Friday, July 23, 2010

Another secular saint

This time it's Galileo, in whose museum in Florence remains of a finger, a thumb and a tooth are displayed like relics. They were, indeed, found in a reliquary by a collector named Alberto Bruschi. But the translation of relics is always a storied affair:

Mr. Bruschi credits providence with the find. “More than by chance, things are also helped along a bit by the souls of the dead,” he said in a telephone interview.

That's providence? Oh well, you don't expect religious precision from an article (and a paper) which manages to assert that the Vatican still hasn't fully accepted heliocentrism!