Giordano Bruno – A Martyr’s Revenge

Looking back at the insanity of it now, trying to imagine tens of thousands of corpses strewn across the fields of Europe from the various religious wars, to the auto de fe’s that warmed the hearts of religious fanatics, or the sadistic tortures that forced the innocent to confess to imaginary crimes to make the horror stop, to tongues being cutout, faces branded, limbs ripped out of their sockets, to even the severed heads of heretics displayed for public amusement……. it’s all impossible for us today to produce a coherent answer to the “how and why” of it. The brutality of it simply doesn’t register. To a modern perspective, those living in Medieval times held views about God and faith that would now be seen as fanatical to the point of absurdity, and to such an extent that there was no degree of cruelty off limits to the Medieval mind if it meant protecting sacred doctrine. The Catholic church had established THE truth to every important question, and all who valued their lives were forced to accept it. The great French mathematician, Renee Descartes, once described how curious minded people like himself remained safe from the flames, poignantly stated “those who lived well, were those who hid well.”

Of course, nothing from that world touches us much today, since religious sentiment has chilled considerably since that raging inferno. In fact, religious fervor now has all the veracity of taking one’s daily vitamins, it’s just something to stay spiritually healthy, like a weekly gym visit. But make no mistake, throughout large areas of Europe, from the creation of the Inquisition in 1184 by Pope Lucius III, to the mid-1700s, expressing ideas contrary to church doctrine, or even being accused of doing so, was an invitation to torture and death.

Yet, even while the Inquisition was torturing heretics at the slightest provocation, radical, provocative ideas still found their way into the open air, as independent thinkers, scientists, and philosophers made judicious use of the printing press to propagate their ideas clandestinely, as books became weapons in this war for the mind. They stung the beast using the weapons of logic and reason and dared the church to respond in kind. They took aim at the ridiculous dogmas, such as the incarnation, the Trinity, the immaculate conception, and the absurd miracle of converting bread and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus during communion. Each are dogmas imagined by church theologians, then established as unquestionable facts that could not be questioned.

Which brings us to Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a young 16^th century Dominican Friar, educated deep in the heart of the Catholic faith. Even as a teenager it became clear to his parish Priests that he possessed a highly intelligent, lucid mind and they clearly envisioned great things coming from him for the betterment of their faith, but though his intelligence stood out to all those around him, it was all of those around him who were domesticated, corralled into sanctified beliefs of doctrine, which the young Bruno was expected to follow. This posed quite a problem for the free-spirited Bruno, for he didn’t possess a mind amenable to control. This became apparent when he began asking his parish priests disconcerting questions about contradictions he found in holy writ, some even flirting with outright heresy against church doctrine.

He apparently came to realize that his ideas posed a real threat to life and limb, as whispers of heresy began to circulate, so he left the priesthood, choosing instead a life of intellectual freedom as he wandering across Europe teaching and writing on all the radical ideas ricocheting across his mind.

Bruno’s unique character made him the ideal man for his time, being born at the tail end of the Renaissance when Europe found itself reaching back to its pagan past, initiating a golden age of intellectual curiosity, a Zeitgeist that pulled the science and philosophy from Greece and Rome out the dustbin that Christian orthodoxy had thrown them. For the first time in over a millennium, creative thinking became social currency, and Bruno soaked it up. Fresh ideas were springing up all across Europe and he quickly established a reputation as an intellectual maverick, and fearless thinker. He developed clever thought experiments that imagined new ways to considering old ideas, which Galileo, Newton, Huygens, and Leibniz would all take advantage of. Even Bruno’s religious writings had influence as they would go on to inspired Spinoza and his Pantheist conception of God. As one could imagine, his views very often put him at odds with the church, so his life was spent avoiding countries where the Inquisition held influence, such as his home country of Italy.

When we casually read of the ideas that would eventually cost him his life, it’s all laughable to us now. For example, he argued that the universe was infinite and therefore had no center, that the stars in the sky were distant suns, and very likely had planets orbiting them as ours does and possibly had life and civilizations of their own. He clearly adopted Copernicus’ conclusion that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and therefore not the center of God’s attention, and he was not bashful to expound on these ideas. All of this was blasphemous to the Medieval church, which easily placed him squarely on the Inquisition’s radar. Their only problem was how to capture him.

Enter Giovanni Mocenigo.

Giovanni was a nobleman who invited Bruno to Venice to tutor him the art of memory, which Bruno was a leading expert at the time. Bruno hesitated, but Giovanni continually flattered Bruno and expressed the hope to learn all he could from this intellectual trailblazer. Bruno’s friends pleaded with him not to go due to the Inquisitions presence, but Bruno knew Venice was one of the more liberal cites in Europe and valued its relative autonomy from the church and was known to keep the Inquisitors at arm’s length, but it was a risky gamble, just the same. Little did Bruno know that Giovanni worked with the Inquisitors and all his fawning enticements to become Bruno’s devoted student was simply a ruse to extract the proof of his heretical ideas. Giovanni even admitted to this at Bruno’s trial.

Although his ideas harmed no one, and he broke no secular law, the Office of the Inquisition arrested him on charges of “blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology”, and imprisoned him in solitary confinement for eight years. Yet even after years of confinement and torture, he obstinately refused to recant his views on anything he thought, so he was sentenced to death by fire. When the verdict of guilt was finally announced and his execution ordered, a defiant Bruno famously stated;

“Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.”

On February 17^th, 1600, he was turned over to the executioners who stripping him naked, hung him upside down and burned him alive, with the blessing of the Pope; making Bruno the first modern man to be martyred for our right to think freely.

To illustrate just how committed the Vatican was to silencing curious minds, thirty years after Bruno’s burning, the Inquisition arrested Galileo, the world’s preeminent scientist, a man hailed around the world as one of the greatest minds of the century. His arrest and trial had been prompted in 1632 when he published “Dialogs”, a book that presented a conversation between two interlocutors with one putting forth the proof for Copernicus’ heliocentric (sun centered) model, a position strictly against church doctrine. The format of the “dialogue” provided something of a ruse for writers, where they could express their opinions under the guise of a fictional conversation, and was clearly Galileo’s intention. The man desperately wanted his proof of Heliocentrism to be known before he died and attempted a bit of slight-of-hand with “Dialogs”, but the church wasn’t having it and jailed him. Even with his iconic stature and old age (67), the church still threatened him with Bruno’s fate if he failed to fully comply. He dodged their accusations of heresy as long as possible, but eventually the thought of burning like Bruno broke him and fully recanted all that he had written to save himself.

This war with Christian orthodoxy for the ownership of our minds claimed others, of course, but Bruno was the first that truly mattered, not due to his ideas per sei, but rather to the hard line the church drew against him or anyone else who dared to deviate from their sacred dogmas. Due to Bruno’s sharp intelligence, articulation, and being openly opinionated, the Church clearly felt they had a type of virus on their hands that could easily infect others. Also, the sitting Pope (Clement VIII), was hearing growing rumors of his weakness on heresy, with complaints of his lack of leadership to the matter, so Bruno’s case presented him with something of a gift, an easy solution to his dilemma; an example would be made of Bruno that would silence his critics and strengthen his authority in one swoop. The math was that simple.