Galileo recanted his heliocentric views—that the Earth orbits the Sun—mainly because he was threatened by the Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition with torture and severe punishment. In 1633, Galileo was tried and found "vehemently suspect of heresy" because his support for the heliocentric model contradicted the Church's interpretation of the Bible, which held the Earth as the center of the universe. Faced with the threat of torture and a possible death sentence, the frail 69-year-old Galileo publicly took back his ideas to avoid harsher punishment. Instead of a prison sentence, his punishment was commuted to house arrest, where he spent the rest of his life. The Church only formally admitted centuries later that Galileo's heliocentric ideas were correct.
This recantation was not a change of belief but a forced act to save his life under extreme pressure from the Inquisition, which held the authority to dictate what was considered heretical based on their theological interpretation of scripture at that time.
