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"Innumerable
suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner
similar
to
the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit
these worlds."
"An
academician belonging to no academy", an unfrocked
monk, an excommunicated Calvinist, an expelled Lutheran, an avant-garde
and
marginal philosopher, a forgotten genius of the Renaissance
- Giordano
Bruno was also an inspired magus.
http://www.bruno-giordano.net/
Brief
Biography from The Galileo Project :
http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/bruno.html
Giordano
Bruno: Italian
philosopher original name Filippo Bruno, byname
Il
Nolano born 1548, Nola, near Naples died
Feb. 17, 1600, Rome. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/82258/Giordano-Bruno
Procedure of the
Roman Inquisition:
It was
strict Holy Office practice to keep detailed records of all its
proceedings
from the first summons to the final sentencing. This was intended to
discourage
the inclination to ask leading questions which would suggest to the
accused how
they should reply. A permanent member of every court of inquisition was
the
Notary, who took down in writing every question and every answer,
including the
exclamations of pain emitted by the victims of torture. Each official
took a
solemn vow of secrecy, held interrogations in strict privacy, and
carefully
guarded the records of trial proceedings. There were several reasons
for this.
First, witnesses had to be protected from possible retaliation by the
family
and friends of the accused. Second, once a defendant named his
accomplices, the
Holy Office might have to move swiftly to bring them into custody. If
word
leaked out to them before they could be apprehended, the system would
not be
very effective. Third, the reputation of the accused had to be
protected. It
was often reiterated that inquisitors should act cautiously when making
an arrest. http://galileo.rice.edu/lib/student_work/trial96/loftis/procedure.html
1592 – 1600 From
the Trial to the Stake: Giordano's
trial lasted almost eight years. The Inquisition initially accused him
for his
anti-dogmatic ideals, which had already cost him his Dominican habit.
As an
anti-Trinitarian, the philosopher rejected the virginity of Mary and
transubstantiation. His reflections in terms of cosmology, his
rejection of
geocentrism and his attraction for magic gradually gave rise to an
impressive
list of accusations. In the end, it was the whole of his freethinking
that was
challenged. In February 1593, Bruno was
incarcerated in the prisons of the Holy Office. The trial dragged on
for
another two years before the decision was taken to conduct an in-depth
study of
his works, which were censured and subsequently burned at St Peter's Square.
From his cell, Bruno
finished writing a statement for his defence and presented his final
plea
on 20 December 1594 before the Holy Office. The
trial was interrupted for six months,
during which time Bruno continued to actively defend his theory on
infinite
worlds, sometimes stating that he was ready to recant, and at other
times
declaring that he was faithful to his ideas. Cardinal Bellarmin
therefore drew
up a list of the theories deemed to be heretical, over which Bruno
again
hesitated before categorically refusing to renounce his doctrine: The
eight
propositions that the philosopher refused to renounce were
as follows:
1 - The statement of "two real and eternal
principles of existence: the soul of the world and the original matter
from
which beings are derived".
2 - The
doctrine of the infinite
universe and infinite worlds in conflict with the idea
of Creation:
"He who denies the infinite effect denies the infinite power".
3 - The idea
that every reality
resides in the eternal and infinite soul of the world, including the
body:
"There is no reality that is not accompanied by a spirit and an
intelligence".
4 -
The argument according to
which "there is no transformation in the substance", since the
substance is eternal and generates nothing, but transforms.
5 - The idea
of terrestrial movement,
which according to Bruno, did not oppose the Holy Scriptures, which
were
popularised for the faithful and did not apply to scientists.
6 -
The designation of stars as
"messengers and interpreters of the ways of God".
7 -
The allocation of a
"both sensory and intellectual" soul to earth.
8 -
The opposition to the
doctrine of St Thomas
on the soul, the spiritual reality held captive in the body and
not
considered as the form of the human body.
None of these final
accusations tied in with
the philosopher's magic reflections. Nevertheless, the Inquisition
accused him
of having turned towards hermetism and the arcane, branding him a
sorcerer for
having written in On Heroic Frenzies that "Magi can
accomplish
more using the faith than doctors using the ways of liberty" and for
recognising magic as beneficial and lawful. Whatever the case, on 20
January
1600, Pope Clement VIII declared that the accused was
"an unrepentant
heretic, tenacious and stubborn". Taken to the secular arm, Cardinal
Madruzzi pronounced the sentence on 8 February. Giordano Bruno was
burnt at the
stake in Campo dei Fiori in Rome
around 10 days later. Defiant to the very end, Bruno looked away from
the
crucifix before perishing in the flames. http://www.bruno-giordano.net/bio.html
Summary
of
the Trial Against Giordano Bruno, Rome
1597: From the Vatican
Archives.
In one of the volumes of the “Miscellanea
Armadi” (Arm.
