This book began Galileo’s troubles with the Catholic Church. He was forbidden to write further on his belief in the Copernican system, which states that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun—a concept denounced as heretical by Church authorities for its seeming contradiction to Scripture. Deposed by the Roman Inquisition four times, Galileo was finally sentenced in 1633 to indefinite house arrest, though he remained a Catholic up to his death in 1642 at age 77.