Rigelian and JimBob, excellent points on Galileo - I see that you have read some of the latest historical work on his life. Most of which, by the way, supports your argument that events were much more complex than good Galileo versus bad Church.
You have nicely laid out the general terms of the disagreement between Galileo and the Church, but I would like to add that it wasn't strictly a case of "we say so" versus overwhelming scientific evidence. There was some criticism of the heliocentric model that I would consider legitimate from a scientific and mathematical perspective. Yes, Galileo had the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and the explanation of Mars' retrograde motion in his favor. But, since he continued to use Copernicus' circular orbital model, he could not explain why planets appear to speed up and slow down in their orbits (elliptical orbits solved this problem, but Galileo ignored Kepler's work), nor could he find stellar parallax. The idea behind parallax is that IF the Earth were moving, then we should see changes of position in stars relative to one another as we move across the heavens. With the instruments available at the time of Galileo's trial, no one could see parallax. Galileo's counter-argument was that the stars are so far away that the motion would be imperceptible. As it turns out he was right, but he could not prove it at the time.
Moreover, and perhaps even more problematic, was that there was a third option beyond the heliocentric and geocentric models: the Tychonic system. Tycho Brahe, perhaps the greatest observational astronomer of the time, had created a system that could explain all of Galileo's findings and still "save the appearances" and keep the Earth at the center of the universe. His system had the Earth at the center, the Sun revolving around the Earth, and all the other planets (except our moon, of course) revolving around the Sun. An ingenious system, really, and dynamically speaking it was the equivalent of the heliocentric model. So, Galileo's detractors could point to more than just theological problems with his work.
But it was, as Jimbob and Rigelian have pointed out, the theological problems that really got him in trouble. Especially his insistence that the Bible be interpreted metaphorically rather than literally. This was a clear intrusion on Church turf, and Urban VIII could not allow that to pass without some kind of punishment.
The other example, Giordano Bruno, is more compelling because he was burned at the stake (instead of being put under house arrest). But here again the story is more complex. It was really his refusal to accept the Holy Trinity, more than his scientific theories, that rendered him a heretic.
One Last point...(I'm almost done, I promise
) Copernicus was actually a member of the Church (administering church property in Poland), and the reason that he was investigating astronomy was Calendar reform. The existing Calendar did not predict Easter well, and the Pope wanted to revise it in line with the actual motions of the planets. So, it was a religious reason that spurred Copernicus to work on the problem.
Sorry for the length of this post - I got carried away. This is one of my favorite historical topics.
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