 By 1615 Galileo 's writings on heliocentrism had been submitted to the Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolo <unk> , who claimed that Galileo and his followers were attempting to reinterpret the Bible , which was seen as a violation of the Council of Trent and looked dangerously like Protestantism . <unk> specifically cited Galileo 's letter to Castelli . Galileo went to Rome to defend himself and his Copernican and biblical ideas . At the start of 1616 , Monsignor Francesco Ingoli initiated a debate with Galileo , sending him an essay disputing the Copernican system . Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed . According to Maurice Finocchiaro , Ingoli had probably been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy , and the essay provided the " chief direct basis " for the Inquisition 's actions . The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism . It borrowed primarily from the arguments of Tycho Brahe , and it <unk> mentioned Brahe 's argument that heliocentrism required the stars to be much larger than the Sun . Ingoli wrote that the great distance to the stars in the heliocentric theory " clearly proves ... the fixed stars to be of such size , as they may surpass or equal the size of the orbit circle of the Earth itself . " The essay also included four theological arguments , but Ingoli suggested Galileo focus on the physical and mathematical arguments , and he did not mention Galileo 's biblical ideas . In February 1616 , an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism to be " foolish and absurd in philosophy , and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture . " The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth 's movement " receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith " . ( The original document from the Inquisitorial commission was made widely available in 2014 . ) 
