Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

  Campanella became convinced by 1598 that certain dismal events

  and celestial signs would bring great upheaval at the end of the

  millennium. He became involved in a conspiracy to remove the

  Habsburg rulers in Calabria and re­establish the region (including

  the Pythagorean city of Croton) as an independent republic in opposition to the Spanish government in the Kingdom of Naples. But the plot was exposed. Campanella and others were arrested in 1599.

  He was put on trial in Calabria and Naples. Allegedly, Campanella

  sought not only to support a political revolt, but to contrive a new

  religion based on heresies and the recovery of ancient liberty. There

  were two separate and simultaneous investigations: one, headed by

  royal authorities, concerned the conspiracy for a rebellion; the other,

  an investigation for heresy, was headed by the Inquisition.74

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  It was alleged that Campanella had been influenced by the

  Devil.75 Campanella later divulged some of the accusations against him: ‘The first time, when they asked me: “How do you know that

  which you have never learned? Do you have a demon at your command?” I replied, “To learn that which I know, I have not used more oil than what you have drunken in wine.”’76 Witnesses testified that Campanella had said that Jesus Christ was not God’s son and had

  not resurrected, that his body had just been stolen and hidden, as ‘the

  same had been done with Moses, Pythagoras and others. ’77

  Allegedly Campanella had also said that the Christian religion

  was a political scheme; that Jesus had not established the sacraments; the Eucharist was ‘an absurdity and it is craziness to believe in it’; Mary was not a virgin; heaven, Hell and demons do not exist;

  biblical miracles were imaginary, but Campanella himself ‘could

  revive the dead and other extraordinary things’.78 As if those were not enough heresies, allegedly he had also tried to prove that God

  does not exist and said that the Holy Trinity is an illusion, that Jesus

  had lovers, that sexual acts are licit, and that the tyrannical Pope

  was the Antichrist. Reportedly Campanella had further said that

  Christians are ignorant asses who were subdued by the apostles into

  believing by faith and against reason.79

  Furthermore, Campanella later recalled that the Inquisitors

  accused him ‘of having the opinions of Democritus’, but he replied

  he had actually written books against Democritus. He also recalled:

  They accused me of being a heretic, I who have composed

  a dialogue against the heretics of our times. In sum, they

  accused me of rebellion and heresy, for having said that

  there are spots on the Sun, the Moon and the stars, against

  Aristotle who made the world eternal and incorruptible. For

  that it was that they threw me, like Jeremiah, into the lower

  lake, where there is neither air nor even light.80

  Like Bruno, Campanella defended himself against the accusations by arguing that they were ridiculous and false. He also

  argued that his alleged participation in planning a revolt had consisted merely in making an astrological prophecy. Witnesses testified against him. He denied their allegations. So the Inquisitors tortured

  him by hanging him from a corda. He protected himself by acting

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  Tommaso

  Campanella,

  sculpted by Ettore

  Ferrari, on the base

  of Bruno’s statue

  at the Campo de’

  Fiori.

  insane. He babbled incoherencies. He yelled that he had been murdered but that the Pope would save him! When asked how long he had been imprisoned he said ‘always, always’. To the threat of

  further torture he reportedly said, ‘yes, yes, do it, do it.’ And when

  asked what he expected from ‘these lords’, he replied, ‘let me shit.’81

  Pope Clement viii did not believe that Campanella was mad. At

  one point the Pope ordered that Campanella be tortured by both

  the corda and the cavaletto, a procedure whereby the prisoner was tied to a chair suspended from the walls for forty consecutive hours

  while kept awake.82

  An account of another of the tortures endured by Campanella

  says that he was interrogated ‘for thirty­five hours, held harshly and

  cruelly, all the veins and arteries around his rear end were broken

  by the inhumane device of torture, with such force that they emitted blood that could not be stopped’. 83 At some point Campanella wrote a poem to God about his sufferings, which I translate literally

  as prose:

  that the hard example of my lasting hel , may be seen without

  my consent. Six and six years, spent in painful punishment,

  the affliction of all the senses, my limbs tortured seven times,

  the blasphemies and the fables of fools, the Sun denied to

  the eyes, the nerves plied, the bones injured, the pulp lacerated, the roughness on which I sleep, the irons, the spilled 119

  burned alive

  blood, and the raw fear, and the food scant and foul; in hope

  worthy of Your lance and shield.84

  If a prisoner endured torture without confessing, especially multiple

  tortures, then the Inquisitors usually surmised that he was not guilty

  of heretical intentions.85 This could lower the accusations to the minor rank of unintended heresies. The prisoner could eventually

  be released. Also, having an ‘injured mind’ could prevent an ecclesiastical tribunal from issuing a death sentence ‘because the accused’s inability to perform penance would lead to a loss of his soul, with

  grave consequences for his judges’.86

  Campanella’s alleged insanity kept him alive, but his defence

  failed inasmuch as he remained imprisoned in Naples for years. Still,

  in 1602 Campanella began drafting a manuscript titled City of the

  Sun, in which he described a utopia based on astrology. Its inhabitants worshipped the Sun and shared wisdom like the Pythagoreans.

