Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno (1548 Nola – Rome, February 17, 1600) was an Italian philosopher, priest, cosmologist, and occultist. Bruno is known for his system of mnemonics based upon organized knowledge and as an early proponent of the idea of an infinite and homogeneous universe. Burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition, Bruno is often seen as the first “martyr for science.”
Travel Years
In April 1583, he went to England with letters of recommendation from Henry III, working for the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. There he became acquainted with the poet Philip Sidney and with the Hermetic circle around John Dee. He also unsuccessfully sought a teaching position at Oxford, where however he held lectures. His views spurred controversy, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College and from 1589 bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, who poked fun at Bruno for supporting “the opinion of Copernicus that the earth did go round, and the heavens did stand still; whereas in truth it was his own head which rather did run round, and his brains did not stand still.” and who reports accusations of plagiarising Ficino’s work. Still, the English period was a fruitful one. During that time Bruno completed and published some of his most important works, the “Italian Dialogues,” including the cosmological tracts “La Cena de le Ceneri” (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584), “De la Causa, Principio et Uno” (On Cause, Prime Origin and the One, 1584), “De l’Infinito Universo et Mondi” (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584) as well as “Lo Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante” (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584) and “De gl’ Heroici Furori” (On Heroic Frenzies, 1585). Some of the works that Bruno published in London, notably the “The Ash Wednesday Supper,” appear to have given offense. It was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that Bruno’s controversial views coupled with his abrasive sarcasm lost him the support of his friends.
In October 1585, after the French embassy in London was attacked by a mob, he returned to Paris with Castelnau, finding a tense political situation. Moreover, his 120 theses against Aristotelian natural science and his pamphlets against the Roman Catholic mathematician Fabrizio Mordente soon put him in ill favor. In 1586, following a violent quarrel about Mordente’s invention, “the differential compass,” he left France for Germany.
In Germany he failed to obtain a teaching position at Marburg, but was granted permission to teach at Wittenberg, where he lectured on Aristotle for two years. However, with a change of intellectual climate there, he was no longer welcome, and went in 1588 to Prague, where he obtained 300 taler from Rudolf II, but no teaching position. He went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt, but had to flee again when he was excommunicated by the Lutherans, continuing the pattern of Bruno’s gaining favor from lay authorities before falling foul of the ecclesiastics of whatever hue.
1591 found him in Frankfurt. Apparently, during the Frankfurt Book Fair, he received an invitation to Venice from the patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, who wished to be instructed in the art of memory, and also heard of a vacant chair in mathematics at the University of Padua. Apparently believing that the Inquisition might have lost some of its impetus, he returned to Italy.
He went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, and applied unsuccessfully for the chair of mathematics, that was assigned instead to Galileo Galilei one year later. Bruno accepted Mocenigo’s invitation and moved to Venice in March 1592. For about two months he functioned as an in-house tutor to Mocenigo. When Bruno announced his plan to leave Venice to his host, the latter, who was unhappy with the teachings he had received and had apparently developed a personal rancour towards Bruno, denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition, which had Bruno arrested on May 22, 1592. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him in Venice, based on Mocenigo’s denunciation, was his belief in the plurality of worlds, as well as accusations of personal misconduct. Bruno defended himself skillfully, stressing the philosophical character of some of his positions, denying others and admitting that he had had doubts on some matters of dogma. The Roman Inquisition, however, asked for his transferral to Rome. After several months and some quibbling the Venetian authorities reluctantly consented and Bruno was sent to Rome in February 1593.
Trial and Murder by the Roman Catholic Church
In Rome he was imprisoned for seven years during his lengthy trial, lastly in the Tower of Nona. Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940. The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology. Luigi Firpo lists them as follows:
- Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
- Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
- Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
- Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
- Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
- Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
- Dealing in magics and divination.
- Denying the Virginity of Mary.
Bruno continued his Venetian defensive strategy, which consisted in bowing to the Church’s dogmatic teachings, while trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular Bruno held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. Instead he appealed in vain to Pope Clement VIII, hoping to save his life through a partial recantation. The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, handed over to “secular” authorities on February 8, 1600. At his trial he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said: “Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.” Shortly thereafter he was brought to the Campo de’ Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600.
Information Courtesy of Wikipedia
