Histories of modern science often begin with the heroic battle between Galileo and the Catholic Church, which sparked the Scientific Revolution and led to the world-changing discoveries of Isaac Newton. In reality, more than a millennium before the Renaissance, a succession of scholars paved the way for the discoveries for which Galileo and Newton are credited.In Before Galileo, John Freely investigates the first European scientists, many of them monks, whose influence ranged far beyond the walls of their monasteries. He shows how science and religion coexisted, and places the great discoveries of the age in their rightful context.'A sinuous odyssey, which chronicles the transmission of scientific ideas from ancient Greece and Rome to an early modern Europe on the cusp of the scientific revolution' Booklist.'Informative and intriguing . Freely shows how Western science developed in relation to - and in controversy with - ancient Greek ideas about matter, light, motion and the structure of the heavens' Publishers Weekly.