Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition Page 6

by Alberto A. Martinez


  Much of Bruno’s book On Mathematical Magic was copied from

  various sources, but this passage was not copied verbatim from

  any source. Furthermore, in another work Bruno overtly identified

  the universal spirit with God. Again he attributed this notion to the

  Pythagoreans, and he related it to polytheistic notions about the

  heavens, the stars and the Sun:

  The ancients and those more recent attribute Gods to the

  Heavens, where by Gods they really meant stars, from which

  none can be the first God; although among those that are in

  our sphere, the Chaldeans had the Sun rising in the centre of

  the stars as God’s great temple, and for the Pythagoreans it is

  an infinite spirit that penetrates everything, comprehending

  and vivifying.67

  Finally, to complete this compelling chain of evidence, in his work

  The Heroic Furor Bruno again said that the heavenly bodies are composed of superior powers (that abide with the divinity) along with inferior powers that abide with the ‘mass’ and ‘vivify’ the body, and

  sustain ‘the living things in that world’. In that book Bruno referred

  to Virgil as ‘the Pythagorean poet’.68

  Regarding the theory of transmigration of souls from one body

  to another, Bruno testified to the Venetian Inquisitors, apparently

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  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  with less certainty, that ‘if it is not true, then at least it has verisimilitude following the opinion of Pythagoras.’69 In sum, Bruno recanted or denied practically all charges of heresy, except the doctrine of the

  universe and the doctrine of souls. He said that he was ‘reasoning as

  a philosopher’. These three points are striking because they confirm

  his Pythagorean beliefs, that is, he willingly denied every heresy he

  had allegedly said, except his Pythagorean convictions. To be sure,

  Bruno’s beliefs were not merely or exclusively Pythagorean; he had

  developed his own idiosyncratic, original and subtle theories, yet his

  views involved well­known Pythagorean notions.

  We should consider Bruno’s phrase ‘the Pythagorean doctrine’.

  It is an important expression especially because the cardinals later

  used it, in 1616, to censure Copernican works. Expressions such as

  ‘the doctrine of Pythagoras’ appeared in some ancient works, such

  as Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius, where it referred to transmigration of souls, the memory of past lives, abstinence from eating animals

  and the importance of silence. In 1576 Thomas Digges praised the

  ‘Doctrine of the Pythagoreans’, a supposedly perfect description

  of the celestial orbs that included an immovable and perpetual

  orb of stars extending infinitely in all directions. In 1592 an Italian

  book on emblems referred to the most secret ‘Pythagorean doctrine’ according to which numerical proportions correspond to the elements and the theory of the world, leading to knowledge of ‘the

  Real Kabbalah’. 70 Also in the 1590s a few works on government, in Italian, used the expression ‘dottrina Pittagorica’ as the name for the

  astrological theory that distinct numbers can be associated to the

  planets and the signs of the Zodiac to make predictions. 71 A 1594

  work by a Spaniard, advocating the establishment of a new Catholic

  Council, included discussions about Pope Clement i, in which he

  disdained this late first­century Pope’s father as ‘a pagan man, and

  educated by the Pythagorean doctrine, not Christian or Mosaic’, for

  having opposed Christian and Apostolic teachings. 72 The author alluded briefly to ‘Pythagorean errors’, in the context of religious

  heresies. This contrast seems to echo the ancient dichotomy posited

  by Hippolytus, who had criticized some heretics as ‘disciples not of

  Christ but of Pythagoras’.

  Thus the phrase ‘Pythagorean doctrine’ had been used to refer

  to mystic or pagan beliefs, numerical astrology and, in Bruno’s case,

  the soul of the Earth and the soul of the universe. The phrase had

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  also been used in literary elaborations of classical works. Ovid’s

  ancient Metamorphoses featured Pythagoras but did not refer to

  him by name, only as the wise ‘man from Samos’. It did not even

  say ‘the Pythagoreans’. Yet later editors and translators added such

  names. In 1584 Giovanni dell’Anguillara published a translation of

  the Metamorphoses into Italian that greatly expanded it. For ex ample,

  in the original Latin version, in Book 15, Ovid wrote 74 lines of

  verse before saying that ‘the man from Samos’ rejected the killing and eating of animals; yet in dell’Anguillara’s version there are instead 272 lines of verse until that point. Dell’Anguillara referred

  to Pythagoras repeatedly by name, and he also referred to the teachings of Pythagoras as ‘the new Pythagorean doctrine’. 73 Again, in the Metamorphoses Ovid had portrayed the Samian sage as revealing sacred knowledge: that everything changes, but that souls are immortal and, not keeping the same form, they can transmigrate

  into other human bodies or even into animal bodies; that the soul

  of Pythagoras had lived before; and that Earth is a living animal.

  Bruno actively defended all of these beliefs.

  The Venetian Inquisition summoned more witnesses. Two were

  booksellers: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, also known as ‘Ciotto’, and

  Giacomo Bertano, also known as Jakob van Brecht from Antwerp.

