Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

  plus Aristotle’s followers, who said that the world is only one. Rubio

  did not mention that writers such as ‘Plutarch’, Hippolytus, Lucian,

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  Iamblichus, Theodoret, Bruno, Piccolomini, Kepler, de Nancel,

  Lagalla and Galileo had attributed the theory of more than one

  world to Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans. In addition, Pythagoras

  had been born more than a century before Democritus. In any case,

  Rubio duly cited several authorities who denied the existence of

  many worlds: Athanasius, St Ambrose, Albertus Magnus, Theodoret

  and Thomas Aquinas. Rubio noted that ‘the multitude of worlds,

  and how large it is, is among the errors of the faith enumerated’ by

  Augustine as the 77th heresy and by St Isidore. Rubio concluded:

  ‘Now some heretics at the end, count among [their] other heresies

  to posit innumerable worlds. ’3 He did not name Bruno.

  Galileo now abstained from publishing about Pythagorean doctrines. Yet Johannes Kepler did the contrary. Living in Protestant lands, Kepler hardly feared the Inquisition. Soon after Copernicus’s

  book was prohibited, Kepler wrote, ‘these people should be refuted not

  with arguments but with laughter.’ So he ridiculed such censorship:

  They were able to castrate

  The bard lest he fornicate;

  He survived without any testicles.

  Alas, O Pythagoras,

  Whose thinking wore out iron chains;

  They spare you your life,

  But first they get rid of your brains.4

  In 1618 Kepler published an Epitome of Copernican Astronomy

  aimed at general readers. In 1619 he published Harmony of the World,

  in which he further analysed planetary motions and voiced theological opinions. He wrote controversial ideas similar to those of Plato, the Pythagoreans, Plotinus, Porphyry, Origen, Novatian,

  Abelard, Ficino and Bruno. Kepler again insisted the Earth is

  an animate being and has a soul.5 He said that the Earth’s body has hairs (plants and trees) on its skin. It expels vapours, mucus

  and vomit. He also said the planets have souls, which produce a

  heavenly harmony. He argued that mathematics contains hidden

  divine knowledge, and that ‘the Pythagorean philosophy disguises

  its teaching on divine matters with these, so to speak, veils.’

  Kepler discussed numerology and the ‘Golden Verses of

  Pythagoras’, trying to decipher the mystery of ‘the spiritual

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  Tetractys’, the legendary sacred oath of Pythagoras.6 Kepler conjectured that the ancient Pythagoreans knew the connection between the five regular solids and the order of the six planets, but had kept it

  secret.7 Kepler also criticized Aristotle and Cicero for having denied that the heavens generate inaudible harmonies:

  These preconceived opinions are a considerable obstacle to

  readers who are striving towards the inner secrets of Nature,

  and could frighten off many who have great powers of judgment and are seekers after truth, to such an extent that they would disdain those Pythagorean pipedreams, scarcely recognized at arm’s length, and throw away the book unread. 8

  Just like the ancient Pythagoreans (as criticized by Hippolytus),

  who worshipped a Creator who allegedly was ‘the Great

  Geometrician and Calculator’, Kepler claimed that geometry is

  God: ‘Geometry, which before the origin of things was coeternal

  with the divine mind and is God himself (for what could there be

  in God which would not be God himself?), supplied God with

  patterns for the creation of the world. ’9

  Furthermore, Kepler refused to accept all the doctrines of his

  Lutheran religion. In particular, he refused to accept the Sacramental

  Union (that during the ceremony of the Eucharist the wine and

  the bread combine with the real blood and body of Jesus Christ).

  Therefore, the Lutherans excommunicated him in 1619, to his chagrin.

  That same year the Index of Forbidden Books promptly banned

  Kepler’s Epitome (1618), in which he not merely insisted that the

  Earth moves; he went beyond Copernicus by arguing that Earth

  moves because it has a soul. Kepler said that Earth’s soul causes its

  bowels to emit heat, fire, exhalations and secretions. Its soul helps to

  move its rivers and seas.10 He wrote that the Earth has blood, sweat, mucus, saliva and excrements. 11 Kepler said that God had initially set the Earth in motion, but subsequently, the Earth’s soul kept it

  moving constantly.12 Such claims, that the moving Earth is a living animal with a soul, had been defended by Bruno.

  In 1619 the Decree of the Index, totally prohibiting Kepler’s

  book, was signed by one of Bruno’s judges, Bellarmine. 13 It was co­signed by Francisco Capiferreus, the Dominican who had

  co­signed the anti­Pythagorean Decree of 1616.

