Robert Bellarmine was a prominent Jesuit theologian at the time of Galileo. Before several remarkable novas appeared, and 40 years before Galileo’s evidence of sunspots, Bellarmine had already come to believe on the basis of biblical authority that the heavens are not eternal but corruptible. Bellarmine rejected the idea of solid spheres, endorsing an ancient Stoic idea that the planets move through fluid heavens like fish swim through the sea.