Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

  Scriptures are false.113

  Also in 1608 one of Bellarmine’s fellow Jesuits, Antonio Possevino,

  dismissed some of the notions that Bruno had defended. In a catalogue of definitions and truths of the Catholic faith, Possevino echoed and praised the critiques that Photius the Ecumenical Patriarch had

  raised against hypotheses allegedly voiced by Clement of Alexandria.

  Possevino said that it was ‘blasphemy’, ‘monstrous’, ‘impious and

  ridiculous’ to say that matter is eternal, that souls transmigrate from

  body to body, and that there existed many worlds before the first

  man, Adam. 114 Possevino commented that Clement’s ‘errors’ probably came from the influence of ‘Eastern heretics’. Possevino said that Photius had voiced the true spirit that could be recognized in

  Cardinal Bellarmine and other orthodox men truly invested in the

  works of the Church Fathers. Possevino was one of Bellarmine’s

  longtime friends and supporters.115

  While discussing works of St John Chrysostom, Possevino

  complained about ‘certain heretics and philosophers who beyond

  the entire globe of stars have posited other starry heavens and other

  worlds’.116 He did not name such heretics, but he cited arguments by John Chrysostom, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to deny their

  claims.

  Such worlds were part of Bruno’s cosmology. Since God is

  infinite, His creation must be infinite too. Since God is everywhere,

  His Spirit infuses everything. Orthodox Catholics rejected these

  views. In a work on ‘miraculous arts’, a French jurist explained: ‘False

  Gods have originated from the Devil’s wickedness or pretentiousness and his pride, and from other fictions and empty reasonings.’

  Hence this jurist listed various false gods, including the ‘obstinate reasonings’ of philosophers such as ‘Pythagoras of Samos and M. Varro that soul permeates the entire universe’.117

  When Galileo published his discoveries, in 1610, Bruno’s

  Pythagorean heresies were not yet forgotten. That same year the

  theologian Placido Padiglia published a long commentary on Psalm

  50: ‘Unto the end, a psalm of David.’ In it, Padiglia mentioned a

  censured notion: ‘not that we want to say, with Pythagoras, that

  God is a soul dispersed throughout all parts of the World, that by

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  this perhaps we mean that which the [Solomon’s book of] Wisdom

  says, “For the spirit of God fills the Earthly orb” ’.118 This is the same biblical quotation Bruno had voiced when interrogated by Roman

  Inquisitors to support his ‘Pythagorean way’ of making sense of the

  Trinity: to construe the Holy Spirit as the soul of the universe.119

  This was one of Bruno’s ‘horrendous and utter absurdities’, according to Schoppe, along with the doctrine of many worlds. Padiglia did not mention Bruno, but he dedicated the book to someone

  who knew much about such matters: the ‘most illustrious and most

  reverend’ Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the Protector of Padiglia’s

  congregation. Accordingly, Bellarmine owned a copy of this book.120

  Under interrogation, the Roman Inquisitors had accused Bruno

  of having said that stars are animated rational beings that speak.

  Bruno admitted it. He cited Psalms as evidence, ‘the Heavens

  declare the glory of God’, and that therefore heavenly bodies are

  rational beings or angels that interpret God’s voice. 121 This issue arose in Padiglia’s text, without mentioning Bruno. Padiglia translated Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei as ‘the Heavens write the glory of God’ (emphasis added).

  Padiglia paraphrased John Chrysostom, saying that since ‘the

  Heavens write the glory of God’, then ‘these very skies are books,

  on which is found recorded and collected all the secrets of God, and

  books fashioned to speak to all the World, and to teach. ’122 Padiglia paraphrased St Basil, saying ‘all this World is a book open to the eyes

  of everyone, in which the secrets of the divine wisdom are described,

  and all other works of God, which we observe in this grand machine,

  are written in the many books of divine science abundantly, which

  we should read’.123 Years later, Galileo used similar metaphors.

