Galileo's Recant

Galileo’s decision to recant was the best choice possible in the long run. Had Galileo not recanted, he likely would have been tortured, maybe even killed; while the Pope was reluctant to do so when Galileo might recant, there is no reason he might not change his mind if Galileo became a bigger threat. At the very least, he would have been arrested. He would have become a martyr for the cause of questioning everything, but a martyr rarely does much alone.


At absolute best, it would have spurred on a rebellion, which, after a long and likely body-strewn ‘war’, might have lead to a new age of enlightenment in the best-case scenario. In that case, it would be quite a while until everything settled down, and longer still until Galileo’s experiments were repeated, results found out, information published, and it still probably would not have been as respected as it was coming from Galileo. The worst-case scenario in a rebellion situation would have been a gory massacre.

Had Galileo been tortured or killed, he might have become an example of why to obey the Church, like Bruno was. That runs the risk of scaring everyone into obedience until they forget about it, or some other hero comes along.

Of all these situations, arrest is the most boring. Had Galileo simply been arrested, he would have been watched too closely to write anything useful, assuming he would have even been allowed to experiment at all.



Because Galileo did not recant, he was left in peace, in relatively good health, by the church, and was able to finish and write up his research.