It is, however, important to know that at the time religion was not a single crime, it was four. Formal heresy was the most sever, then there was suspected heresy which had three sub-heresies: strong suspicion of heresy, vehement suspicion of heresy, and mild suspicion of heresy . The specific heresy that Galileo was condemned with was vehement suspicion of heresy, not the worst kind to be sure, but still moderately heretical. The main difference between these types of heresy is that for formal heresy the subject must realize they are committing heresy, and still cling to their beliefs, where suspected heresy (also known as material heresy) has people in ignorance committing one heresy or another . This fact is important when determining if Galileo was in fact a heretic, because the level of heresy he was accused of is quite variable, and changes the charges laid against him. In this case, repudiating his beliefs is not enough to absolve him of heresy, but at the same time doing so means he did not knowingly go against what the church knew to be correct, thus it was not as serious an offense under catholic doctrine as it could have been otherwise. There are detailed accounts of the actual …show more content…
At this point it has become clear that by the conventional definitions of heresy given above, he is most certainly a culprit, so all that remains is to define it. This is where Galileo’s thought on what exactly he was intending to support comes into play. If Galileo knew both that he was barred from ever discussing heliocentric models, and he knew that what he was doing in his book was discussing them, despite their orthodoxy, then Galileo could have been guilty of formal heresy . It is of course impossible to know what Galileo thought without a confession, and his confession was very particular in what he did, and did not admit