  Yet Padiglia quoted more passages from scriptures and the

  Church Fathers to argue that none of this means that the Heavens

  actual y speak. He explained, ‘Chrysostom confirms it: They have

  no voices, they possess no mouths, language is not theirs; and we now

  know by science that Heaven is inanimate.’ Padiglia did not mention that the beliefs he rejected, that the Heavens are animated and have voices, were known as Pythagorean beliefs, together with the

  idea of the soul of the world. In his illustration of ‘the most ancient

  Doctrine of the Pythagoreans’, Thomas Digges had described the

  ‘innumerable’ stars as divine, ‘the very court of celestial angels devoid

  of grief ’.124

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  Aliens on the Moon?

  Meanwhile, the Lutheran jurist who had received Gaspar

  Schoppe’s letter about Bruno produced an annotated edition of

  Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras. Rittershausen referred to Porphyry

  by the name his parents gave him: Malchus, meaning ‘King’. In

  his book Rittershausen discussed pagan notions: transmigration,

  that ‘nothing in the world is really new’, the ‘error’ that God has

  a body and soul, and ‘the opinion of Epicurus’ that things repeat

  ‘innumerable times’. 125

  A decade had passed since Bruno was killed. Schoppe mentioned

  the event in a booklet published in 1611:

  Ten years ago I happened to see a memorable example of the

  obstinacy of hatred, in Giordano Bruno of Nola, in Rome.

  For he preferred omens and monstrosities, which he had

  learned from the ancient Epicureans and such kinds of philosophers and heretics, and which he advocated openly in books; first execrable insults and blasphemies about Christ

  and the Apostles, to recant, and he said that they were prestidigitators and artificers of Magic, which penance led to confess, miserably surrounded by faggots he preferred to be

  burned by luminous flames. To such a degree is vindicated

  the good life itself, as meant by [Publilius] Syrus the Mime:

  Revenge on an enemy is to receive a second life. For it was a great

  part of his [Bruno’s] hatred for the Cardinal Inquisitors,

  whether it was from some intolerable, rough austerity and

  perversity.126

  This account reiterates the ‘monstrous’ character of Bruno’s beliefs,

  which echoed Epicurus and other philosophers. Writers such as

  ‘Pseudo­Plutarch’, Hermias, Augustine and Rupert of Deutz

  credited Epicurus with the theory that there are many worlds.

  ‘Plutarch’ and others also attributed such beliefs to Orpheus and

  the Pythagoreans. In Bruno’s case, such heretical beliefs allegedly

  mingled with blasphemies about Christ and magic.

  Meanwhile, Galileo voiced beliefs similar to Bruno’s: countless stars exist that had not been seen, Earth moves, and the Moon is a mountainous world. In early 1611 an anonymous writer used

  Galileo’s findings combined with Bruno’s beliefs to ridicule the

  Jesuits. This was actual y the famous English poet John Donne,

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  who was also an anti­Catholic writer. In his book Donne m
ocked

  the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, as possessed by the

  Devil and damned in Hel , where the sinful Jesuits arrived daily

  and willingly.127 Ignatius advised the Devil, Lucifer, about which

  ‘innovators’ should be admitted into the most remote and exclusive

  chamber of Hell.

  The first innovator trying to enter was Copernicus, because

  ‘the Papists have extended the name and punishment of Heresy to

  almost everything.’ According to Donne, since Ignatius did not even

  know Copernicus’s name, this Jesuit was ‘utterly ignorant in all great

  learning’. Hence Copernicus, to prove his evil, bragged that he had

  lifted Lucifer and Hell (in the Earth’s centre) up into the heavens,

  against God’s will. Donne’s Copernicus dared to call himself ‘almost

  a new Creator’ and bragged that ‘I was the soul of the Earth.’ Since

  Origen the heretic inhabited the exclusive chamber of Hell, Ignatius

  wondered whether Copernicus too deserved entry. Ignatius asked

  whether by lifting the Earth Copernicus had threatened God as

  with the Tower of Babel, or whether he taught men ‘that there is no

  Hell, or denied the punishment for sin?’. Donne’s Ignatius pondered

  whether Copernicus belonged to ‘a sect’ of philosophers or deserved

  to enter the place reserved for the ‘Antichristian Heroes’.128

  Donne’s Ignatius asked whether the Jesuits would issue a

  Decree by which the Earth’s motion would become a heresy,

  so that Copernicus and his sectarians would earn their place in

  Hell. According to Donne, Galileo had discovered ‘a new World,

  namely the Moon star, with its mountains, woods, and cities’. 129

  He asked whether ‘Galileo has done harm, in recently summoning other worlds, namely Stars’, which are inhabited by ‘peoples’.130

