinking, on Dec 21, 1613 Galileo sent a letter to Father Castelli, a fellow physicist who had furthered Galileo's ideas in his own writings. He wrote that science had revealed enough to conclude that the current interpretations of the Bible were too literal and the church needed to develop new less literal interpretations. He said, "it is the office of the wise expositors to strive to find the true meanings of passages in the Bible." Did he not suspect that this letter might be shared and in the wrong hands would elevate him to "enemy of the church."

Probably not, I've seen innocent managers in pursuit of the "truth" send e-mails or make presentations that were just as naïve. Galileo, already in too deep, made things worse by choosing to quote the Bible to support his ideas. It's hard to say whether he was getting defensive and using this tact as a way to legitimize his ideas or if he genuinely embraced his mystical imagery to be just as true as his science. He talked of the "radiant sun, ...(a) calorific spirit which bears heat and fecundates all corporeal substances" that was "a very spiritual substance, spreading itself through the universe."

Cardinal Bellarmino, keeper of the "Index of Forbidden Books" and head of the Inquisition didn't like Galileo at all. One author described Bellarmino as possessing "a ferocity of ignorance." Most heretics encounter the ferocity of ignorance. I believe that if we meet a ferocious ignorance of an unacknowledged "truth" with our own ferocious ignorance of political and organizational systems we set ourselves up to re-live Galileo's story. Bellarmino was self-important and sure of his right to judge. His tombstone reads "with force I subdued the brains of the proud." We are talking ferocious ignorance, here. It probably galled Galileo that Bellarmino considered himself a scientist-he had after all sat up all night on a beach from sunset to sunrise to measure the velocity of the sun's rotation around the earth by reciting two Miserere (a recited prayer). Bellarmino pulled Galileo aside in 1616 and in no uncertain terms explained that he must cease his explorations into this Copernican nonsense about the earth moving around the sun - except in a purely hypothetical sense. And if he did, he could continue his studies. Galileo got Bellarmino to put this compromise in writing. God love him, he assumed that this piece of paper settled his position with the church once and for all. He was wrong.

Galileo was also interested in atoms and the structure of matter. Only problem here is that the Society of Jesus clearly stated that they 'severely prohibit the doctrine of atoms." (the doctrine of atoms?) One of my good friends has a bumper sticker on the back of her truck that I suspect Galileo would have enjoyed. It says "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. Galileo gave in to the temptation to use sarcasm and his much quicker wit to discredit his less intelligent attackers. He humiliated one of the Jesuits by saying that his dependence on sight as evidence made him less intelligent than a monkey who sees another monkey in a mirror but can still discover his error by running behind the mirror. So... he ticked off the Aristotelians, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and then he had the gall to take a pot-shot at the pope (up to then, a friend and protector!). He wrote a book he called Dialogue so his characters could discuss what he was not allowed to discuss openly. Tongue firmly in cheek. he paraphrased the pope's well-known position as coming from the mouth of a dim-witted character he called Simplicio. Not smart.

It may have been Aristotelian professors, the Jesuits, or a host of other enemies that persuaded the church to go after Galileo. Whoever it was, they were determined to get him. One supporter, Ambassodor Niccolini from Florence directly told the pope that the "people who are envious of him are full of ill will." The pope still liked Galileo- even after Simplicio thing. But it was embarrassing for the pope's official scientist to be a suspected heretic and a trial was unavoidable. Galileo was 68 years old when he went to trial. Accounts of the trial are full of weird details. The trial was interrupted by several private, confidential talks the last of which resulted in Galileo making a rather extreme and flamboyant self-accusation. He said, "I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies." Whether it was heartfelt or dripping with sarcasm his "confession" satisfied the commission and Galileo was formally condemned. He must not have burned all of his bridges. Galileo was housed in a nice big apartment instead of a cell during the trial. A hand-selected group instead of the normal interrogators interviewed him. And his life sentence was interpreted as house arrest... in his own home in Florence. (Obviously Galileo stayed better connected than Joan of Arc)

A sweet footnote to Galileo's life was the last letter he wrote. His last letter was to 37 year old Alessandra Bocchineri who was married to a diplomat. Galileo and Alessandra had kept up a lively and affectionate correspondence for years. In this last letter, the 77 year old apologized for the brevity of his note and wrote "with most warm affection I kiss your hands." Galileo was both coward and hero, humble and arrogant, rude and charmingly tender.

In 1992 a papal commission acknowledged the Vatican's error in condemning Galileo. Which as an analogy could mean that if you were to get fired from your job in 2001for being "right," then you should expect vindication around...say...2360 A.D. What is the price of self-righteousness?

How do you balance being right with being effective? Is hypocrisy ever the right thing to do?

If you choose hypocrisy how do you deal with the internal conflict?

Is it unavoidable for a genuine heretic (someone ahead of their time) to make enemies and suffer the jealousies of smaller minds?

How can you tell the difference between small-minded self-righteous indignation and courage?

How can you help your supporters, who may be afraid to risk open alignment, support you?

Brilliant minds are often rewarded and punished depending on the economical implications of their brilliance. What is the risk of being brilliant?