Galileo’s telescope had enabled him to keep close track of the planet Venus. ‘Sometimes it is obscure, sometimes it is completely illuminated, sometimes it is illuminated either in the superior quarter or in the inferior quarter.’ Just in case the implication of this was not clear, Schreck had made sure to spell it out. ‘This proves that Venus is a satellite of the sun and travels around it.’23 Here, as the Jesuits readily accepted, was yet another body blow to the model of the cosmos that the Church had inherited from Aristotle.
