The Roman Inquisition: trying Galileo

With this final installment in his magisterial trilogy on the seventeenth-century Roman Inquisition, Thomas F.

Mayer has provided the first comprehensive study of the legal proceedings against Galileo.

By the time of the trial, the Roman Inquisition had become an extensive corporatized body with direct authority over local courts and decades of documented jurisprudence.

Drawing deeply from those legal archives as well as correspondence and other printed material, Mayer has traced the legal procedure from Galileo's first precept in 1616 to his formal trial in 1633.