When Galileo died in 1642, the Catholic Church flatly refused to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground because of his heretical theories at the time
More than 380 years after the death of the father of modern astronomy, Galileo Galilei, parts of his body continue to be displayed as priceless exhibits in Italy. Dismembered by his own admirers almost a century after his burial, the scientist is now venerated in a museum in Florence in a manner that strongly resembles the cult of a medieval saint.
The three fingers of his right hand (the thumb, index and middle finger), a tooth and a vertebra from his spine are kept in glass cases, surrounded by the same telescopes and lenses with which the astronomer proved that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The story of how these mortal remains ended up in the museum, however, reads like a true Gothic thriller.
Theft of the “holy relics” of science
When Galileo died in 1642, the Catholic Church flatly refused to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground because of his heretical theories at the time. His body was laid to rest in a small, unofficial room.
It was not until 1737 (95 years later) that the Church finally relented and allowed his remains to be moved to a lavish new mausoleum in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, directly opposite Michelangelo’s tomb.
During the exhumation, a group of scientists and admirers of Galileo, led by historians and antiquarians, decided to secretly cut off parts of his skeleton. Their motive was not vandalism, but quite the opposite – they saw Galileo as a “martyr of science” and wanted to preserve pieces of him as secular relics. The botanist who cut off the fingers later wrote that he took them “because with these fingers Galileo wrote so many beautiful things”.
The disappearance and discovery of the black market
While the vertebra was donated to the University of Padua (where the scientist taught), the tooth and two of the fingers were put away in a small wooden box with a bust of the astronomer and remained in the family of an Italian marquis.
Over the generations, the heirs of the family forgot what exactly was in the box and sold it. Thus, in 1905, all traces of the relics were completely lost and scientists declared them irretrievably lost.
However, in 2009, the strange wooden box suddenly appeared at auction. A private collector bought it and immediately contacted the director of the Florence Science Museum. Using historical documents and old family archives, experts confirmed that these were indeed Galileo’s lost fingers and tooth.
Today, they have been officially reunited with the third finger (the middle finger), which had been kept in the museum since before, and are on display in special egg-shaped glass containers. The irony of the story is complete: Galileo’s middle finger was positioned so that it pointed straight up towards the sky – a gesture that many today interpret either as a triumphant gesture to the cosmos or as eternal, silent defiance of the Church that condemned him during his lifetime.
Source: Times of India
Illustrative photo: pexels-fred-souza-245702210-23787394