X, 205) by the famous canonist Francisco Peña, Auditor and
then Dean of
the Rota, there is a precious document, searched for a long time, then
kept
secret for a long time and finally found on the 15th
November 1940
after 15 years of unsuccessful investigation by the Prefect of the
Vatican
Archives, Angelo Mercati: the summary of the trial against Giordano
Bruno. The human vicissitudes of Giordano
Bruno
ended with the Roman trial (1593-1600) and with the sentence of proven
heresy, which,
due to his resolute and extreme statement of not being guilty, changed
into
capital punishment, executed at Campo de’ Fiori on the 17th
February 1600. In one of the last interrogations before the execution
of the
sentence (maybe in April 1599), the Dominican friar was questioned by
the
judges of the Holy Office on his cosmogony conception, supported above
all in
the “La cena delle Ceneri”(Ash-Wednesday Dinner) and in the “De
l’infinito
universo et mundi”. Even then, he defended his theories as
scientifically
founded and by no means against the Holy Scriptures.
http://asv.vatican.va/en/doc/1597.htm#top
The
Folly of Giordano Bruno : by Prof. Richard W. Pogge, Ohio
State
University
In popular accounts of the life of Bruno, it
is often said
that he was condemned for his Copernicanism and his belief in life on
other
worlds. He is portrayed as a martyr to free thought, and an early,
prosecuted
proponent of the modern view of the universe, hounded across Europe
by the Inquisition for his beliefs and finally paying the ultimate
price for
them in a fiery public death. The one key fact of the study of Bruno's
life is
that we do not actually know the exact grounds of his conviction on
charges of
heresy. The simple reason is that the relevant records have been lost.
The
second often overlooked fact of Bruno's life concerns his period of
exile
between 1576 and 1591. Most brief popular accounts state the bare facts
of his
peregrinations around Europe, but what is left unsaid is that his
wanderings
appear to have had less to do with his being hounded by the Inquisition
as it
did with his own rather difficult personality. http://www.setileague.org/editor/brunoalt.htm
The
Catholic
Encyclopedia: Bruno’s
system of thought is an incoherent materialistic pantheism. God and the
world
are one; matter and spirit, body and soul, are two phases of the same
substance; the universe is infinite; beyond the visible world there is
an infinity
of other worlds, each of which is inhabited; this terrestrial globe has
a soul;
in fact, each and every part of it, mineral as well as plant and
animal, is
animated; all matter is made up of the same elements (no distinction
between
terrestrial and celestial matter); all souls are akin (transmigration
is,
therefore, not impossible). This unitary point of view is Bruno's
justification
of "natural magic." No doubt, the attempt to establish a scientific
continuity among all the phenomena of nature is an important
manifestation of
the modern spirit, and interesting, especially on account of its
appearance at
the moment when the medieval point of view was being abandoned. (Turner, W. (1908). Giordano Bruno. In The
Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York:
Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved
February 12, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm)
Great
Theosophists - Giordano Bruno:
http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/setting/bruno.html
Ingrid Rowland's Giordano
Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic is an excellent starting point for anyone
who wants to rediscover the historical figure concealed beneath a cowl
on Campo
de' Fiori. Her lively and learned biography removes Bruno from myth and
polemic, where he has so often resided, and restores him to the time
and place
that inspired his dual passion for knowledge as well as faith. She also
offers
a far richer and multidimensional account of Bruno's peculiar and
complex
intellectual itinerary than earlier scholars like Frances Yates, who,
in her
brilliant and influential account Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
Tradition
(1964), depicted him as a great Renaissance magus. She inspired a
generation of
readers to see him primarily as a Hermetic philosopher devoted to the
restoration of Egyptian wisdom. Generously acknowledging the more
recent work
of Bruno specialists like Hilary Gatti, who have shown us how to read
his
politics, philosophy, science, plays and poetry seriously, Rowland
describes
how Bruno became the kind of person who fascinated and alarmed
virtually
everybody who came into contact with him. She takes us inside his head
to see
the interplay of theology, philosophy and poetry that shaped his
worldview. From
A Hungry Mind: Giordano Bruno, Philosopher and Heretic in The Nation
at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/findlen
Bibliotheca
Bruniana Electronica/ The Complete Works of Giordano Bruno:
All texts in pdf with extensive biographies
and other
studies. http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Bruno/index.html
Additional
Reading:
Broderick, James, 1961, Robert
Bellarmine, Saint and Scholar (Westminster, MD.:
Newman Press)
di Santillana, Giorgio, 1955,
The Crime
of Galileo (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press)
Singer, Dorothea Waley, 1950,
Giordano
Bruno, his Life and Thought. (New York: Schuman) [contains an
annotated translation of On
the Infinite Universe and Worlds]
White, Andrew Dickson, 1896, The
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: D.
Appleton & Company), 1978
reprint.
Yates, Frances,
1964, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press)
A number of Bruno's writings
(most in Latin)
are now available at the Twilit
Grotto -- Esoteric Archives,
including De
Umbris Idearum ("The Shadow of
Ideas"), Ars Memoriae
("Art of Memory"), De Gli Eroici
Furori ("The Heroic Frenzies"),
Cantus
Circaeus ("Incantations of
Circe"), De Magia,
Theses
De Magia, Magia
Mathematica and De Vinculiss
in Genere. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/bruno.html
The statue of
Giordano Bruno, unveiled on 24 June 1899 despite objections from
Pope
Leo XIII, still adorns the Campo dei Fiori in Rome to this very day.
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