Two withered dead fingers and a tooth have been identified as belonging to Galileo Galilei, shown here at work around 1630.
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A tooth and two fingers of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian astronomer, physicist, inventor and mathematician, have re-emerged from a lost wooden case, Florence's authorities announced today.
The remains have been identified by a collector, who spotted an unusually shaped wooden case at an auction.
"The case was surmounted by a wooden bust of Galileo. Inside there was an 18th-century blown-glass vase which contained a tooth and two dried up fingers. It wasn't difficult to attribute the relics to Galileo as the case and its content fully match descriptions found in historic accounts," Cristina Acidini, superintendent of Florence museums, told Discovery News.
The tooth and fingers (from Galileo's right hand) were removed in 1737 when the scientist's body was exhumed from his unconsecrated grave and transferred to a mausoleum in the Florentine church of Santa Croce.
It was a solemn event, fully described by a notary report. For 95 years since the death in 1642 of the great scientist, ecclesiastical authorities refused to allow Galileo to be buried in a consecrated ground.
The man who made the first complete astronomical telescope and who used it to determine that Earth revolved around the sun, was accused by the Church of bringing "such universal scandal to Christianity" with theories "so false and so erroneous."
Convicted of heresy by the Inquisition, Galileo spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest.
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To wrest the government's autonomy from ecclesiastical intrusion, Grand Duke Gian Gastone ordered that the scientists' remains be moved to Santa Croce, the world's largest Franciscan church, to rest among the tombs of illustrious dead, opposite the tomb of Michelangelo.
"The solemn ceremony was attended by numerous representatives of the cultural world and local nobility. But as the coffin lid was raised, naturalist Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti drew a knife from his pocket and removed the thumb and forefinger of Galileo's right hand," Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of History of Science in Florence, told Discovery News.
According to Targioni Tozzetti, those two fingers had to be kept as relics since they held the pen with which so many great works were written. The macabre scene continued with the middle finger, the fifth lumbar vertebra and a tooth removed from the badly deteriorated remains of Galileo's corpse.
Both the long bony middle finger and the vertebra were preserved and are now on display respectively at Galluzzi's museum in Florence and at the University of Padova.
Meanwhile, the other two fingers and the tooth went through continuous changes of ownership until they totally disappeared a century ago.
"Coming on the 400th anniversary of Galileo's revolutionary stargazing, this finding is indeed a symbolic seal to the Year of Astronomy," Galluzzi said.
The re-discovered relics will be on display in March, at the reopening of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, which will soon change its name to the Galileo museum.
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