Giordano Bruno: Burned at the stake on this Date: February 17, 1600

[Trajan]

Excerpt from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno


The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de' Fiori, Rome.

Imprisonment, trial and execution, 1592-1600

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.<11> 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: <12>

* 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.

In these grim circumstances 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, and told he would be handed over to secular authorities. According to the correspondence of one Gaspar Schopp of Breslau, he is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied:

"Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam (Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it)."<13> He was quickly turned over to the secular authorities and, on February 17, 1600 in the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, "his tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words" he was burned at the stake.<14> When the fire had died out his ashes were dumped into the Tiber river. All Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603.

On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode". However he added that people should not judge those who condemned Bruno and maintained, despite the historical facts, that the inquisitors "had the desire to preserve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save his life."<15>

[closeupready]

1. And they would still be doing this if they had the power to do so.

:puke: They hate science. They hate being proven wrong. They hate dissent.

[ixion]

2. Exactly. And why we need Separation of Church and State

because whacko fundies need to be kept far away from the reigns of power.

[HeresyLives]

3. So many good minds lost

because of willful ignorance and brutality.

[edhopper]

4. And I've yet to hear

any church or church member acknowledge what a force for ignorance Christianity has been over the millennium.

But they will babble on about the Jesuits.