“Are they still in there? Can’t they settle such a trivial matter more quickly? Clavius must surely know his astronomy. I am told that this Mr Galilei moves mankind away from the centre of the universe and dumps it somewhere on the edge. Clearly this makes him an enemy of the human race. We must treat him as such. Mankind is the crown of creation, as every child knows, God’s highest and dearest creature. How could He take something so miraculous, the fruit of so much effort, and lodge it on a remote, minor, constantly elusive star? Would he send His Son to such a place? How can there be people so perverse as to pin their faith to these slaves of the multiplication table! Which of God’s creatures would stand for anything like that?” (Scene 6)
This quote illustrates the attitude of the church which Galileo was faced with. It may also explain his decision to back down when threatened by the church, given that their reasoning is based in such convoluted logic he could likely never convince them to accept his findings, in addition to the fact that they have an agenda to push to the public. This quote also highlights how Galileo and his pupils are truly stand-outs in European society during this period, when everyone was blindly convinced of the church's propaganda, Galileo was completing his scientific research in the complete contrary of religious science, even while he was imprisoned, he never stopped writing his work. In the end, it seems Andrea changes his opinion on Galileo again, and this dedication to science shown by the completion of his book publishing his research proved to Andrea that he was in fact still the same person, so driven to discover the truth and aid to the advancement of society through science, just as we see here in this quote in which the church is totally appalled by Galileo's findings.
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