  Both had first met Bruno in Frankfurt. Ciotti, from Siena, had

  introduced Bruno to Mocenigo. Ciotti and Bertano had hardly

  any accusations against Bruno. Andrea Morosoni testified that

  Bruno seemed to be a good Catholic. Among other witnesses was

  Domenico da Nocera. (It is unclear whether Celestino Arrigoni

  participated in the Venice proceedings or only in Rome.) Overall,

  they testified that Bruno regularly read forbidden books. Indeed,

  he was a fugitive friar who had consorted with Protestants in

  Geneva, London and Wittenberg, while publishing multiple books

  on controversial topics. Some of his books had false imprints, for

  example purporting to have been published in Venice when in

  fact they had been published in London. Such activities reeked

  of heresy.

  Bruno then begged for forgiveness, saying ‘I now detest and abhor’

  any and all errors committed in regard to the Catholic faith and life. 74

  The Venetian proceedings were interrupted by the Inquisition

  of Rome. The central office of the Inquisition determined that the

  case was so important that it should be handled directly. They argued

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  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  that Bruno was not a citizen of Venice, but of Naples. The ‘Supreme

  Inquisitor’ in Rome, Cardinal Giulio Santori of Santa Severina,

  ordered that Bruno be transferred because he was not merely a heretic, he was something worse: a heresiarch, someone who leads and converts Catholics into heretics, and can become their intellectual

  patriarch.75

  They complained that this ‘popular heresiarch’ had fraternized

  with heretics, he had written heretical books, he published them ‘in

  heretical places’, and he had praised royal heretics, such as Queen

  Elizabeth of England. His heresies were ‘extraordinarily grave’, such

  a
s doubting the incarnation and the Trinity, and leading a ‘diabolical

  life’.76 Pope Clement viii himself wanted Bruno to be extradited and put on trial in Rome. For months the Venetian authorities resisted

  the extradition order. Historian Thomas Mayer explains that almost

  none of the detainees requested by Rome were allowed to leave

  Venice, ‘unless the Venetians had decided on their own that they had

  outlived their usefulness’. Finally in February 1593 they transferred

  Bruno to the Inquisition’s prisons in Rome. This was very unusual,

  because unlike other jurisdictions the Venetian authorities ‘almost

  never allowed the extradition of those accused of heresy’.77

  The Roman Inquisition continued the proceedings instead of

  beginning anew. In Rome a fellow Venetian prisoner, a friar called

  Celestino Arrigoni from Verona, confirmed some of Mocenigo’s

  accusations and added new ones. This is very important because

  other wise the Inquisition essentially had just one free witness

  against Bruno, namely Mocenigo, since his principal accusations

  had not been confirmed by the other witnesses. According to the

  practice of the Inquisition, one witness was equivalent to no wit­

  ness.78 Friar Celestino accused Bruno of blasphemies about Christ (that Jesus had sinned), that Bruno had erroneous opinions about

  Hell, that he criticized Moses and the prophets, that he denied

  Church dogmas and the Catholic book of rites, that he disapproved

  of praying to the saints, that he uttered blasphemies, that he planned

  to burn down a monastery and said that Cain was a good man for

  killing his brother Abel, in addition to the previous claims that stars

  are worlds, and about the transmigration of souls from body to body,

  and from one world to others.79

  In turn, Bruno again defended himself and gave various clarifications, for example, that ‘I was primarily joking when I told him 45

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  The building of the Holy Roman Inquisition, ‘S. Inquisitio’, near the southern

  wall of Vatican City, south of St Peter’s Basilica. Map by Antonio Tempesta, 1593.

  that Cain was a Pythagorean, that is, by having a Pythagorean zeal,

  because Pythagoras abhorred the slaughter of animals.’80 In Genesis 4:4, Abel offered an animal sacrifice to God, while Cain did not.

  Still more witnesses accused Bruno too. They reported that he

  had argued that Jesus sinned; that Bruno uttered blasphemies; that

  he doubted dogmas; that he said the world is eternal; that many

  worlds exist, and so on. There transpired ten more interrogations

  and depositions (for a total of sixteen), but Bruno continued to deny

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  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  charges and renounce alleged heresies, except the plurality of worlds

  and the Pythagorean doctrine of souls.

  Six witnesses against Bruno were fellow prisoners, which greatly

  undermined their credibility. Also, roughly half of Mocenigo’s

  accusations were unconfirmed.

  Censured Propositions in Bruno’s Books

  In early 1595 the Inquisition decided that its theologian consultors

  should systematically inspect Bruno’s books in order to pinpoint

  heretical statements that should be censured. Over the following

  months they managed to gather only some of his books, not all.

  The identity of the theologians is unknown, but it seems plausible

  that Robert Bellarmine joined them after February 1596, when he

  became a consultor for the Inquisition.

  By late 1596 the list of censured propositions from Bruno’s books

  was nearly ready.81 On 16 December the Inquisitors visited Bruno in his cell and ordered ‘that he be interrogated as soon as possible

  about the propositions excerpted from his writings and about the

  censures’.82 Apparently the original list has not survived, but any need to speculate about its contents diminished when a summary

  was discovered.