  And Lucifer himself came from a star. 131 Donne ridiculed the new astronomers for their arrogant vainglory, and their temerarious,

  disrespectful ideas.

  Supposedly the founder of the Jesuits was so evil that he

  obstructed Copernicus, Paracelsus and Machiavelli from promptly

  entering into that exclusive chamber of Hel . Sil y old Lucifer

  approved everything that Ignatius said. Donne’s Machiavelli even

  described Ignatius as Lucifer’s son, and he disdained Copernicus as

  ‘futile and chymerical’. Donne further said that Ignatius was craftier

  than the Devil and worshipped the Devil as the true God. Donne

  added that the Pope too carried the image of the Devil.132

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  Aliens on the Moon?

  Ignatius was so evil that he deserved to be Lucifer’s successor

  on the throne of the Empire of Hell. However, Lucifer decided that

  instead of sharing Hell, Ignatius should become the ruler of a second

  Hell. Lucifer would ask the Pope to get Galileo to somehow pull

  the Moon closer to the Earth so that all the Jesuits would move to

  the Moon! The ‘Jesuits will beget a Hel ’, on the Moon, to be ruled

  by Ignatius. The Jesuits would then ‘reconcile the Lunatic Church

  with the Church of Rome’. Lucifer told Ignatius: ‘And similarly as

  you go from the Earth to the Moon, you will travel from it to other

  stars which are also thought to be Worlds, so your Jesuits will always

  easily travel, thus propagating many Hells, so that you may expand

  your empire. ’133

  Donne’s Ignatius commented that Elizabeth of England was a

  ‘Lunatic Queen’ who was allied to ‘the kingdoms of the rest of the

  stars, and all the planetary and firmament worlds’. He also mentioned that the Sun itself is a world, and that Ignatius had never thought about God. Allegedly, Pope Paul v then decided to canonize Ignatius, so that the ‘spiritual butchers, and murderers of Kings’

  would have a saint to invoke.134 Finally, too impatient to wait for his throne on the Moon, Ignatius seized the throne that was next

  to Lucifer, by pushing aside its former occupant, Pope Boniface.

  Donne warned that having seen this Jesuit eject that Pope from

  a throne in Hell, perhaps the Jesuits would try to do the same thing

  in Rome. 135 Donne complained that they had already hired assassins to kill kings (in 1610 Henri iv of France had been assassinated).

  Donne ridiculed the ‘sinful’ cardinals in Rome. In particular, he

  denounced Cardinal Bellarmine for having evil and vow ­breaking

  ambitions. He insulted Bellarmine as ‘the Sword of the Roman

  Church’.136 (Donne had previously attacked Bellarmine in a book of 1610, Pseudo­Martyr.)

  Donne did not name Giordano Bruno, yet many of Bruno’s

  actual and alleged beliefs appear in his book: the soul of the Earth,

  its motion, that the Moon is a star, that the stars are worlds, that

  the Sun, the Moon and the planets are worlds, that such worlds are

  inhabited, that there is no punishment for sins, and that souls can

  travel out of their bodies. Moreover, in a poem titled ‘An Anatomy

  of the World’ (1611) Donne complained about how the ‘new philosophy calls all in doubt’, by leading men to look for other worlds: ‘And freely men confess that this world’s spent, / When in the planets,

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  and the firmament / They seek so many new. ’137 Thus, various kinds of evidence seem to suggest that Donne was influenced by some of

