Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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by Alberto A. Martinez


  partly by their bold, personal efforts to uphold the humanist culture

  of dialogue and tolerance in a period when both parts of Europe,

  the Catholic and the Protestant, were becoming rigidly dogmatic

  and intolerant.

  If I may compare the Copernican Revolution to a large marble

  sculpture, the issues to be discussed can be compared to thin, deep

  stains that cut through the marble, at some points emerging in its

  surface as a fracture. This analogy should serve as a reminder of the

  approach taken: tracing inconspicuous connections between ancient

  notions and Copernican developments. I stress the importance of

  this analogy because this is not a reinterpretation of the Copernican

  Revolution. Instead I expose a neglected chain of events within

  it. It is not an account of the rise of the theory that the Earth

  moves; it is a supplement to such discussions. I will set the works

  and concerns of Copernican astronomers in the context of forgotten

  pagan heresies.

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  burned alive

  The Moving Earth and the Fugitive Friar

  The one admirer of Copernicus who most earnestly held Pythagorean

  beliefs was the Italian philosopher and Catholic friar Giordano

  Bruno. Famously, Giordano Bruno was a martyr for the freedom of

  expression. Despite being imprisoned and interrogated by Catholic

  Inquisitors for almost eight years, Bruno refused to recant his eccentric opinions. In February 1600 the Roman Inquisition declared him guilty of heresies. The Roman city officers gagged him, took him

  to a public square where a crowd watched, tied him to a post and

  burned him alive.

  Countless books and articles have been written about Bruno.

  Let us discuss a neglected but important dimension: how did his

  beliefs about the cosmos relate to his trials and execution? To trace

  the Pythagorean thread in his life, consider first his education.

  Bruno was born in 1548 in the village of Nola, Italy, at the foot

  of the ancient volcano Vesuvius. At an early age, in 1565, he entered

  the Dominican monastery in Naples, like Thomas Aquinas, to lead

  a life of devotion and prayer. As a novice, however, Bruno once discouraged another novice from reading a book on Marian devotion.

  Someone also saw Bruno discard some images of saints and reported

  him. For such reasons young Bruno was denounced to the Neapolitan

  Inquisition, but he was not processed. Having completed his courses

  in theology, focused on the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, Bruno was

  ordained priest in 1573.32

  However, Bruno cultivated objections against Aristotle’s philosophy, the doctrine of the Trinity and other points of theology.

  He thought that some heretics had proposed interesting ideas that

  were not necessarily wrong. Bruno also secretly managed to read

  some forbidden books. Hence in 1576 he was again denounced to

  the Inquisition for doubting the Trinity, rejecting the cult of saints

  and sympathizing with Arian heretics.

  To avoid the confrontation, at the age of 28 Bruno fled from the

  monastery and travelled to Rome. Meanwhile, his superiors found

  that he had hidden prohibited books in the latrine of his cell. 33 The

  books included texts by saints Jerome and John Chrysostom that

  had been edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Catholic priest who

  had become a social critic and humanist, and whose works had been

  banned by the Index of Forbidden Books.

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  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  Erasmus sought wisdom from many sources and he discussed

  many ancient ideas and sayings. Discussing philosophers, he

  sometimes referred to Pythagoras. Like others, Erasmus praised

  Pythagoras as a sage who voiced insightful pronouncements about

  life. Apparently Pythagoras had argued that friends should share all

  their possessions as common property. He described life as a solemn

  gathering in which some people fought, others did business, while

  others were spectators (philosophers who peacefully contemplate

  people and nature).34 Erasmus portrayed Pythagoras as an admirable role model. He claimed that the apparent ‘superstitions’ that were taught by Pythagoras were just meant to train youths in ways

  that would facilitate learning. As examples, Erasmus mentioned

  the prohibition against eating meat, the praise of vegetables, the

  five­year restriction of silence and the oracular precepts. He argued:

  ‘Our modern monks, who are monks in name only, seem to have

  imitated some of this man’s teachings, and those who control their

  bellies and their tongues are the ones who sin least.’ So according to

  this one priest, Pythagoras was above most, ‘for no one among the

  pagan philosophers is more saintly than this man. ’35 Erasmus asked Christians to carry out Pythagoras’ advice to review one’s actions

  and duties before going to sleep every night.

  Of course, Erasmus also discussed the Pythagorean idea of the

  transmigration of souls: in Praise of Folly, for example, Erasmus

  referred to Lucian’s The Dream, or the Rooster, in which a rooster

  spoke and identified himself as having formerly been Pythagoras.

