arse, that is,
‘To Bruno – The
century predicted by
him – Here where
the pyre burned.’
The statue was set
in place in 1889,
facing towards the
Vatican.
and Rome. Moreover, the accusation against ‘diverse worlds’ was the
single disciplinary admonition given to Bruno on his first meeting
with Bellarmine. In the seventeenth deposition the Inquisitors noted
that Bruno had ‘relapsed’ ( reincidit) into this belief. This meant that
he had remained obstinate in his heresy. 313 It was also included in the Summary of ten censures extracted from his books.
Schoppe pointed out the issue of innumerable worlds four times.
His first letter describes Bruno’s belief in the precise wording in
which it was known as a heresy in Latin: ‘Mundos esse innumerabiles.’ In ancient times Cicero and Lactantius had disdained the claim ‘mundos esse innumerabiles’ as insane. Valerius Maximus
and Seneca quoted the expression, attributing it to Democritus.
Philaster declared that ‘mundos esse infinitos et innumerabiles’ was
a heresy. Jerome too criticized Origen for asserting ‘mundos esse
innumerabiles’. Augustine described this heresy as ‘Alia dicit esse
innumerabiles mundos.’ Likewise, Praedestinatus denounced the
heresy of ‘innumerabiles esse mundos’. Echoing Valerius Maximus,
Ficino and Erasmus quoted the expression ‘mundos esse innumerabiles’. Among various critics, Jacob Schegk ‘refuted’ this belief in 95
burned alive
1550. Meanwhile, other writers often used other expressions, when
writing about worlds but not writing about heresies.314
This was the first ‘utterly horrific’ doctrine listed by Schoppe,
and again when he sarcastically said Bruno would go to such other
worlds. Schoppe’s letter to Wackher repeats this point. Moreover,
the recently discovered document about another clergyman who
was apparently burned for positing many suns seems to suggest that
Bruno too was in that category: ‘The Proceedings were burned, those
in which the curate already noted had specified so many ¤ [suns]
and for which he was burned, and soon will be burned an obstinate
relapsed [heretic]’, Bruno.
Is there any evidence that Schoppe’s list of doctrines or accusations echoes the reasons why Bruno was executed? Yes. In his letter, Schoppe argued: ‘But perhaps you might add: the Lutherans neither
teach nor believe such things, and therefore should be treated otherwise. I agree with you, & therefore, precisely no Lutherans do we
[Catholics] burn.’ This means that if only the Lutherans ‘taught
or believed’ what Bruno did, ‘docere neque credere’, they would be
burned. It also means that Bruno was burned for his teachings and
beliefs. And Schoppe listed the horrendous absurdities that Bruno
‘teaches’: ‘quibus horrenda prorsus absurdissima docet’.
The convergence of evidence makes it preposterous to imagine
that Schoppe interpolated whichever notions bothered him personally in Bruno’s writings. He was echoing recurring accusations against Bruno. Schoppe’s main point was to explain why Bruno
was really burned. Importantly, he was an eyewitness on the day
the Inquisitors condemned Bruno. Schoppe explained: ‘Perhaps I
too would believe the vulgar rumours that Bruno was burned for
Lutheranism, but I was present at the Holy Office of the Inquisition
when the sentence against him was pronounced, & so I know what
heresy he professed.’315 Schoppe specified the site of the condemnation: ‘the Palace of the supreme Inquisitor’, and indeed it was Cardinal Madruzzo’s home, where Schoppe lived. His patron was
the first to sign Bruno’s condemnation on that very day.
Therefore I conclude that Bruno was burned for the heretical teachings that Schoppe listed, or for most of them. I cannot imagine that although Schoppe actually heard the heresies for which
Bruno was condemned, and specified Bruno’s ‘horrific’ teachings, and
specified that anyone would be burned for such teachings, that yet
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Bruno was burned for some other teachings that Schoppe chose not
to specify. Bruno died for affirming that there exist many worlds,
souls migrate into bodies, the soul of the world is the Holy Spirit
and so forth.
For years, some historians, writers and astronomers have said
that it’s a myth that Giordano Bruno was burned for believing in
many worlds. 316 But their claims did not take into account most of the present evidence. It shows the apparent myth was not a myth.
I have found more evidence showing that in 1600 the Church in
Rome did condemn the thesis of the plurality of worlds. First, while
the Inquisitors were deliberating Bruno’s final fate, Cardinal Baronio
was finishing a volume of his Ecclesiastical Annals. It was published
in 1600 and it discusses, among many things, how Pope Zacharias
reacted against Virgilius in the year 748. Baronio paraphrased
Zacharias’s critique:
Regarding the perverse doctrine, which he [Virgilius]
has spoken against the Lord & his own soul, namely that
there is † another world, and other men beneath the earth,
another sun & moon, if he is convicted of confessing this:
the summoned Council will deprive him of the honour of
being a priest of the Church. But we also communicate
with the Duke mentioned above, regarding the aforementioned Virgilius we send a letter as we have presented this, & request a thorough investigation, [and] if an error is found,
[we will] condemn it in canonical decrees.317
In the margin Baronio added a note corresponding to the dagger
he placed next to the expression ‘another world’: ‘To doubt the
Antipodes is not heresy, but to posit many worlds is repugnant to
divine scriptures, and therefore is proven to be a heresy.’ Cardinal
Baronio was librarian of the Vatican and held a privileged position
as one of the closest clergymen to Clement viii: he was the Pope’s
personal confessor.
