SOURCE: "Galileo's Letter to Christina: Some Rhetorical Considerations," in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, Winter, 1983, pp. 547-76.

In the following essay, Moss argues that Galileo's letter to his patron's mother, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in which he defends his position on Copernicus would have been more likely to save him had it stayed within his own area of expertise—mathematics—rather than strayed into theology, the specialty of his accusers.

The year 1982 marked the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a work that was to have a tragic impact on the astronomer's life, and also on the relations between science and religion. It was the publication of the Dialogue that precipitated the trial of Galileo before the Inquisition on charges of teaching the Copernican system, which had been condemned in 1616. The book sets forth the inadequacies of the Ptolemaic...