Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial

<p>Richard Blackwell offers yet another important volume for our understanding of the context and thought around the trial of Galileo and more broadly the interaction of theology and science in the early modern era. Blackwell's scholarship is well known to Galileo scholars. . . . This latest volume makes Melchior Inchofer's <i>Tractatus syllepticus</i> (1633) available in English for the first time affording those lacking Latin better insights into the mind of the advisor to the Holy Office of the (Roman) Inquisition who gave the most detailed analysis of Galileo's <i>Dialogue.</i> Blackwell's five introductory chapters set Inchofer and other <i>dramatis personae</i> in Galileo's life in the context of the history of theology as well as of science. Blackwell especially considers the biblical hermeneutics that prompted figures like Inchofer to conclude that the Bible in fact taught the immobility of the Earth. -<i>Journal for the History of Astronomy</i></p>