Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Galileo begins with his discoveries in the heavens and the opposition they had met from professors who, he says, filled their writings with passages of the Bible that they had not understood. His case rests on a few principles. Scripture and nature both proceed from the divine Word. The Bible, written to be understood by everyone, often speaks in ways that differ from the bare truth of things, while nature never departs from the laws laid on her. What sense experience or necessary demonstration shows about nature should therefore not be called in question because of scriptural passages that may bear another meaning, and since two truths cannot contradict each other, it is for interpreters to find the sense of Scripture that agrees with what has been demonstrated. He supports this from Augustine and other Fathers.

It is cited in the Trial of Galileo for his own statement of the question. Pope John Paul II in 1992 called it a short treatise on the interpretation of the Bible.