Two of Galileo’s fingers that were removed from his corpse in the 18th century have gone on display in a Florence museum today dedicated to scientific discovery.
The Museum of the History of Science shut down for two years for renovations but as reopened as The Galileo Museum. Last year, the museum director announced the thumb and middle finger from Galileo’s right hand had turned up at an auction and were recognised as being the fingers of the scientist who died in 1642.
The body parts, along with a vertebrae, were cut from Galileo's corpse by scientists and historians during a burial ceremony 95 years after his death.
"The laymen and masons that were attending the ceremony thought that they should have some souvenir of Galileo's body," Paolo Galluzzi, director of Florence's Galileo Museum, told Reuters.
"They thought that having a piece of the man would have been a homage to his tradition. The idea of having relics of science is very similar, is a mirror of the relics of religion," he said.
The remains, along with two telescopes, a compass and a wealth of other instruments designed by Galileo, are the main attraction at the refurbished Galileo Museum.
While one of Galileo's fingers and the vertebrae had been conserved in Florence and Padua since 1737, the other finger, the thumb and the tooth had passed from one collector to another until they went missing in 1905.
Alberto Bruschi, a renowned Florence art collector, unknowingly bought them with other religious relics last October at an auction, where they were being sold as unidentified artefacts contained in a 17th century wooden case.
When Bruschi and his daughter noticed that Galileo's bust topped the case, and read a book by Galluzzi documenting how parts of the scientist's body had been cut off at his burial, they contacted the museum. Tests and studies confirmed that they had found Galileo's missing remains.
Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa in 1564, is considered one of the fathers of modern science due to his studies in physics, mathemathics and particularly astronomy, where his work led to great advances in developing the telescope.
For 95 years after his death, ecclesiastical authorities refused to allow Galileo to be buried in consecrated ground because his findings - and his support for the view which placed the sun, and not the Earth, at the centre of the universe - were contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
His body now lies in Florence's Santa Croce church, opposite the tomb of Michelangelo.
Reuters