Next, Johann van Heck was a Catholic physician, from the
Netherlands, who lived in Rome at the time. In 1600 or 1601 Heck
drafted a manuscript commentary on Pliny’s Natural History. It
should be remembered that Pliny had discussed, from the outset,
the question of whether many worlds exist; Pliny had written that it
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was ‘madness’ to believe that there are innumerable stars and worlds.
Hence Heck too discussed ‘whether the world is infinite and [whether
it is] one’. 318 He rejected the notion that the universe is infinite, and he attributed the thesis of the plurality of worlds to several writers: Democritus, followed by ‘Archelaus, Metrodorus, Anaximenes, Diogenes, Leucippus, Epicurus and some others.’ Heck did not specify it, but his list echoed an account by Stobaeus ( c. 425 ce).319 Heck quoted critical statements by St Albertus Magnus against the belief
in many worlds. Heck added that this false belief was also asserted
by the Manichaeans, ‘truly heretics’. The Kitâb al Fihrist ( c. 987), a history of Arabic literature, attributes to the Manichaeans a belief in
the existence of ‘five worlds’ inhabited by devilish, lustful creatures. 320
/>
And here’s the most significant point: Heck then wrote a timely
remark that echoes the outcome of Bruno’s trial some months prior:
‘to posit a plurality of worlds is totally condemned by the Holy Roman
Church. ’321 I’ve added the emphasis.
Furthermore, Heck also noted that the notion that the stars are
animated ‘contradicts the Catholic faith no less than [it contradicts]
the Aristotelian philosophy’.322 In 1603 Heck became one of the four founders of the scientific Academy of the Lynx in Rome, of which
Galileo later became a member.
Final y, I discovered another piece of evidence regarding Bruno’s
condemnation. In 1626 a book was published by a ‘Lucius Verus’ that
replied to critiques against Catholics by the prominent Calvinist
politician Ludwig Camerarius. In response to a remark about Bruno,
the pseudonymous ‘Verus’, an advocate for the Catholic emperor,
wrote: ‘for those who are interested, there are documents; & the
records show, those which are available: Regarding the execution
of Bruno of Nola it states: He was not a Lutheran, instead he was
infected partly with Calvinism, even by Manichaeus, Borborites,
Arian and Eutychian heresies, and he was convicted of those
crimes. ’323 Rather than explaining all the possible connotations of these five kinds of heresies, we can answer a narrower question: did
any of these heretical groups believe in the existence of many worlds?
Yes. Epiphanius, Augustine and Albertus Magnus all complained
that the Manichaeans believed that multiple worlds exist.324 As for the ‘Borborites’, that was a name given to the Gnostics. Epiphanius
accused the ‘filthy’ Gnostics of believing that, after death, a person’s soul travels successively to multiple inhabited heavens, and can 98
The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
sometimes be reborn in ‘this world’ as animals.325 It is significant that although books of heresies gave the names of hundreds of sects
with various beliefs, the few groups that ‘Lucius Verus’ linked with
Bruno include two that said many worlds exist.
There are other links between such sects and Bruno’s heresies.
Epiphanius complained that ‘all the Gnostics and Manichaeans’
believed in the transmigration of souls. Reportedly they thought
that soul is dispersed in all things, and that the human soul is a fragment of God, imprisoned in the body.326
The Catholics who denounced, feared and hated the Christian
reforms of Luther and Calvin likewise rejected Bruno’s more eccentric efforts to reinterpret biblical scriptures and Catholic doctrines on the basis of pagan Pythagorean beliefs. Therefore, the Romans
finally gagged him and burned him alive.
99
two
ALIENS ON THE MOON?
Giordano Bruno was not alone. Like him, Kepler and Galileo
praised Copernicus and Pythagoras. In time, the less severe
confrontations between Galileo and the Inquisition became
more infamous than Bruno’s deadly trial. For decades, historians
have distinguished sharply between the proceedings against Bruno
and Galileo. They have argued that Bruno was not prosecuted for
the same transgressions as Galileo. It’s true: Bruno’s main crime was
not that he claimed that the Earth moves. However, I will argue that
Galileo’s problems in 1616 were linked to the proceedings against
Bruno.
This will not be a comprehensive portrayal of the Copernican
Revolution, or of the Galileo affair. 1 But we will investigate the surprising links between Bruno and Galileo.
Prior to Bruno’s works, some ancient sources told stories about
life in other worlds. Lucian and Plutarch discussed the Moon, saying
that it was inhabited by beings or souls. Iamblichus mentioned that
some people believed that Pythagoras had lived on the Moon as a
demon. St Augustine repudiated the idea of sacrificing to demons
living on the Moon. Then Copernicus triggered the question: was
it true that there exist worlds other than our Earth?
