The 16th & 17th Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo Galilei is widely considered to be the founder of modern science, due to his adoption of the scientific method in conducting experiments about gravity, motion and the movement of the planets in space, aided by the development of the telescope in the early 17th century. He also fell afoul of the Catholic Church during the Inquisition, due to his rejection of Aristotle's geocentric model in 1610, in which the earth was a fixed object around which the other planets, including the sun, revolved, in favor of the heliocentric model proposed by Nicolas Copernicus in 1543, which placed the sun at the center of the solar system. The Church opposed this pronouncement, as it apparently contradicted several Biblical passages that implied that the sun moved in space, cast doubt upon the location and existence of Heaven, and thus was a threat to Christianity and, more importantly, the authority of the Church during a period of widespread suffering and subjugation of millions of believers. Although the heliocentric model was confirmed by Jesuit astronomers who also had the benefit of using telescopes to confirm Galileo's findings the Church declared that heliocentrism was heretical in 1616, banned any publications that supported it, and Pope Paul V specifically ordered Galileo "to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it...to abandon completely...the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing."

Galileo kept quiet from 1616 through 1624, after Maffeo Barberini, a mathematician, became the new pope, Urban VIII, in 1623. Galileo assumed that the pope would support heliocentrism, based on prior interactions with him, but Urban VIII, under pressure exerted by members of the Inquisition and Galileo's decision to publish his work in Italian, the language of the common people, was ultimately convinced to withdraw his support and protection of the famed mathematician. In 1632 Galileo was called to Rome to testify in front of the Inquistion, and once he arrived the following year he was found guilty of heresy. Under threat of torture and death he publicly recanted his heliocentric beliefs, and he was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Although he was forbidden to write any works which fell afoul of the Church and despite going blind in 1638, Galileo did surreptitiously write a manuscript, "Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences", which was published in the Netherlands to avoid censors, and became critical to the development of modern physics.

The German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote "Life of Galileo" in 1938, while he lived in exile from Nazi Germany, which he fled in 1933 after Adolf Hitler rose to power. The play starts in 1610, as Galileo receives word of the newly invented telescope from a young Dutch man who wishes to study under him, and ends just prior to his death. At the time he was a professor at the University of Padua, whose salary did not meet his means, which forced him to take on students outside of the classroom in order to earn a decent living. Although he was well known and widely respected he, along with other modern scientists and thinkers, was viewed unfavorably by the Catholic hierarchy, but his position in the university afforded him the protection he needed to conduct his experiments. Brecht portrays Galileo as a man singularly driven to pursue Truth using the scientific method, irregardless of his daughter's future and happiness, the advice of others to avoid antagonizing the Church and members of the Inquisition, and his own health, as presumably his blindness was largely due to him repeatedly viewing the sun to study its position in space and the spots on its surface. It is not an anti-religious play, but one that contrasts science and reason with authority and dogmatism.

I read the script of "Life of Galileo" after I saw the production of it at The Young Vic in London last month, which was translated by John Willett, directed by Joe Wright, and starred Brendan Cowell as Galileo. Although the play was true to the act-less script it omitted one or two scenes, and featured several irreverent skits, including one particularly amusing one set to music. The round stage was surrounded by the audience, but several paying customers sat in the middle of the set, as actors moved around them, forcing them to move repeatedly throughout the performance.

"Life of Galileo" was a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable performance, and after seeing three outstanding renditions of Bertolt Brecht's plays in London in the past nine months, "The Threepenny Opera", "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" and "Life of Galileo", I am eager to see the remainder of this brilliant playwright's works.… (mer)