IT IS A REMARKABLE BIT of irony, the finger: venerated, kept in a shrine, subjected to the same treatment as a saintly relic. But this finger belonged to no saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. Two of Galileo's fingers, removed from his corpse by admirers in the 18th century, have gone on display in a Florence museum now named after the astronomer. The fingers are now displayed in slender, glass cases. Also on display is his tooth. A third finger was already in the museum.
In 1737, admirers of Galileo Galilei removed the three fingers, plus the tooth and a vertebra, from his body as it was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb – opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence.
The vertebra is kept at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught for many years.