It turns out the trial of Galileo was based on a clerical error. They were going through his file and found a document that seemed to say he had pled guilty to a heresy several years earlier, and he was bound by a consent decree that prevented him from teaching heliocentrism. They hauled him to court and accused him of violating the consent decree. Galileo promptly pulled out paperwork showing that he had been cleared in that investigation, he WAS permitted to teach heliocentrism (as a hypothesis), and the judges were looking at an unsigned draft document that never went into effect. It seems to be the case that he never would have been tried if that bogus document hadn't been left in his file.