The Trial of Galileo, Essential Documents, translated and edited by Maurice A. Finocchiaro – Book Review

Lincoln Green

Image © Steve Jurveston

It was Raymond Williams who wrote that “only the line of a life, hardly anything of its area, can be articulated and reduced to grammar”.  Finocchiaro’s book offers the reader the opportunity to move away from a simple linear view of the historical events of Galileo’s trial, a view frequently misinformed by myth and prejudice, to one which is informed by an awareness of the multidimensional interplay of early 17^th century personalities, politics and perspectives.