  Bruno’s works.138

  The Jesuits did not reply to Donne in print. He was safe in

  England. But not everyone was beyond their reach. In April 1611

  Cardinal Bellarmine wrote a letter to the Jesuit mathematicians at

  the Collegio Romano asking them several questions about Galileo’s

  alleged discoveries. He asked about the apparent ‘multitude of fixed

  stars invisible to the naked eye’. He asked about Saturn, the phases

  of Venus, the Moon’s surface, and the ‘four moving stars’ around

  Jupiter. Bellarmine asked whether these ‘new inventions are well

  founded, or are just apparent and not true’.139

  Five days later, four mathematicians of the Collegio Romano

  replied. They confirmed that very many stars exist that previously

  were not visible, that Venus exhibits phases, the Moon’s surface seems

  to be uneven and that four stars orbit Jupiter.140 Their letter shows that these Jesuits, astronomers skilled in mathematics, evaluated

  Galileo’s claims fairly. They acknowledged most of his discoveries,

  speaking cautiously about their significance with respect to theology

  but without slavish allegiance to Aristotle.141

  One of these Jesuits was the prominent astronomer Christopher

  Clavius. We should note two of his opinions, in a booklet of 1611.

  Clavius noted that some ‘philosophers’ claimed that the world is

  eternal, but that ‘according to the Catholic faith, the world was created’ from nothing. Clavius also complained that ‘some Philosophers, among whom was Democritus, claimed that worlds are innumerable, with additional others, almost like spheres, or globes.’ Instead Clavius insisted that Aristotle and ‘our Theologians’ taught that only

  one world exists, although God has the power to create infinitely

  many worlds. 142 Clavius did not name the infamous philosopherheretic Bruno. Also he denied that the spots that Galileo had observed on the Moon were really mountains and valleys.

  Stil , in late 1611 Kepler published an addendum to his Discussion

/>   with the Starry Messenger. On the first page Kepler referred to

  Galileo’s seemingly ‘dangerous observations’ and briefly raised the

  question of whether the new planets and stars pertained to what

  ‘Cardinal of Cusa, and Bruno’ had predicted: the infinite stars.143

  Meanwhile, a professor at the Collegio Romano composed a

  booklet criticizing Galileo’s claims. The philosopher Giulio Cesare

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  Aliens on the Moon?

  Lagalla finished it in late 1611 and published it in 1612. Lagalla

  argued that Galileo’s flat, telescopic images were insufficient to

  show that the Moon had mountains and was therefore a world. He

  quoted Galileo’s passage about ‘if anyone wants to revive the ancient

  Pythagorean opinion that the Moon is like another Earth’. 144

  Lagalla complained that the belief that the Moon is another world

  led directly to the false view that many worlds exist.

  Lagalla knew Bellarmine, and he too lived in Rome at the time

  of Bruno’s execution, when Lagalla’s main patron was Cardinal

  Giulio Antonio Santori, Archbishop of Santa Severina and head

  Inquisitor in Bruno’s trial. In his book Lagalla named several individuals who had wrongly claimed that worlds exist or that the Earth is a star: Orpheus, Thales, the Pythagoreans (according to Aristotle),

  ‘Philolaus the Pythagorean’ (according to Diogenes and ‘Plutarch’s’

  Placita), Democritus, Heraclides, Anaxagoras, Plutarch and

  ‘Copernicus, the famous mathematician’. 145 Lagalla said that some of them wrongly thought the Sun is at the centre of the universe.

  And he paraphrased the ancient lines attributed to Orpheus: ‘he

  posits another Earth above us called the Moon; how poetic, feigning that it has many mountains, many cities, many Dwellings.’146

  Lagalla insisted that such views are absurd, and grumbled that

  Kepler had been deceived into thinking that there are inhabitants

  on the Moon who build giant structures.

  Lagalla noted that ‘the Pythagoreans said that the centre is the

  prison of Jupiter’, though Aristotle had not explained why. Therefore

  Lagalla tried to explain it. He said that since God moved the heavens

  in circles around the centre, then if Jupiter were near the centre it

  would be necessary to hold it in place, as if by a prison. Lagalla also

  argued that the universe is not infinite. If it were infinite it would