Early Modern Catholic Defense of Copernicanism: The Jesuits and the Galileo Affair

Interpreting the relationship between the Jesuits and Copernicans like Galileo Galilei through the frame of “blind obedience” reaffirms the conservative image of the Catholic Church – to which the Jesuits owed such obedience – as committed to its medieval traditions. In opposition to this perspective, I will argue that the Jesuits involved in the Galileo Affair represent the progressive ideas of the Church in the early seventeenth century