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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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I had Galileo Galilei down as 'a movement' as well. Not so much strength in unity as safe in anonymity. I had them outside the Church but reformers inside works too. Or it could be standard bearers of the universities breaking with the Church. Or the Italian city states breaking from the Papal States.
But there is presumably (I've never looked) a considerable amount of surviving documentation to account for if he wasn't a person.
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Pete Jones

In: Virginia
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The story of the surviving documentation is fascinating. Galileo allegedly recanted his Copernicanism in a letter to a friend, who then tried to erase the recantation from history. Here's the text from a book on my shelf:
Few are aware that a year before he died Galileo renounced, quite dramatically, all his claims that the Earth went around the sun. In 1641 his colleague Francesco Rinuccini had written a letter to Galileo claiming that the astronomer Giovanni Pieroni, by discovering a case of stellar parallax, had proven that the Earth moves. Galileo, who by this time had had a dramatic conversion back to the Christian faith two years earlier in 1639, wrote the following letter back to Rinuccini later in 1641:
The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and the motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence. |
Rinuccini was so disturbed by the letter that he attempted to erase Galileo's signature from off the last page. The editor of Galileo's works states: "The signature 'Galileo Galilei' has been very deliberately and repeatedly rubbed over, with the manifest intention of rendering it illegible." Stillman Drake, one of the premier Galileo historians of our day, states:
Among all Galileo's surviving letters, it is only this one on which his name at the end was scratched out heavily in ink. I presume that Rinuccini valued and preserved Galileo's letters no matter what they said, but did not want others to see this declaration by Galileo that the Copernican system was false, lest he be thought a hypocrite. |
What was it that made Galileo change his mind? Why did he come to believe that the Copernican heliocentric system was inferior to the geocentric system? We will see that the scientific and historical facts we will uncover in this book may have been the reason for Galileo's sudden change of heart.
Since it appears that Galileo recused himself from the debate, we can no longer lay the burden on him. It is solely on the shoulders of modern science. Modern science claims to have all the sophisticated instruments that Galileo lacked to prove the Earth moved. Truth be told, four hundred years later modern science has also failed to provide the human race with proof that the Earth is moving.
As one honest scientist put it in a book endorsed by Albert Einstein in 1948:
...we can't feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion. | |
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest active astronomical observatories in the world, it dates to 1582. The Vatican was heavily involved scientifically in these debates, it was not anti scientific enquiry, its expectation was that the science would confirm that the Bible was correct.
The Biography of Galileo was written by Vincenzio Viviani, the young secretary who served him in his final years of blindness and home imprisonment. Galileo died in 1642. This was published in 1717.
Much of Galileo is invented over 70 years after his death.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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Gildas is the source of a goodly slice of British Dark Age history. His De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is an obvious fraud but I didn't pay attention to to why they chose the name 'Gildas' as the author. Today I did
St Gildas Well (Laniscat) Country: France Topic: Springs and Holy Wells
This is one of many holy wells dedicated to St Gildas - the healing of rabies seems to be one of their attributes. Every year, on 30th January after Mass, dogs are taken to this fountain to receive blessings and food. The Megalithic Portal |
Since it is unlikely the French would adopt an obscure British scribe as their patron saint of rabies, and since it is unlikely that an obscure British writer would be named in honour of the French patron saint of rabies, one can only conclude that the fakers hunted around for 'a name' and came up with Gildas.
It seems to have worked.
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Pete Jones

In: Virginia
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Wile E. Coyote wrote: | Much of Galileo is invented over 70 years after his death. |
Makes me wonder what the cutoff time for trustworthy biographies is. Being a personal acquaintance of the subject might extend it a bit, but 70 years is surely too long
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Pete Jones

In: Virginia
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Subtitle of De Excidio was "Good as Gold" no doubt
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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You're an entomologist, what is the origin of 'gilding the lily'?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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On line etymology wrote: |
Continental guilds of merchants, incorporated in each town or city and holding exclusive rights of doing business there, arrived after the Conquest. In many cases they became the governing body of a town (compare Guildhall, which came to be the London city hall). Trade guilds arose 14c., as craftsmen united to protect their common interest. |
Gildas provides an invented history to settle land division.
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Pete Jones

In: Virginia
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Apparently "gilding the lily" is a mashup:
Therefore, to be possess'd with double pompe,
To guard a Title, that was rich before;
To gilde refined Gold, to paint the Lilly;
To throw a perfume on the Violet,
To smooth the yce, or adde another hew
Vnto the Raine-bow; or with Taper-light
To seeke the beauteous eye of heauen to garnish,
Is wastefull, and ridiculous excesse.
— William Shakespeare, King John, 1623 |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
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For those of you don't speak archaic English spelling but find yourself in the presence of someone who can't be bothered to make it easily comprehensible, I'll do it myself. It also reduces the poetry to something much tawdrier.
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Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard a title, that was rich before;
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily;
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the yce*, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow; or with taper-light
To see the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.
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* whether yce is ice, house, a toad, a bird or A N Other, I leave open.
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