Galileo has quarreled with the Jesuit astronomers, who knew perfectly well that the planets were moving around the Sun, but did not publish their ideas . He had three matches with the, on on the priority of the discovery of the sunspots (with Cristoph Scheiner, SJ), one on the origin of tides and one on the substance of comets. On at least the latter two of these subjects he was wrong and a Jesuits were right, but he was quick tongued,like many Tuscan, and made fool of them. The Jesuits counterattacked by accusing him of believing in the existence of atoms, and a trial followed. The Pope, who was a friend of Galileo, downplayed the accusation to that of proclaiming the Kepler hypothesis and saved his life. This at least is the thesis exposed by the Italian scholar Pietro Redondi in his book "Galileo eretico". Redondi found in the Vatican archives a copy of an anonymous denounce marked by only a "G",which could stand for Orazio Grassi, a famous Jesuit astronomer.
Tullio

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