I like how whatever the Medici were doing for the betterment of society was always stopped short because of the church. it became a struggle between Power & Truth (hence the name of this episode). the church did not care what discoveries were made or what art that was created if it went against their creed because it would have shown a sign of weakness in them for teaching falsely to the rest of the world. so instead of embracing new ideas and helping to educate the world they 'silenced' those & and the Medici in whatever way necessary only to keep their control and position over the world. the church is everything but the protagonist. an important lesson taught in this documentary is that the system is entirely flawed. perfectly shown in this period in time, religion is used none other than as a means of control and manipulation through fear. the pope and cardinals who considered (and still do) themselves "God on Earth" and abuse their power for self-betterment and for their own personal interests are, in short, very sick people. Thank you Hulu for putting this up as I very much enjoyed it. =)

Church = bad guysGalileo = good guyChurch = dumbGalileo = genius
Dumbing down would be an understatement. This is a quote from Cardinal Robert Bellarmine:"If there were a real proof that the sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me."The fact is the church was directly responsible for creating the University system. It was the Judeo-Christian belief that God created a universe with immutable laws, laws that could be discovered by observation and study - the basis of modern science. St. Thomas Aquinas said:"Since the principles of certain sciences - of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance - are derived exclusively from the formal principles of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predictable of the species, nor the lanes drawn from a circle's center to its circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles."The Christian church believed that since God was perfect, the laws of nature were immutable. Observance of nature to discover it's properties and laws, which served as the foundation of modern science and it began with the Catholic church. If this is true then why the problem with Galileo?In this video Gallileo is tried for heresy, but it never says how they gathered evidence against him. Gallileo was called to Rome in 1624 when Cardinal Barberini became Pope Urban VIII. The pope welcomed him, showered him with gifts, and assured Gallileo the church would never declare heliocentrism heretical. So what happened? I began with the account of Bellarmine's position on heliocentrism. There is no difference in his position than that of a modern, rational scientist - evidence, reason, and logic must support your claim. The pope was favorable of Gallileo's explanation of heliocentrism but others were not. The argument against Gallileo wasn't a close-minded, Hollywood version of evil church folk that's being painted in this video, it was a rational one - presenting theory as law is dishonest. It's heresy because natural law is the law of God. Gallileo presented heliocentrism as a fact when his evidence wasn't fully convincing to the learned world. He did this when he published his book in 1632 after 8 years of receiving patronage for his work by the pope. It is for this reason that pope John Paul II never apologized. That too, like much of this video, is a myth. The video sets out to create animosity were it didn't exist.