  Erasmus celebrated

  that never­sufficiently­to­be­praised Pythagorean rooster,

  who in his own person had occupied many shapes, as a

  philosopher, a man, a woman, a king, a lowly subject, a fish,

  a horse, a frog, even I think a sponge – after which he concluded that no animal was more wretched than man because all others were content with the limits imposed by nature.36

  Furthermore, in other writings Erasmus said that Pythagoras construed the mind or the soul as being imprisoned in the body.37 He also discussed the precept against eating flesh. Erasmus discussed

  what the Pythagoreans viewed as the ‘monstrous’ crime that had

  become very common:

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  burned alive

  taking the carcasses of slain animals for food, to tear dead

  flesh with their teeth, to drink the blood and suck the gore,

  to ‘stuff their entrails with other entrails’ as Ovid says. That

  crime, however monstrous it might seem to gentler minds,

  was nevertheless sanctioned by usage and convenience. It

  has even become a pleasure to see, among the luxuries of

  the table, the semblance of a corpse. Meats are covered

  under crusts like buried corpses, they are embalmed with

  scents.38

  Erasmus did not focus his discussions on Pythagoras or his followers,

  but these passages just illustrate his willingness to engage unusual

  intellectual perspectives, slight departures from Catholic doctrines.

  Since his fel ow monks knew that Bruno had read some of

  Erasmus’s forbidden works, plus he had committed other questionable acts, it seemed that Bruno should be required to meet with an Inquisitor. But Bruno had fled in 1576, so the proceedings could not

  be carried out.

  Impressed by the theory that the Earth moves around the Sun,

  Bruno studied ancient texts on astronomy, including the Placita

  allegedly by Plutarch, in which the author or authors discussed

  ‘Pythagorean’ ideas that greatly impressed Bruno: that stars are

  worlds, the universe is infinite, and there exist other worlds similar

  to Earth. Bruno al
so continued to study texts that had been prohibited by the Congregation of the Index. Following the Pythagoreans, he pondered their major religious belief: that human souls are

  reborn, even in animals. He also pondered unorthodox ideas about

  Jesus Christ, such as whether others could perform similar feats.

  Moreover, in his writings Bruno argued as if knowledge by reason

  is superior to knowledge by faith.

  At the time numerous writers discussed magic and divination.

  Some of them cited references to Pythagoras and his legendary

  powers. For example, in 1558 Christofo de Cattan had published a

  popular book, Geomancy, with the Wheel of Pythagoras, in Italian. 39

  The ‘Pythagorean Wheel’ was commonly cal ed the Wheel of

  Fortune, which included, along its circumference, rows of numbers and the alphabet, and sometimes signs for the Sun, the Moon and the planets, all to divine a person’s future arithmetically. Cattan

  said the Wheel could be used to detect lies, to predict who will die

  30

  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  first, to predict the sex of a child, whether a prisoner will be freed,

  whether a disease will kill and so on.

  Reputedly, Pythagoras was a master of divination: numer ology,

  hydromancy, geomancy and onomancy (deciphering the future on

  the basis of numbers, water, bits of dirt, or words, respectively). In

  another work, On the Trickery of Demons, another author, Johan

  Weyer, described how magicians colluded with demons to effect

  seemingly impossible tricks, for example, that Pythagoras appeared

  in two distant cities at once, and that Apollonius travelled instantly

  from one city to another. Pythagoras appeared as someone who

  had travelled to many distant lands in search of arcane knowledge.

  Echoing Philostratus, Apollonius was described as a magician

  who allegedly once resurrected a young bride in Rome, and who

  summoned the soul of Achilles the warrior, from Hell, back into

  his body. 40 By the 1590s the Vatican launched an attack on magic and the occult arts. Apollonius was viewed as a demonic magician

  and great enemy of the Church, who conspired with the Devil to

  overthrow Christianity.

  Meanwhile, a few Christian writers defended the theory of

  Copernicus. In 1576 Thomas Digges argued that Copernicus correctly said that the Earth circles the Sun. He echoed Copernicus in writing that ‘[Hermes] Trismegistus called him [the Sun] the visible god. Thus doth the Sun like a king sitting in his throne govern his courts of inferior powers.’ But while Copernicus imagined a

  bounded sphere of stars surrounding the planets, Digges argued

  that the Sun­centred universe is infinite, with infinitely many stars

  throughout it. He repeatedly described the sphere of the stars as ‘that

  Orbe immoveable garnished with lights innumerable’, and again,

  ‘that fixed Orbe garnished with lights innumerable and reaching

  up in Sphærical altitude without ende’. But at one point he backed

  down a bit, echoing Copernicus: ‘But whether the worlde have its

  boundes or bee in deed infinite and without boundes, let us leave

  that to the Philosophers. ’41

  On the first page of his account Digges included an image

  of this Sun­centred universe, and he titled it ‘A perfect description of the Celestial Orbs, according to the most ancient doctrine of the Pythagoreans.’ He asked that this ‘so ancient doctrine’ that

  Copernicus had ‘revived’, should be investigated further, ‘and not

  rashly condemned for phantasicall’. 42 Digges was one of the leading 31

  burned alive

  Statue of Giordano

  Bruno at the

  Campo de’ Fiori in

  Rome. Sculpted by

  Ettore Ferrari, 1889.

  mathematicians and scientists in England at the time, so his book

  was reprinted multiple times, helping to blend the Copernican and

  Pythagorean notions.