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  Soon an updated supplement to the Index of Prohibited Books

  was published; it included specific books by Copernicus, Zúñiga,

  Foscarini and Kepler, plus ‘all books that teach the motion of the

  Earth and the immobility of the Sun’.14

  Galileo had been careful not to associate his works with Giordano

  Bruno. Yet Kepler and others publicly linked the two. Kepler portrayed Bruno as Galileo’s predecessor and praised them both. Still, Kepler rejected the infinity of worlds. He thought that stars are

  not suns surrounded by planets. Yet there were some astro nomers

  who thought that the telescopic evidence supported the theory

  that infinitely many stars exist and planets are worlds. One was the

  French astronomer Jean Tarde, a canon of the Sarlat Cathedral in

  southwestern France. Tarde published a treatise analysing sunspots,

  arguing that they are not clouds in the Sun’s atmosphere, as Galileo

  suggested, but small planets orbiting the Sun:

  Orpheus, Pythagoras, Anaximander, Leucippus and their

  followers, who imagined an infinity of worlds to exist, said

  that the Moon is a world, Lunar; Mercury, Venus and other

  planets, and the fixed stars, were also cal ed worlds. And

  since the known stars did not exceed the number 1022, they

  thought that there were an infinity of others, and those

  were infinite worlds, those which in our century have been

  detected by glass lenses.15

  Galileo’s discovery of countless stars seemed to confirm Bruno.

  The plurality of worlds was harmless speculation if it were

  presented dismissively as fiction. But presented as truth, it contradicted Christian dogma: that humans were unique in God’s creation. Already theologians had to explain the puzzling destiny

  of humans born in the American continents. If natives had never

  heard the Word of God, through Moses and Jesus, would they then

  suffer the same damnation as European sinners who violated God’s

  commandments? What about beings in other worlds?

  In 1620 the Index censored eleven sentences in Copernicus’s

  book. Catholics could now read it by making the required corrections. Hardly any history books actually state any of the censored sentences, so I must summarize them.16 First, the Index censored the passage in the Preface where Copernicus criticized Lactantius

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  for not knowing mathematics and being wrong about the Earth’s

  shape. Second, they
censored a sentence in book 1, Chapter Five,

  in which Copernicus said that the question of whether Earth rests

  in the centre of the world had not been settled absolutely. Third,

  they censored lines in Chapter Eight discussing Earth’s motion as

  truth. (Incidentally, those lines are followed by words from Virgil’s

  Aeneid that illustrate relative motion: ‘as we sail from the harbour,

  the lands and cities recede.’) Next, an objectionable line in Chapter

  Eight said that it is ‘absurd’ to think that a container can move without moving its contents, plus, another sentence said that it is ‘more probable’ that Earth moves rather than not. Next, they censored

  the first sentence of Chapter Nine, which said ‘nothing prohibits

  the Earth’s mobility’, and that it could well be regarded ‘as one of

  the wandering stars’. They also censored assertions in Chapter Ten

  that said ‘we are not ashamed to admit’ that Earth moves with the

  wandering stars around the immobile Sun, that Earth’s motion can

  be verified, and that it is the divine work of God. They censored

  the title of Chapter Eleven, which ‘demonstrated’ or proved Earth’s

  triple motion (instead, this demonstration now had to be viewed as

  hypothetical). Finally, in book 4 they censored the title of Chapter

  Twenty, on ‘The magnitude of these three stars: Sun, Moon and

  Earth’, because none of these bodies should be considered stars.17

  This list shows that what bothered the censors was not merely

  the Earth’s motion and the Sun’s immobility, but the claim that the

  Earth, Moon and the Sun are stars. Whereas they censored the Sun’s

  immobility only in one passage, they censored the claim that the

  Earth is a star three times.

  Unorthodox claims about the Earth’s location and motion pertained directly to the question of whether Earth is a star. 18 This involved the question: are the stars other Earths? I point this out

  to show the continuity with Bruno’s condemnation and heresies.

  He had affirmed: ‘there are infinitely many individual worlds like

  our Earth. I regard it, like Pythagoras, as a star, and the Moon, the

  planets and the stars are similar to it.’ In 1630, as we will see, the most

  important cardinal Inquisitor became annoyed at Galileo precisely

  for implying that Earth is a star.

  Meanwhile, other controversies continued. In 1620 Kepler

  published an addition to his censored Epitome. He elaborated his

  eccentric religious views. Building upon his previous claim that

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  Earth has a soul, Kepler noted that he did not deny that planets

  have individual souls, yet he suggested that ‘the soul of the world’

  flowing outwards from the Sun, with light and heat, penetrates all

  bodies with power to animate them.19 The Sun’s spinning motion was not caused merely by ‘the Creator’s omnipotence’, but was maintained by its ‘motor soul’, the ‘superintendent’ of worldly motions. 20

  He argued that sunspots are exhalations from the Sun’s innermost

  bowels, and that sunlight too is evidence of the Sun’s soul. He said

  the soulful Sun is the source of the motions of all things, and the

  source of life of all living things.21

  That year, the perennial prisoner Campanella published On the

  Sense of Things and Magic. He envisioned a universal animation, a

  great concord by which even the living Earth could perceive things.

  Like Bruno and Kepler, Campanella connected the Earth’s motion

  to the theory that Earth is alive. He explained:

  Since the heavens have sense, the Earth also feels. Thus

  Philolaus and Copernicus, who would give it movement,

  even more they give it sense. Pythagoras posited that Earth

  is truly a corpulent animal, whose fur and hairs are plants

  and trees, bones are stones, the animals on it are like the lice

  on our head, and he says that the heat in its centre is like

  the heart in ours. And what Ovid seems to think, but this

  is disputed elsewhere.22

  Campanella criticized Aristotle, while praising Pythagoras,

  Trismegistus and others. Campanella cited Varro and Virgil’s Aeneid

  to discuss how the great spirit nourishes animals, he argued, by heating air within their heart and spreading it within their organs. 23 He said that air is the common spirit, which interacts with our human

  spirits, also aerial.

