Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition
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one of them, by transmitting to them from its spirit . . .
That it [the Earth] is a rational animal is manifest by its
rational intellectual acts, which are seen in the regularity
of its motion around its own centre, another around the
Sun …’94
‘Likewise on folio 294 [ 8th censured proposition] states that
the intel igent soul is not form, in these words: “I do not
intend to support by my philosophy the ordinance that the
soul is form, as in no place of divine Scriptures is it so cal ed,
but the spirit which is now in the body as the inhabitant in
his house, a traveller in his pilgrimage, as the inner man in
the outer man, as a captive in a prison . . .” ’95
[ 9th censured proposition is that] ‘Likewise, he denies that
individuals’ true being, what they are, is but vanity, according
to the dictate of Solomon, “I saw everything that is done
under the Sun, and all is vanity” [Ecclesiastes 1:14], but that
true substances are species of primal nature, that truly are
that which they are. ’96
[ 10th censured proposition] ‘Again, he posits many worlds,
many suns, necessarily containing similar things in kind and
in species as in this world, and even men, as in folio 139 and
the subsequent long digression. ’97
Again, these last two propositions are brief: they don’t have Bruno’s
replies. The tenth cites a folio number out of sequence with the rest.
As noted, apparently Bruno replied to eight propositions, then the
censors added two more.
Do the ten propositions form a coherent group? Some match
Pythagorean beliefs, such as (10) that many worlds exist. At first
it seems that several are not Pythagorean – (2), (3), (4), (6), (8),
(9) – but we will see that Bruno’s transgressions were essentially
‘Pythagorean’. The term does not necessarily mean that Pythagoras or
his early followers held such views. Instead, it means that, throughout the centuries, such views had been variously attributed to the Pythagoreans.98
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Bruno’s first censured proposition was that things arise from
two principles: the world soul and primal matter – both eternal.
‘The world’ means either Earth or universe. The Placita philosophorum said that Pythagoras believed that the world has a soul.
It said that he thought the universe could never be destroyed. 99
Porphyry – enemy of Christians but advocate of Pythagoras – also
asserted the universe’s eternity. He denied Creation and spoke of
the ‘soul of the world’.100
St Hippolytus complained that Pythagoras said the world is eter
nal.101 In the 1270s Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, condemned the proposition that ‘the world is eternal’ as heretical, with authority
granted by Pope John xxi.102 Bishop Tempier argued that members of the faculty of the University of Paris transgressed the limits of philosophy to speak erroneously about theology. Anyone stating
the world’s eternity would be excommunicated and subject to the
Inquisition. Tempier also deemed heretical ‘That the substance of
the soul is eternal’.103 Yet Bruno said that souls are made from the eternal substance of the world soul.
In 1553 the Divinity Faculty of the University of Paris censured the claim ‘That the World was never made’.104 By the 1580s a tome on heresies specified: ‘One heresy is to say that elementary
Matter, from which the world is made, was not made by God, but
is coeternal with God.’105
Justin Martyr quoted Pythagoras as saying God is the ‘animating soul of the universe’. 106 The Pythagorean philosopher Apollonius also said the world has a soul.107 This notion derived popularity from Plato’s Timaeus. Likewise, Marcus Varro said the true gods are the
soul of the world and its parts. St Augustine attacked this in City
of God against the Pagans. He denounced the polytheistic notion
of a world soul as contradictory. He complained that pagans who
believed such notions were ‘possessed by many demons’.108 St Jerome too rejected ‘the error of heretics, who suppose that everything is
animated’.109
To further understand the first censure against Bruno, we must
discuss the French theologian Peter Abelard. He was also a famous
philosopher and logician, who became infamous for having an
affair with a young woman, which, since it did not end in marriage, angered the woman’s uncle so much that he castrated Abelard.
Subsequently, Abelard became a monk in Paris.
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Even though Abelard was convicted of misinterpreting the Holy
Trinity in 1121, he later argued that ancient philosophers called the
Holy Spirit the ‘soul of the world’, a Spirit that infuses all and ‘vivifies creatures’.110 He cited Salvian who ‘quoted’ Pythagoras: ‘A soul is intermixed or diffused in all parts of the world, from which all animals when born receive their life.’111 Abelard discussed the World Soul not as strictly real, but as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. But
just like Giordano Bruno centuries later, Abelard repeatedly quoted
Virgil’s passage about how the ‘Spirit nourishes within’.112
In 1139 Abelard’s claims about the Holy Spirit angered William
of St Thierry, who denounced Abelard to the Bishop of Chartres and
Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, complaining that Abelard endangered
faith in the Trinity, constituting a growing evil that threatened to
become a serpent. Among the thirteen ‘monstrous doctrines’ listed
by William was the proposition ‘That the Holy Spirit is the soul of
the world’.113 Soon after, in 1141, Bernard convened the Council of Sens in which the attending bishops condemned Abelard’s doctrines
as heretical.114 Pope Innocent ii promptly confirmed their ruling and gave an order on Abelard's ‘erroneous books’: ‘wherever you
find them, burn them in fire. ’115 Abelard died the next year, in 1142.
