The Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, traveled to Rome in 1611 to show the papal court the first astronomical telescope, a revolutionary contraption that he himself had built and that had the potential to greatly expand humanity's view of the universe then.
However, the Church was not enthusiastic about advances in science, quite the opposite, since they revealed much of what it preached. And so it was demonstrated in 1616, when the Copernicus system was denounced as dangerous to the faith and Galileo was also called to Rome to be warned not to defend or teach it.
In 1632, Galileo published a work that supported the Copernican system - which maintained that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice versa - as opposed to that of Ptolemy, which represented a turning point in scientific and philosophical thought. Since he had already been warned by the Church to stay out of the Copernicus theory, Galileo was called to Rome to be tried by the Inquisition and forced to retract all his beliefs and writings.
After the trial, Galileo was sentenced to seclusion in Siena, although he was later allowed to live in Arcetri, near Florence. Despite his weak state, and even the blindness he suffered during his last years, the astronomer continued to search for scientific truth until the day of his deathIn 1642.