An Address to the Pope Regarding the Man Known As Galileo

   I am Ptolemy, ancient Mathematician, Scientist, Astronomer, and more. I lived in Alexandria from 90 to 168 A.D., under Roman rule, and wrote my works in Greek.
    I find Galileo not guilty of heresy, due to the fact that we are determining whether or not he has violated the words of his God. I do not know this..."Christianity" very well, however, I am somewhat familiar with this book about the life of the individual "Jesus," and I know of the original section of this book, it has been around for quite some time.
   From what I can determine, I find that our man Galileo is not guilty of heresy because your little book does not specify that he is wrong, and isn't that book the word of God? Yes? Then where is the heresy? This man, faulty though his findings may be, is not crossing the word of your God, only the word of your Pope.
   That being said, I would not cross this Pope, if I correctly understand his position and power. He sits upon the old throne and power of my people. He is a powerful man. Therefore, I would say that Galileo is not a heretic, but merely a madman, one who needlessly crosses those who are his betters with his crazy ideas.
   Aristotle and I have already certified: the Earth is the center. There is no need for this man to continue his work. For this reason, I say, he has committed no crime besides that of stupidity, which is common to man. There is no need to kill him, to burn him at your stake.
   If you wish to punish him, it is clear that your current path is not the best way: he is a madman, he crossed you already, knowing your absolute power. He does not fear death. Yet, he has spent his life's work on his science, incorrect as it may be. Take away his science from him, and you will have taken away not only the entire life he has already spent, but any hope at a future life he may have. This should be his punishment.

Religion

   Today's post is going to be short. Very short. This post will be addressing Ptolemy's stance on Religion and Heresy, and in particular, Galileo's.

   The straight and narrow of it all is that Ptolemy was most likely Pagan. The Catholic church didn't exist in his lifetime, and thus, Galileo may be a heretic, but not against Christianity, but the Roman Gods.

   Also, little is known about Ptolemy's religious stances towards his own current religion, but it can be assumed that his stance in this trial will be mostly concern about this challenge to his intellectual findings.

Why Ptolemy is Important, or Why You Should Care

   So, poking around in Ptolemy's history, we find that he was both an Astronomer and Geographer as well as a Mathematician, living in Greece, under Roman rule, sometime in the stretch of 90-168 A.D.

   He is well known for his Geographic works, however, of most importance for this upcoming trial of Galileo, is his Almagest. This is the Arabic name for his Syntaxis Mathematica, his foremost work on Astronomy. It summarized the knowledge of his day and age, but also, and most importantly, gave the mathematics behind the phenomena, as is seen in this example above of the explanation of the earlier conclusions by Hipparchus in finding the distance of the Sun and Moon from Earth.


In Almagest, Ptolemy supports the Geocentric theory of the Universe, where the Earth is at the center, and the planets and starts orbit around it, as seen in this model to the right.

Because Ptolemy used the works of older Mathematicians in Almagest, one of the side-effects of his work becoming the preferred go-to text is that older texts fell out of use, and became outdated. Due to this, many of them stopped being recopied, and Ptolemy's Almagest is the only access that can be gained to many of the older works such as Hipparchus, one of the primary sources that Ptolemy used and expanded upon.


Also, one of the most useful parts of what he outlined, was the tables he included. These tables allowed for the computation of the position of planets either in the future or past, and opened up the art of Astronomy.