In 1642, upon Galileo’s death, the Catholic Church denied him burial in consecrated ground due to his controversial theories. Over 380 years later, parts of Galileo Galilei’s body are displayed as valuable exhibits in Italy. Almost a century after his burial, admirers dismembered him, leading to his current veneration in a Florence museum, reminiscent of a saint’s cult.
His right hand’s three fingers (thumb, index, and middle), a tooth, and a spine vertebra are exhibited in glass cases with the telescopes and lenses he used to prove Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The journey of these remains to the museum is a story worthy of a Gothic thriller.
Science’s “holy relics” theft
After Galileo died in 1642, the Church didn’t allow burial in consecrated ground. His body rested in an unofficial room. In 1737, the Church permitted his transfer to a grand mausoleum in Florence’s Basilica of Santa Croce, opposite Michelangelo’s tomb.
During exhumation, scientists and admirers, led by historians and antiquarians, secretly took parts of his skeleton. They aimed to preserve Galileo, seen as a “science martyr,” as secular relics. The botanist who took the fingers explained his act as preserving the fingers with which Galileo “wrote many beautiful things.”
Disappearance and black market discovery
The vertebra went to the University of Padua where Galileo taught, while the tooth and two fingers were kept in a wooden box with a bust of Galileo, forgotten by an Italian marquis’s family. When sold in 1905, the relics were thought lost.
In 2009, the wooden box resurfaced at auction. A private collector bought and alerted the Florence Science Museum. Historical documents and family archives confirmed the relics as Galileo’s lost fingers and tooth.
Today, they are reunited with the third finger, previously held by the museum, displayed in egg-shaped glass containers. The irony is complete: Galileo’s middle finger points skyward, a gesture interpreted as triumph or defiance of the Church that condemned him.
Source: Times of India
Photo: pexels-fred-souza-245702210-23787394
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