Galileo wrote a letter to his former student, the Benedictine Benedetto Castelli (1578-1643), about how the Earth’s movement around the sun need not be understood in opposition to Sacred Scripture. Alluding to the exegetical proposal he would develop further in his later letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Galileo gives as an argument for the Earth’s rotation the analogy of the sun’s rotation on its own axis and the reasonableness of maintaining that the sun’s greater size and dignity suggests its central role: “For I have discovered and conclusively demonstrated that the solar globe turns on itself, completing an entire rotation in about one lunar month, in exactly the same direction as all the other heavenly revolutions; moreover, it is very probable and reasonable that, as the chief instrument and minister of nature and almost the heart of the world, the sun gives not only light (as it obviously does) but also motion to all the planets that revolve around it.” One year later, on December 21, 1614, Galileo was attacked from the pulpit by a Dominican, Tommaso Caccini, in the church of Santa Maria Novella, for teaching the Copernican theory.