Galileo, Campanella, and the Clash for the New Science at the Court of Pope Urban VIII

In the late 1620s, Tommaso Campanella wrote a voluminous commentary on Urban VIII’s Latin poems, in which he gave pride of place to the Adulatio perniciosa (the poem in praise of Galileo and his discovery of sunspots) and presented the pope as an advocate of the new science against the dogmatic Aristotelians from within the Church. This caused a harsh reaction from the Curia and the pope felt betrayed by someone he considered close. Shortly thereafter, when Galileo’s Dialogue was published, it met with an even harsher reaction. The Campanella incident might have contributed to the pope’s resolution to sentence Galileo in 1633, and in his determination never to revise his decision.