The topics here seem to be (a) what about Galileo and the Catholic Church? (b) what did Cardinal Bellarmine say about Copernicanism and the Bible? (c) what did Luther and Calvin say about Copernicanism and the Bible? and (d) is all of that history actually relevant to the creationism controversy today?
It’s very hard to give short, reliable answers to (a). I won’t try. But, some of my views are embedded in the answers below.
For (b), lets go right to the source, Bellarmine’s letter to Catholic priest Paolo Foscarini, who wrote a book defending Copernicanism with certain biblical texts: At the Roots of the 1616 Decree: Robert Bellarmine’s Letter to Paolo Foscarini | Inters.org.
For (b) and (c), listen to this podcast (about 60 minutes): Episode 126: Galileo – Veracity Hill.
For (d), with information on (a) and (b), go here: Galileo and the Garden of Eden: The Principle of Accommodation and the Book of Genesis - Articles - BioLogos. This post was based on a published essay in an academic book that can be obtained, realistically, only in some university libraries: Chapter Thirteen. Galileo And The Garden Of Eden: Historical Reflections On Creationist Hermeneutics in: Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present.
However, I will send the essay privately to interested persons upon request.
Just two specific comments on this thread, so far. (1) Bellarmine was dead when Galileo’s book was placed on the Index and he was put under house arrest. One might say that Bellarmine’s ghost played a role in that, but others were responsible for it. (2) Calvin was unquestionably a geocentrist, and some of the pertinent passages are identified above. As I state in the podcast, however, almost everyone before 1610 (when Galileo published The Starry Messenger) was a geocentrist; this is of no greater import than saying that Robert Boyle believed the earth was created around 4004 BC (his father had known Archbishop Ussher, and Boyle accepted Ussher’s then state-of-the-art chronology). Calvin began his university education at Paris, where mabye (I haven’t seen his transcript) he took the standard introductory course in astronomy that most universities then required. The text used at Paris and many other universities had been written by a famous Parisian professor of the 13th century, namely, the English monk John of Sacrobosco. Like every other medieval astronomy text, it teaches both the Earth’s round shape and its place in the center of the universe. Whether or not he read Sacrobosco, Calvin knew what that book teaches, including the fact that Saturn is much larger than the Moon—a point Calvin mentions in his commentary on Genesis 1:16, where he appeals to accommodation to say that Moses didn’t intend to teach astronomy. That’s how he handles what he believes is the literal sense of that text, according to which the Sun and Moon are the two largest bodies in the heavens. Here’s the most important point: Calvin’s French sermon on 1 Cor 10-11 does refer pejoratively to “these madmen who have a spirit of such venomous contradiction, contriving to gainsay everything and perverting the very order of nature.” He means those who say “that the sun does not budge, and that it is the earth that bestirs itself and that turns around [qui se remue et qu’elle tourne].” (Luther’s off-the-cuff remark about Copernicus had a similar tone: he treated Copernicus’ frankly crazy idea as an outrageous claim, as if Copernicus were a 16th Century version of Lady Gaga, who seeks to draw attention to herself by being outrageous.) In fact, Calvin probably did NOT refer here to the Copernican view, despite appearances. Probably, he had in mind Cicero’s Academica, where the character Hicetas holds that the earth spins on its axis diurnally in the center of the world, but does not circle about the sun. For the details, see Christopher Kaiser, “Calvin, Copernicus, and Castellio,” Calvin Theological Journal 21 (April 1986): 5-31.