  Campanella managed to send some manuscripts out of prison, but

  his efforts were obstructed by a Decree of the Index in 1603, banning

  all of his works. 87 The same decree also banned all of Bruno’s books.

  It prohibited such works for including ‘false doctrines, heretical,

  erroneous, scandalous, corrupting’, and ‘against God’.88

  In 1607 Gaspar Schoppe visited Campanella in prison in Naples.

  Whereas Schoppe despised the ‘monstrous’ Bruno, whom he never

  met, he had an opportunity to talk with Campanella. Schoppe and

  Campanella both shared an interest in producing a Christianized

  version of ancient Stoic moral wisdom.89 Hence Schoppe became sympathetic towards Campanella’s plight. Consequently, when

  Campanella worked on a manuscript against atheism, he dedicated

  its Preface to Schoppe. He there described the interrogations and

  tortures he had endured:

  I have been locked up in fifty prisons and subjected to the

  most atrocious torture seven times. The last time it lasted

  forty hours. I was strangled with a garrotte with very taut

  ropes that ripped my bones, suspended, my hands tied

  behind my back, over a sharp wooden stake that devoured

  me, the sixth part of my flesh, and drew out ten pounds

  of blood, after forty hours they thought me dead, so my

  ordeal ended; some of them [Inquisitors] injured me, and,

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  to increase my pains, they shook the rope from which I was

  hanging; the others very softly praised my courage. Nothing

  has broken me and it could not tear from me a single word.

  After six months of illness, miraculously, I was finally cured;

  [but then] I was plunged into a pit. Fifteen times I have

  been put on trial.90

  Despite Schoppe’s sympathy, Campanella remained in prison.

  Meanwhile, a philosophy professor in Florence criticized

  Copernicus and Galileo. His name was Ludovico delle Colombe.

  He circulated a dissertation that gave physical reasons why the Earth

  cannot move, by insisting that all heavy things must go to the centre

  of the world. He also denied the notion of a living Earth: ‘it is an

  impossible thing that the Earth is of an angelic intel ligence or substance that moves and spins. ’91 Delle Colombe also said that at first sight the telescope seemed to confirm ‘the opinion of Pythagoras’

  that the Moon is ‘another Earth’, by apparently showing that it

  is irregular, with mountains and cultivated valleys. 92 But Delle Colombe argued that philosophy, reason and the scriptures showed

  that this was a ‘deception of the senses’.93 He insisted the Moon’s surface is truly smooth. He said Galileo’s claims were ‘vanities’, that

  everyone disparaged as ‘temerarious’. He quoted the Jesuit theologian Pineda, ‘it is worthless, temerarious and dangerous to the faith, and taken from the ancient philosophers. ’94

  Campanella had the opposite reaction. By 1611, still imprisoned

  after many years, he heard about Galileo’s discoveries. He wrote

  effusively to Galileo:

  In astronomy Ptolemy and Copernicus had put us to shame,

  but you, enlightened man, not only have retrieved for us the

  glory of the Pythagoreans, stolen from the subtle Greeks,

  resurrecting their dogmas, but you extinguish all the glory of

  the world with your splendour. ‘ And I saw a new heaven and

  a new Earth’, as [John] the Apostle and Isaiah said, blinding

  us; you purged the eyes of men, and show us a new heaven

  and a new Earth on the Moon.95

  Campanella thus quoted a phrase from the New Testament, about

  the Apocalypse, which I have italicized:

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  Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

  The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was

  not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into

  the lake of fire. Then I saw a new heaven and a new Earth,

  for the first heaven and the first Earth had passed away.

  (Revelation 20:14–21:1)

  Campanella also referred to other notions by many writers. He

  cautioned Galileo that if ‘theologians should murmur’, some ancient

  theologians could serve to defend himself, including Augustine and

  Origen, so that the scriptures would not be used against mathematicians: ‘You have Origen, who taught that the Earth is an animal and all the stars, and praises the Pythagorean dogmas and tested by

  the Scriptures. ’96 Campanella did not explain this remark further, but indeed in one work Origen had argued:

  but as our one body is provided with many members, and is

  held together by one soul, so I am of opinion that the whole

  world also ought to be regarded as some huge and immense

  animal, which is kept together by the power and reason of

  God as by one soul.97

  Furthermore, Origen had similarly argued that stars and planets ‘may

  be designated as living beings’. Because only bodies with souls can

  move, living things are always in motion. The stars move regularly

  so they must be rational beings. Furthermore, apparently stars were

  subject to sin (Job 25:5). Finally, because the stars receive orders from

  God, as the Bible says: ‘I have given a commandment to all the stars’

  (Isaiah 45:12).98 These had been the beliefs of Giordano Bruno.

  Origen claimed to have discovered, from the scriptures, that

  heavenly bodies have life, reason and, probably, souls. But Origen

  did not attribute this to the Pythagoreans. He had criticized stories

  about Pythagoras, Euphorbus, Hermotimus and Apollonius. Origen

  said the Pythagoreans were wrong about transmigration and about

  souls’ alleged descent from the vaults of heaven and from the

  planets. 99 So, in writing to Galileo, Campanella was linking Origen with ideas that seemed Pythagorean to him.