  Regarding those ‘who posit the soul of the world’, Campanella

  replied that each natural thing suffices for its own actions, because

  God’s instruments can accomplish anything without any assistance

  from a world soul.24 Remember that Bellarmine had voiced the same argument. Later in his book, however, Campanella described

  the world’s divine intelligence, and said that if it is not a primal

  wisdom then it is ‘the soul of the world’, or the immortal mind of

  a most noble Being.25

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  Like others, Campanella mentioned Bruno’s doctrines without

  embracing them and without mentioning him. Regarding the doctrine of ‘infinite worlds’, Campanella attributed it to Democritus and Epicurus. He said that God’s power is not exhausted with this

  one globe, because God could well create infinitely many diverse

  worlds. He said that if this is true it could only be revealed by God.

  He then subsumed his speculations to higher authorities: ‘However,

  the body of Jesus, we confess, is above all the heavens, where the

  Legislators place happiness, and the divine Being of Pythagoras.’26

  Campanella discussed infinite worlds not as a consequence

  of God’s infinite power, as Bruno did, but as a plausible intuition:

  ‘Behold, when a man meditates, he extends his thoughts above the

  Sun, and then higher, and then wanders beyond the sky, and finally

  conceives the infinite outer worlds, as the Epicureans themselves

  realized, giving the truth. ’27

  Campanella also denied that there was a demonstrative argument to show that God sends each soul into a body to be ‘captive in a prison’, or as ‘a portable tomb’. Still, Campanella said:

  But when I consider the spirit of the Sun implanted in the

  form of the body, and living in that prison, and enjoying

  it, just as I have seen very many rowers wil ingly live in a

  galley, and others for a long time in prison, they almost have

  forgotten the good knowledge of freedom.28

  Campanella rejected the transmigration theory he attributed to

  Pythagoras, that a human soul can inhabit any animal body: ‘I say

  that the human soul is not commensurable with all bodies, because

  fleas, lice, sea urchins, oysters, sponges are utterly different from us;

  it is not possible for our soul to vivify them.’ Campanella denied the

  Pythagorean religion in general, but he allowed some exceptions:

  The pronouncements of Pythagoras contain a kind of religion, but no certainty. And in the Church of Christ and God’s knowledge, this opinion is considered a heresy by the

  law of nature, only God with justice can make it happen

  sometimes, as Daemons have often entered into the bodies

  of humans and animals.29

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  Campanella said that transmigration was condemned by theologians

  and even
in Origen, if indeed he had affirmed it. He also discussed

  what ‘Origen skilfully wrote’, that stars are the seats of evil spirits

  and demons.30 Campanella’s book was both praised and criticized.

  Also in 1620 a treatise, On the Nature of Demons, mentioned and

  denounced Pythagorean ideas. The author noted that Pythagoreans,

  Persian Magi and Apollonius spread the fraud of the transmigration of souls. He criticized the shameless Pythagoras for teaching silence and the Tetractys, ‘as the instinct of demons shakes off the

  knowledge of the true God from the chests of men, taking the effigy

  of Jupiter’.31

  Likewise, a professor at the Ambrosian College in Milan,

  Antonio Rusca, published On Hell and the State of Demons before

  the End of the World. One chapter focused entirely on Pythagoras. 32

  Rusca tried to settle questions about Hell, its inhabitants and torments. He cited Diogenes’ story that Pythagoras descended to Hell and saw the souls of Hesiod and Homer being tortured. Rusca

  rejected Diogenes’ and Iamblichus’s claims as fictitious terrors. He

  discussed the Pythagorean belief in immortality, and commented

  that Pythagoras visited Hell because he had nothing in life but

  education. He denied that Pythagoras was Euphorbus during the

  Trojan War, and later Hermotimus. Rusca denied transmigration

  and various subterranean punishments as figments. He criticized

  Plotinus’ ‘heresy’ that souls are reborn in human or animal bodies

  depending on how they lived. In other chapters, Rusca wrote

  mostly about demons, satanic spirits and Lucifer’s sins. He also

  provided maps of Limbo, Purgatory and Hell in the depths of

  the Earth.

  In 1621 Cardinal Bellarmine died, nearly 79 years old. He never

  wrote a public account of what transpired between him and Galileo,

  nor between him and Bruno. People knew that Bruno was imprisoned and executed for heresies, but the particulars were not widely known. In 1621 Gaspar Schoppe’s eyewitness account of Bruno’s

  death was published. Finally readers had a chance to learn some of

  the particulars. Schoppe itemized Bruno’s ‘horrific’ teachings worthy

  of execution, starting with: ‘Worlds are innumerable, souls go from

  body to body, and even migrate to another world, one soul can shape

  two bodies, magic is good and licit, the Holy Spirit is nothing other