He broke a legal agreement.
A better question might be, what was Galileo's punishment?
Is it your position that the church should be above criticism?
Since ArGee criticized the Church in his last post, I have to assume this question is rhetorical.
What legal agreement? Here's an excellent account I just tracked down of the persecution of Galileo by the enemies of science in the Catholic Church. Perhaps you should read that before answering.
Note, btw, the shady methods of Galileo's enemies and how remarkably similar they are to modern creationist tactics....
BTW, one more little historical footnote. Aristotle had also envisioned the heliocentric model but came to reject it for what were actually valid scientific objections: that if the earth moved then the stars should evidence a parallax. This was the same basis upon which Ptolemy and others would then resist the ideas of Aristarchus. What the ancient Greeks didn't comprehend was how far away the stars were, and therefore how miniscule their parallax.