  Campanella did not warn Galileo that, posthumously, the

  almost saintly Origen had been denounced for heresies, just like

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  Bruno. Against Origen, the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553

  decreed that anyone who says that the Sun, Moon or stars are animated is a heretic. 100 That Council condemned Origen for asserting the ‘pre­existence of souls’, or the transmigration and immortality of souls, which were Pythagorean notions. Therefore prisoner Campanella was not giving Galileo entirely useful advice. In addition

  Campanella cited titles of works that he had written, suggesting that

  Galileo read them, starting with his ‘three books On the Philosophy of

  the Pythagoreans’, now lost. And Campanella gave several other arguments to embolden Galileo. Still, Galileo did not pursue any claims about Earth, stars and planets being living, rational entities, unlike

  Bruno. Instead, he reported his telescopic findings in descriptive

  ways, though noting their broader significance. Then one of Bruno’s

  Inquisitors became concerned about Galileo’s claims.

  Bellarmine and the Enemies of Bruno

  Soon after Bruno’s execution, Cardinal Bellarmine became known as

  ‘truly the hammer of the heretics’.101 This same Catholic compliment had been used for St Augustine, owing to his work On Heresies.102

  Bellarmine was admired for his encyclopaedic critiques of Protestant

  beliefs and for his extensive knowledge in theology. Pope Clement

  viii praised him for being unmatched in learning in the Church

  of God. 103 Bellarmine laboured for decades to build and defend a Christian republic, a spiritual commonwealth that would transcend

  political boundaries, ruled by the Pope – what one historian rightly

  calls ‘an empire of souls’.104

  Bellarmine’s views on Bruno are not known, because, as historians have noted, apparently his papers include no discussion of Bruno’s trial. 105 However, I wil il uminate this by identifying remarks that Bellarmine voiced in his theological writings. I’ll also

  show his influence on his allies. There is a trail from Bruno’s trial to

  the Inquisition’s first confrontation against Galileo.

  In 1603 all of Giordano Bruno’s works were banned, placed on

  the Index of Forbidden Books, ‘for religious reasons’. Still, some of

  his doctrines continued to be discussed, as we have seen. The following year a Catholic convert in the Netherlands, Justus Lipsius, published a book in which he tried to harmonize ancient Stoic

  ideas with Christianity. Lipsius was a correspondent of Cardinal

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  Bellarmine, who had defended Lipsius three times against critiques

  of one of his books in 1592, 1601 and 1611, even against other censors

  of the Index.106

  In his new book of 1604 Lipsius briefly discussed Pythagorean

  notions that tied the Earth’s motion to the belief
that the Earth has

  a soul. He cited Diogenes for writing that Philolaus the Pythagorean

  said that the Earth moves. Lipsius noted that in the ‘Life of Numa’

  Plutarch too said that about the Pythagoreans. Lipsius likewise mentioned Aristarchus, Hicetas and others, and linked their ideas to Plato’s account in Timaeus that Earth and the Moon have

  souls. Then Lipsius complained: ‘See these deliriums. What else to

  call them? Or what is this inquiry? Although (it is such a love of

  Paradoxes) the era of the famous mathematician has agitated this

  heresy, but is buried with him.’107 I think he referred to Copernicus.

  Importantly, Lipsius derided such beliefs as heresies. He also

  quoted Ovid’s Pythagoras for saying that the Earth is a living

  animal, and enquiring whether ‘primal matter’ is permanent and

  ‘nothing perishes’.108 Lipsius also discussed ‘Whether the World is one of many?’ and whether it is eternal.109 He did not refer to Bruno, but it was improper for Catholics to write about heretics. Yet

  Lipsius berated several of the offensive notions that Bruno advocated: Earth’s motion, that it has a soul, because it’s a living animal, plus the plurality of worlds, and the eternity of the material universe.

  Lipsius wrote, ‘some in our times have the temerity to assert that

  there are celestial Animals, and even that the World is animated. ’110

  Incidentally, one of Lipsius’s friends saw Bruno’s execution:

  Gaspar Schoppe. 111 Schoppe’s standing in the Catholic world had grown, thanks to his zealous attacks against the Protestants.

  He enjoyed titles and pensions, and by 1605 Cardinal Bellarmine

  personally granted him a licence to read heretical books.112 Some zealots were allowed to study heretical works, to decry them and to

  educate Catholics in general.

  In 1608 Ubbo Emmius, a friend of the Dutch astronomer

  Nicholas Mulerius, worried about opinions that are ‘fantastical and

  absurd’, namely that Earth moves and that ‘the Moon is inhabited.’

  Emmius then complained:

  Good God, how far impiety goes! What could do more to

  overthrow all of our doctrine and religion! It contradicts the

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  foundations. In fact, if this is true, as I sense that the author

  vehemently contends, [then] Moses is false, all of our Holy