Immagini di Galileo nel "Terra Machinis Mota" di Paolo Casati

The aim of this paper is to show how that the image of Jesuit science in the seventeenth century as a united front strongly opposed to Galileo has definitely waned. As an example, I examine in detail the two editions (1655, 1658) of the dialogue Terra machinis mota, written by the Jesuit Paolo Casati, in which the fictitious characters Guldin, Galileo and Mersenne are represented in a discussion about many scientific problems. The real Galileo would not have supported many theories that Casati attributes to ‘his’ Galileo, but the image of him that emerges is far from being a caricature, and is surely not similar to Galileo’s Simplicio.