FLORENCE, Italy  The Galileo case is often seen starkly as science’s first decisive blow against not only faith but also the power of the Roman Catholic Church. It has never been quite that simple, though. Galileo was a believer, devastated at being convicted, in 1633, of heresy for upending the biblical view of the universe.

Now a particularly enduring Catholic practice is on prominent display in, of all places, Florence’s history of science museum, recently renovated and renamed to honor Galileo: Modern-day supporters of the famous heretic are exhibiting newly recovered bits of his body  three fingers and a gnarly molar sliced from his corpse nearly a century after he died  as if they were the relics of an actual saint.

“He’s a secular saint, and relics are an important symbol of his fight for freedom of thought,” said Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Galileo Museum, which put the tooth, thumb and index finger on view last month, uniting them with another of the scientist’s digits already in its collection.

“He’s a hero and martyr to science,” he added.

How the relics returned makes for an appropriate new chapter in the life and legacy of Galileo, which is still under debate. In 1992, the church came around to acknowledging that the judges who had convicted him of heresy had erred, but it did not quite clear Galileo either. And the relics’ return underscores, yet again, continuing tensions between the church and secular culture in Italy.