  In 1579 Giordano Bruno travelled to Geneva, seeking to live in

  freedom and safety from Catholic persecution. He later said that he

  had not gone to Geneva to adopt the religion of Calvin, yet he often

  listened to preachers and read works by Calvin and other Protestants.

  Soon Bruno became embroiled in an argument against a local evangelical pastor, Antoine de la Faye, and was detained. The Calvinists felt antagonized by Bruno. The Consistory admonished him for calumnies, demanded that he repent and forbade him from taking the sacrament of communion. Apparently Bruno then appealed that they

  undo their judgement, but he soon departed from Geneva. In 1583 he

  travelled to England, where, incidentally, the ‘Pythagorean’ account

  32

  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  by Digges had been published. That year Bruno published a book

  titled The Seal of Seals, in which he listed the greatest men ever, the

  best ‘inventors, teachers, leaders, and pastors of their people’, starting

  with Pythagoras, then Moses, followed by Jesus. 43

  In 1584 Bruno published The Ash Wednesday Supper, a post­

  Copernican dialogue about the structure of the universe. In it Bruno

  described himself in the third person as ‘the Nolan’, and he used

  a character named Theophil, a philosopher, to convey his views.

  Through his mouthpiece Bruno argued that there exist innumerable worlds, similar to Earth, and that the Earth is actually a kind of animal. Like Thomas Digges, Bruno argued that the universe is

  infinite. He even bragged about this finding, as it gave evidence of

  the majesty of God’s infinite power: ‘Thus we shall advance to the

  discovery of the infinite effect of the infinite cause, the true and living

  evidence of the infinite vigour.’ And he added that ‘it consists of an

  infinite ethereal region’ , the same claim that Aristotle had attributed

  to the Pythagoreans.

  There is no clear evidence that Bruno read Digges. However,

  both of them read Marcello Palingenio Stellato’s Zodiacus vitae

  (1543), which argued the universe is infinite but has a hierarchical structure: life and misery exist only on the Earth, while the unchangeable heavens are illuminated by spiritual and immaterial

  lights, unlike the Sun.44

  In the Timaeus, Plato had asserted that the sensible world must

  be finite and spherical. Similarly, Aristotle insisted that the universe

  was finite. Hence Copernicus too portrayed the universe as finite

  and spherical. According to Digges, however, the sphere of stars

  extended infinitely outward and was the Celestial Court inhabited

  by God and the chosen ones. For Digges, the Sun was not a star,

  and only the Sun was surrounded by planets. In contradistinction,

  according to Bruno the universe was infinite and homogeneous, such

  that the Sun was not the centre, and countless other stars were also

  suns, surrounded by planets. For Bruno the universe was not spherical or hierarchical. He argued that our Sun, Moon, planets and Earth were actually different kinds of ‘stars’, what astronomers now

  call heavenly bodies. Unlike Digges, Bruno construed God to be

  equally present in all regions of the universe.

  Moreover, Bruno rejected the common notion that life and death

  exist only on Earth. Bruno made explicit references to having read

  33

  burned alive

  the True Story, in which Lucian of Samosata had described a voyage
<
br />   to the Moon as an inhabited world. We might well point out that

  in Lucian’s account Pythagoras appeared as having lived in that

  region of space, in some of the ‘islands in the air’, as his soul transmigrated through different bodies. But Bruno griped that Lucian sought merely to mock the philosophers, and hence suffered from

  blind ignorance of the truth of such matters. Bruno insisted that the

  stars and the Earth are living things, which give life to other living

  beings. He added that each of the heavenly bodies has a soul, which

  is the cause of its motions, and that such souls are both sensitive

  and very intelligent. Bruno further argued that although the Earth

  has flesh, bones, blood, veins, nerves, organs and even senses, all are

  somewhat different to those of humans.

  Bruno repeatedly opposed Aristotle. He criticized Aristotle

  for using overly refined abstractions and abstruse logic. Bruno also

  scorned Ptolemy’s astronomy. He attacked Aristotle’s physics, he

  criticized the notion of a finite universe and he claimed that circular

  motions do not really exist.45

  Bruno further developed his theory of many worlds in another

  book of 1584, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, apparently printed

  in Venice. Bruno gave reasons why the universe is infinite, and he

  quoted passages from Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things ( c. 50 bce), in which the author elaborated the views of Democritus and Epicurus.

  Like them, Lucretius had remarked that ‘it is in the highest degree

  unlikely that this Earth and sky is the only one to have been created. ’46 Bruno’s book was a dialogue, and the character that spoke for him voiced this argument about the stars:

  the universe being infinite, there must ultimately be more

  suns: because it is impossible that the heat and light from a

  particular one can spread throughout immensity, as Epicurus

  could imagine, if what others report of him is true. Therefore

  it necessarily follows that there exist innumerable suns, of

  which many are visible as sorts of small bodies: but such an

  apparently minor star can be much larger than the one that

  seems the greatest.47

  Bruno argued that despite their heat, such suns might be inhabited

  by some beings or animals. Such beings would ‘vegetate’ by virtue

 

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