Did Galileo Really Declare His Innocence at Trial?

Galileo's 1633 trial before the Inquisition is one of history's most famous confrontations between science and religious authority. He was tried for advocating the Copernican heliocentric model after being warned not to in 1616. The trial records show Galileo actually adopted a more cautious legal strategy than outright defiance -- he argued he had not intentionally defended heliocentrism and had merely presented it as a mathematical hypothesis. The image of Galileo as a fearless rebel declaring his innocence is partly a romantic embellishment by later writers. The famous 'And yet it moves' ('E pur si muove') attributed to him after recanting is similarly apocryphal, first appearing over a century after his death.