Henceforth some treatises on heresies included the heresy
that the Holy Spirit is the world soul. For example, the Franciscan
theologian Alfonso de Castro enumerated heresies about God,
including ‘The eleventh heresy: that the Holy Spirit is the soul of
the world.’116 Castro’s treatise was published in fourteen editions until 1578. Another book on heresies also rejected how Pythagoras
defined God: a soul that permeates the world and vivifies animals. 117
Giordano Bruno wrote about God, who ‘for the Pythagoreans
is an infinite spirit that penetrates everything, comprehending and
vivifying’.118 Interrogated by Venetian Inquisitors, he said that he didn’t understand the Trinity or ‘the Holy Spirit as a third person’,
except ‘by following the Pythagorean way’ as soul of the universe. He
quoted the Book of Wisdom, ‘Solomon: “For the spirit of God fills
the Earthly orb: and therefore he who contains everything”, which
conforms entirely to the Pythagorean doctrine. ’119
Bruno’s first censure was Pythagorean: the world soul as a generating
principle. It also referred to primal matter, discussed below.
The second censure was Bruno’s claim that, since God is infinite,
the universe He created is infinite too. Bruno had argued: ‘So great
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
is God
’s excellence, that it is manifested in the greatness of his
empire: it is not glorified in one, but in innumerable suns: not in one
Earth, one world: but in tenhundred thousand, I say in infinite. ’120
In another book he ridiculed a finite universe as a stupid dream of
a confused imagination. 121 His infinite universe was Pythagorean in that they believed that stars are worlds in an infinite ether. 122
The notion of an infinite (but still hierarchical) universe was articulated by the Christian poet Marcello Stellato in his Zodiacus of 1543.
That book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, though
it is unclear whether the author’s views on the universe contributed to the censorship.123 Subsequently, the Protestant or Puritan writer Thomas Digges too said the Copernican universe is infinite,
crediting the Pythagoreans.
The third censure was that each human soul is derived from a universal principle, the world soul. Aristotle denied the Pythagoreans’
claim that any soul can be clothed in any body.124 Justin Martyr rejected the claim that souls are not created, when explaining how
he left Pythagoras and Plato for Christ. 125 Hippolytus and Origen criticized the Pythagoreans for saying that souls come from the stars
or fall from heaven. According to the Placita, Pythagoras taught that
the eternal rational part of human souls is derived from an eternal
Deity.126 Porphyry and Macrobius said that Pythagoras taught that souls, immortal, come from the Milky Way.127 Tertullian, Lactantius and Epiphanius said that Pythagoras misunderstood the soul’s
immortality.128 St Jerome said that ‘among the Greeks Pythagoras was the first to find that the soul is immortal, and transits from some
bodies into others. That which Virgil followed in the sixth volume
of the Aeneid.’129 Thus the Pythagoreans thought that human souls are derived from a previous state, whether fragments of the world
soul, or immortal souls in the heavens. Instead Christians said that
God creates a soul for each person.
Bruno’s fourth proposition was that nothing is created: things are
only transformed. Was it Pythagorean? Other ancient writers, such as
Heraclitus, emphasized change. Hippolytus discussed Xenophanes’
belief that ‘nothing is generated or perishes.’ He also quoted Epicurus:
‘nothing was generated, except from atoms. ’130 Yet in Bruno’s selfeducation, Pythagoras became the most prominent proponent that nothing is new. Interrogated by Venetian Inquisitors, Bruno quoted
Ecclesiastes 1:9. 131 In the Bible it is about the past and the future: 53
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What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the Sun.
But Bruno spoke about the past and the present, as a personal motto:
Solomon and Pythagoras.
What is that which is? That which was.
What is that which was? That which is.
Nothing new under the Sun.132
He often said ‘nothing new under the Sun.’ His words echo the
Pythagorean concern for memories of past lives, instead of the
Christian afterlife. Ancient tales said that the divine Pythagoras
had lived many lives.
The Placita stated: ‘Matter is that first being which is substrate
for generation, corruption and all other alterations. The disciples of
Thales and Pythagoras, with the Stoics, are of opinion that matter is
changeable, mutable, convertible and sliding through all things. ’133
Ovid portrayed Pythagoras as the master of transmutations, teaching that everything in the world transforms, and the soul ‘passes into everchanging bodies’.134
Porphyry wrote that Pythagoras ‘taught that the soul was
immortal and that after death it transmigrated into other animated
bodies. After certain specified periods, the same events occur again;
that nothing was entirely new.’135 St Jerome too said that Pythagoras taught immortality and that ‘those things which had existed, after
certain revolutions of time, came into being again; so that nothing
in the world should be thought of as new. ’136
Bruno’s fifth censured proposition was that the Earth
moves. It was a Pythagorean idea – Aristotle complained that
the Pythagoreans believed it.137 In the Placita, ‘Philolaus the Pythagorean’ and ‘Ecphantus the Pythagorean’ said that the
Earth orbits a central fire. The Placita also referred to ‘Hicetas
of Syracuse’. Hippolytus noted that Ecphantus said that Earth
moves.138 Porphyry argued that the world soul is self movable and can ‘move the body of the world’. Porphyry claimed
that the world soul ‘is adapted to be moved in a beautiful
and orderly manner, and also to move the body of the world
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
according to the most excellent reasons’. 139 Diogenes and
Joannes Stobaeus also credited a moving Earth to Philolaus.