  In 1925 Angelo Mercati became Prefect of the Secret Vatican

  Archives, and soon learned that in 1887 a document had been discovered regarding Bruno’s proceedings. Back then, however, Pope Leo xiii had ordered that it be sent immediately to him and that he

  ‘absolutely did not want these proceedings to be given to anyone’.

  Mercati began an extensive archival search that continued for fifteen

  years, until finally in November 1940 he found the document hidden

  in the personal archives of Pope Pius ix. The document, titled ‘The

  Summary of the Trial of Giordano Bruno’, consists of 261 paragraphs, including 34 articles of accusations, embedded in summaries of Bruno’s interrogations in Venice and Rome. Importantly, the long

  document ends with ten sections, under the final heading, undated,

  titled ‘Summary of the Replies of Brother Giordano to the Censures

  made about Propositions that were extracted from his Books’.

  The Summary includes ten censured topics or propositions. The

  last two seem to have been added later than the rest, for at least three

  reasons: that by comparison to the first eight, the last two are very

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  brief; they do not include Bruno’s replies; and the last proposition

  includes a cited page number, ‘fol. 139’, which is out of sequence with

  all the other cited page numbers. It seems that after the first eight

  propositions were composed and presented to Bruno, and after his

  replies were recorded, the Inquisitors added two more.

  To discuss the relation of these ten propositions to Pythagorean

  notions, we must first list them. The shortest section (the tenth)

  occupies only three lines of print in Mercati’s published edition,

  while the longest (the fourth) occupies 53 lines of print plus 55

  lines of footnotes. Hence, I will abridge the ten sections by quoting

  only the initial lines of each, which include the brief statement of

  each censured proposition, our main interest. I will also summarize

  some of Bruno’s replies. There exist various scholarly accounts, with

  some differences. The ‘Summary’ that Mercati discovered consists

  of ten propositions. Luigi Firpo reproduces all ten, but then adds

  two others from a later account by Gaspar Schoppe. 83 Maurice Finocchiaro closely follows Firpo, but interpolates yet another:

  ‘the individual immortality of the human soul is a questionable

  proposition.’84 I find no evidence for this interpolated proposition.

  Instead, Bruno repeatedly claimed: ‘I hold that souls are immortal. ’85 It is therefore important to analyse the ‘Summary’ carefully, because it has generated puzzlement and speculation. In a classic

  monograph, Frances Yates frankly commented: ‘I find this document very confused and confusing.’86 The following analysis will explain it.

  Summary of the replies of Brother Giordano to the

  censures made about Propositions that were extracted

  from his books. 87

  [ 1st censured proposition] ‘Concerns the generation of things

  since he admitted the eternal existence of two real principles

  from which all things are done, and which are the soul of

  the world, and primal matter; Interrogated whether they

  are eternal.’88

  [ 2nd censured proposition] ‘Concerns the conditional, namely,

  that the nature of God is finite, if it does not in fac
t produce

  infinity, or the infinite . . . [and Bruno insisted] that as a

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  The Crimes of Giordano Bruno

  consequence of my philosophy, since God’s power is infinite

  it must necessarily produce effects that are equally infinite.’89

  [ 3rd censured proposition] ‘Concerns the mode of creation

  of human souls stated by these words: Deriving from that

  universal principle, from general to particular. ’90

  ‘Concerning that [ 4th censured] proposition, indeed. In

  this world nothing is generated, or corrupted in substance,

  unless we want to refer to alteration in this way; a product, whatever may be its alteration, it always maintains the same substance . . . [Bruno replied:] As Solomon does

  not contradict this, now saying “a generation passes away,

  and a generation arrives, [but the Earth remains forever]”

  [Ecclesiastes 1:4] and now also with “Nothing new under the

  Sun” [Ecclesiastes 1:9], that is, what is now is what was. ’91

  [ 5th censured proposition] ‘Concerning Earth’s motion states:

  First, I generally say that the manner and cause of the motion

  of the Earth, and of the immobility of the firmament and

  heaven are to me produced with the proper reasons and

  authority, which are certain and not harmful to the authority

  of divine Scriptures . . .’92

  ‘Likewise folio 292 face 2 states [ 6th censured proposition]

  that Stars are Angels, in these words: the Stars are actually

  Angels, animated rational bodies, which while they praise

  God, and reveal the power and greatness of that by which

  light, its writings etched in the firmament, “the Heavens

  declare the glory of God”; Angels do not mean anything

  other than the messengers and interpreters of the divine

  voice, and of nature, and these are sensible Angels, visible,

  while others are invisible, and insensible. ’93

  ‘Likewise, folio 293 posits [ 7th censured proposition] that

  the Earth is alive, not only with a sensitive soul, but also

  rational, and God expressly attributed a soul to it, by saying:

  “Earth produce a living soul”, which is how animals are

  constituted with the body from a part of its body, and its

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  [Earth’s] universal spirit comes to animate each particular

 

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