Galileo's conflict with the Roman Catholic Church has long held a very special fascination. The prime reason for this, of course, is that the Galileo affair has come to be seen as the paradigm case of the troubled interaction between science and religion.

Another reason is the sheer dramatic power of the events involved, which continue to attract the attention of the scholar, the novelist, and the playwright. Images easily multiply of the flawed tragic hero, of the struggle for intellectual freedom, of the unprotected individual pitted against a powerful institution committed to its selfpreservation, and of plots and subplots and counterplots worthy of the best mystery writer.

At yet another level, the Galileo case has, unfortunately, long provided many with an ideal arena for ideological posturing for and against both the scientific and the religious world views.