Copernicus, Digges and Zúñiga attributed the theory of the
Earth’s mobility to the Pythagoreans. Similarly, in his Ash Wednesday
Supper, Bruno listed some of the proponents of the Earth’s motion:
‘Copernicus, Niceta the Pythagorean from Syracuse, Philolaus,
Heraclides of Pontus, Ecphantus the Pythagorean, Plato in the
Timaeus . . . and the divine Cusa.’140 Interestingly, the ancient Church Fathers did not condemn claims about the Earth’s motion,
so why was it flagged by the censors of the Inquisition when they
read Bruno’s books? It clashed with a literal interpretation of scriptures. But more importantly, the pagan thesis of the Earth’s motion was linked to the other accusations against Bruno. For example, for
Porphyry the Earth’s motion was a direct consequence of the notion
that it has a soul.
The sixth censured proposition was that stars are angels: animated rational bodies that convey God’s voice. The Pythagoreans did not write about angels, so this was not their belief. However,
Digges framed the ‘Doctrine of the Pythagoreans’ as involving stars
as angels: ‘glorious lights innumerable. Far excelling our Sun both
in quantity and quality the very court of celestial angels devoid of
grief.’ Bruno briefly referred to ‘angels, which are stars, announ cing
the divine infinite majesty’. He also wrote that angels flow into
heavenly bodies, the elements flow to the heavens and then ‘into
daemons or angels’. Bruno echoed Agrippa, but Bruno’s identification of ‘daemons or angels’ and the infusion of angels into stars were his own interpolations. He used the terms ‘angels’ and ‘daemons’
synonymously, as Christian and pagan terms: ‘How to attract both
good and bad angels: Good daemons are enticed in diverse ways.’141
To the Pythagoreans, daemons mediated between humans and
gods. Some portrayed Pythagoras as a daemon. Philostratus said
that a daemon guided Apollonius. St Hippolytus complained that
Pythagoras said the souls of animals come from the stars. Pythagoras
theorized that ‘the Sun, and the Moon and the stars were all gods’,
according to Laertius. Likewise, Porphyry said that stars ‘are vis
ible Gods’.142 But many astrological books construed stars as divine beings. So Bruno’s sixth proposition is compatible with Pythagorean
beliefs, but it cannot be described as distinctly Pythagorean: and
Bruno did not attribute it to them, at least in writing.
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Was it a heresy? Yes. In 553 ce the Fifth Ecumenical Council at
Constantinople issued ‘Anathemas against Origen’. The sixth states:
‘If anyone says that the heaven & Sun & Moon & stars and the waters
that are above the heavens, are animated [have souls] & material
powers, he is anathema’, that is, a heretic. Origen’s alleged heresies
were well known in the 1590s. These were ‘confused dreams & wives’
tales to repudiate’, ‘pagan errors’ for ‘imbecile minds’, as noted by
Cardinal Cesare Baronio.143
The seventh censured proposition was that Earth is a living
animal with a rational, sensitive soul that embodies a universal
spirit that animates animals. The belief that Earth is alive appears
in Timaeus: ‘the world became a living creature truly endowed with
soul and intelligence by the providence of God . . . one visible
animal comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred nature.’144 Some commentators thought that Timaeus was a Pythagorean and that Plato based his book on impressions about
Pythagoras.145 The Placita spoke of the ‘respiration’ of the Earth. 146
Diogenes said that Pythagoras taught that the world ‘is endowed
with life, and intellect’. Plotinus (Porphyry’s teacher) argued that
Earth’s soul transmits growth to its parts. 147 Apollonius reportedly thought that Earth is a soulful animal. 148 Iamblichus too argued that it is a great animal. 149
Some of the Stoics advocated similar beliefs.150 But St Augustine denied the Earth is a living being.151 He said that belief in the divine soul of the living Earth led to false belief in many gods. Bishop
Tempier condemned the notion that the heavenly bodies are moved
by a soul ‘like an animal’. So this too was a heresy, forbidden under
penalty of excommunication.152
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pythagoras declared ‘the Earth is of
the nature of an animal, living. ’153 In 1584 an Italian translation discussed in great length this ‘Pythagorean doctrine’.154 Bellarmine, who served on the Index of Forbidden Books, wrote in 1592 that
the original Metamorphoses could be ‘tolerated’ as a model of proper
Latin, but its Italian editions should be censored.155
The eighth censure opposed Bruno’s statement that soul is not
‘form’. He thus rejected Aristotle’s theory of souls, dismissing it