In 1597 a prominent professor of philosophy at Padua, Francesco
Piccolomini, published a book discussing, among other questions,
whether many worlds exist. He said this idea had been asserted
by some Greek philosophers, including ‘Democritus, Leucippus,
Epicurus, Lucretius and others’, who had posited in the immense
vacuum atoms that randomly formed innumerable worlds.2
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Aliens on the Moon?
Piccolomini noted that Empedocles too asserted the plurality of
worlds, and that ‘Pythagoras said that the Moon is a Celestial
Earth. ’3 Piccolomini discussed arguments for and against the plurality of worlds. For example, if such worlds are all similar then it’s pointless that there be many. But if they are dissimilar then the
universe is not really a universe or perfect. He also quoted authorities such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that our world is unique.
Piccolomini also discussed related questions. Is the world eternal? He discussed the opinion that the world has a soul, which he attributed to ‘Orpheus and the most ancient theologians’.
Interestingly, Piccolomini used brief expressions very similar to those
of Bruno, whom he did not name: ‘to understand their propositions,
Spirit nourishes within: and moreover, the spirit hovers over the waters, and this spirit is the life of lives, and the Heaven of Heavens. ’4 This
notion had been advanced by Orpheus, the Pythagoreans and the
Stoics, Piccolomini said, and he quoted Virgil’s words from the sixth
book of the Aeneid, at greater length. 5 But this professor denied that the soul of the world is God.
Thus while Bruno defended such ideas against the Roman
Inquisition, they were also criticized by Catholic professors of
philosophy. Soon, the news of Bruno’s death reached Protestant
England. Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, received this report:
One named: Nolanus, Jordanus, politanus [from Naples], a
notable, learned, and fantastical fellow, who with [Michel de
Castelnau] Mauvissier the Ambassador was here in England,
fell into the Inquisition’s hands at Venice, and from thence
sent to Rome, and there proceeded against by that holy
order, disgraced, excommunicated and to avoid the spilling
of blood, committed over to the secular power to be but
burned.6
In England a prestigious physician, William Gilbert, voiced opinions very close to those of Bruno. In 1600 Gilbert published his book On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Earthly Magnet.
From experiments, Gilbert concluded that the Earth is really a great
magnet. Like Copernicus and Bruno, he argued that the Earth
moves. Citing Thales and Anaxagoras, Gilbert argued that magnets
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seem to be endowed with some kind of soul, because they have
the power of moving iron. Since the Earth is magnetic and moves
things and itself, Gilbert argued that it too has a soul, and that it
is a living being, just as Bruno had argued, though Gilbert did not
cite him in his book.
Gilbert credited ancient thinkers with the belief that the stars,
Sun, Moon and the entire universe are alive and infused with a
soul. He cited Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Hermes,
>
Orpheus, Pythagoras, Empedocles and Plato. 7 But Gilbert argued that life was not quite in the entire universe, only in the heavenly
globes themselves, and to various degrees. He said: ‘the whole world
is animated, all the globes, all stars, and Earth’, each having individual souls. He said God himself is a soul. 8 He said that living creatures arise and receive their life from Earth and the Sun. Like
Bruno, Gilbert argued that Earth itself is a great animal:
The Stoics attribute a soul to the Earth, hence they proclaim (while the learned laugh) that the Earth is an animal.
This magnetic form is astral, whether it be a vigour or soul.
The learned mourn & weep, since none of the foremost
Peripatetics, nor even the popular philosophers, nor Joannes
Costeus who laughs at this, were able to acknowledge and
see the nature of this.9
Since the Earth was a soulful animal, it gave soul to some of its
offspring, including magnets. It gave life to humans and animals by
emitting a kind of breath ( spiritu), and then souls lived in bodies
almost as if in ‘prisons’, until they departed again.10
Since the world was a living animal, it also moved. In the Preface
of Gilbert’s book, Edward Wright argued that the words of Psalm
104:5 (103:5 in the Latin Vulgate), that God ‘established the Earth
on its foundations, it cannot be moved forever and ever’, could not
be used to prove that the Earth does not move. This was because
the Earth could remain forever, ‘resting on its centre’, while moving
in a circular motion, without wandering aimlessly.
In Spain, the Jesuit Juan de Pineda wrote a commentary on Job
in which he complained about Zúñiga’s support of ‘the Pythagorean
opinion of the Earth’s motion’. Pineda declared: ‘it is plainly false
(some others call it delirious, worthless, temerarious, & dangerous
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Aliens on the Moon?
to the faith; and taken from the hell of ancient philosophers by
Copernicus & Caelio Calcagnino . . .).’11 Living in England, however, Gilbert suffered no consequences for flirting with pagan heresies: on the contrary, in 1601 he became the personal physician
of Queen Elizabeth.
Also in 1601 a book published in the Italian city of Reggio
nell’Emilia listed and criticized the heretical beliefs of the contemporary ‘Tower of Babel’. The author, the Dominican preacher Augustino Petreto, included the errors, confusions and blasphemies
Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition Page 13