Theatrical Reading
Place – Time
A theatrical reading will be presented, based on the theatrical play “Galileo’s Pope” by Kostas Gavroglu. The performance will be interpreted by undergraduate students of the Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education (NKUA), on Saturday, 28th June 2025, in the Athens University History Museum, Plaka.
A brief description of the play
Four hundred years ago, in April 1624, the leading natural philosopher Galileo visited Rome to congratulate his friend, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, on his election as Pope Urban VIII. The election of this very friendly figure to the highest office of the Catholic Church created great expectations for the politically and theologically optimistic Galileo. Although he had six consecutive and lengthy meetings with the very friendly Pope Urban VIII, the Pope would later become Galileo’s greatest enemy, and in 1632 he decided that Galileo should be presented and tried for his ideas by the Inquisition. The deeper causes of the Catholic Church’s shift in attitude towards the most famous advocate of the new heliocentric cosmology are presented in an engaging manner in the theatrical play by Kostas Gavroglou, “Galileo’s Pope”.
Galileos-Pope