Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

  from Bruno’s trial in Rome. Between two sheets of ‘The Decree of

  the Congregation of the Holy Office’ regarding Giordano Bruno,

  dated 20 January 1600, Carusi found a slip of paper that reads ‘From

  the sheets of F. Mo . . . of this Congregation there remains only to

  add the 2nd decree of friar Giordano Bruno, al the others have

  been posted.’297 Luigi Firpo conjectured that this referred to a compilation of documents prepared for the ‘Father Monster’, Niccolò Riccardi. This sliver of evidence showed that Riccardi had consulted

  the proceedings against Bruno. Unfortunately, as Luigi Firpo notes,

  the slip of paper found by Carusi is now missing.298

  Campanella’s Exile and Death

  Meanwhile, Campanella’s hyperbolic explanations of Pope Urban’s

  poems failed to win the approval of the Curia for publication.

  Protestant reformers had argued that Urban’s Roman ideas were

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  proof of his perversion, so Campanella’s emphasis on classical

  sources would hardly help the Papacy, as historian Peter Rietbergen

  remarks: ‘The Pope, afraid he himself might fall under suspicion of

  harbouring Copernican, and worse, Pythagorean and neo­Platonic

  views, resignedly accepted the fact that the Campanella­edition of

  his poems would not be after all. ’299

  Soon after Galileo was sentenced to live under house arrest,

  Campanella too was discredited. Members of the Spanish government complained about his presence in the Vatican, because they suspected his involvement in acts of insurgency in Naples.300 In addition he was subjected to persecution by the Master of the Sacred

  Palace, Riccardi. In 1634 Campanella fled to France, at least with the

  apparent support of letters from the Pope. Campanella then stayed

  at a convent in Paris with fellow Dominicans. Fortunately he was

  also well received by some French savants and by Cardinal Richelieu,

  and even received a few kind words from King Louis xiii.

  Campanella then tried to retaliate against Riccardi by attacking

  his writings, unsuccessfully. He promptly published new books and

  second editions of his works in Paris and Lyon. These were initially

  sanctioned by the Catholic faculty of the Sorbonne. However, one

  of the Pope’s emissaries in France and Cardinal Francesco Barberini

  both warned in letters that Campanella’s theology was dangerous,

  requesting that he be discredited before Cardinal Richelieu and

  the French court, and that the publication of his works should be

  opposed.301 Francesco Barberini stressed that it was important to monitor Campanella with vigilance because he was ‘temerarious, and

  presumes to know much’, he was prone to ‘writing extravagances’,

  and worse – capable of ‘being a Heresiarch’.302 In another letter he warned that Campanella was ‘volatile, inconstant and cannot

  be trusted’, because he might wilful y make himself the leader ‘of

  some pernicious doctrine’, and therefore that it might even be necessary to remove him from Paris. 303 Hence the initial, warm welcome that Campanella had received in France, from Richelieu, the liberal

  Sorbonne and even the King, quickly crumbled. Early in May 1636

  the faculty of the Sorbonne retracted all of the approbations it had

  inscribed in Campanella’s recent books. 304 His request to publish Theologica, his new manuscript, was also denied.305

  For years Campanella had heard complaints about his book On

  the Sense of Things and Magic. He had planned to publish a second

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  edition, which would include an addendum defending his claims.

  Although the Sorbonne had retracted its authorization to publish

  his books, Campanella had previously secured permissions to publish his Defence of On the Sense of Things in Rome, in 1631, and also in January and April of 1636 in Paris. Therefore his Defence was finally

  printed in 1637, with such permissions, together with a full copy of

  On the Sense of Things. Campanella opened the book with a dedication to Cardinal Richelieu, exhorting him actually to build the City of the Sun that he had written about many years ago.306

  In his Defence Campanella tried to prove several controversial

  propositions, as if many great authorities clearly supported them.

  His main two theses were that things have sense and that the world

  has a soul! Campanella waged an attack on many fronts, which

  he cal ed ‘phalanges’. He gave dozens of arguments to insist that

  things really do have sense, quoting profusely from the works of

  many authorities, including many saints, such as John Chrysostom,

  Ambrose, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement, Irenaeus, Augustine,

  Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. He also quoted several other Christian authors, including Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea and even Origen. Contrary to

  Melchior Inchofer, Campanella construed any author’s metaphor

  about things or parts of the world somehow perceiving as literally

  true. Hence the world was alive.

  The ‘corporeal world’, Campanella wrote, is an image of God or,

  more exactly, ‘a living statue of God’. He said that in articulating this

  view he was following Orpheus, Timaeus and Origen.307 He noted

  that Orpheus believed that the world is a rational animal, with sense

  and reason, as reported by Eusebius.308 Then Campanella added a very eccentric and wilful ‘conclusion’, as he wrote: ‘Therefore it is an

  error, and at least a material heresy, to deny the soulful life of material things. But a formal heresy against all the Scriptures to deny life, and sense in every way. ’309 He then claimed to be following the rules of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and the Sacred Canon, yet none

  of those sources attributed soulful life to material things.

  Years earlier, in his original edition of the Sense of Things,

  Campanella had said that Copernicus ascribed both motion and

  sense to the Earth. Now that the Copernican or Pythagorean doctrine was clearly heretical, however, Campanella did not repeat or elaborate his earlier claim. In that first edition, Campanella’s

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  comments on the soul of the world appeared in only six pages,

  in subtle and understated ways. But in his Defence he added fifteen more pages discussing this thesis openly and vigorously, and articulating it in detail. To Varro, Anaxagoras and the Stoics he

  attributed the opinion that God actually is the soul of the world.310

  He contrasted their opinion to the notion that, instead, God created an intelligent soul of the world, and Campanella credited this notion to ‘Timaeus the Pythagorean’, and to Plato, Porphyry,

  Plutarch, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, Virgil, Calcidius, Numenius,

  Ficino, Christopher Landinus, Pico della Mirandola, St Basil and

  Gregory of Nyssa. He could have added Giordano Bruno to the list.

  Furthermore, Campanella quoted the ringing lines from the sixth

  book of Virgil’s Aeneid, which he wrote as:

  In the beginning, the Sky and Lands, and regions of water,

  Shining globe of the Moon, and Titanic stars

  the Spirit nourishes within; the totality infused through

  the limbs,

  a Mind agitates the Mass, and intermixes itself with

  the great body.311

  Campanella remarked that Virgil rightly said ‘that a mind is infused

  in the limbs of the wor
ld, totally agitating the mass, which forms

  all bodies, and animates, and produces for its own ends’.312 He also

  quoted the alleged words of Pythagoras, as reported by Clement of

  Alexandria, that God is not outside the world, but is within everything, and is the mind and mover of all. Campanella immediately explained the alleged words of Pythagoras, saying: ‘Therefore God

  did appoint the world intrinsically to give; and in his light, and

  contemplation, and it produces the vivification of souls. ’313

  To justify his belief that the Earth somehow vivifies all organisms, Campanella also quoted passages from the Bible. For example, he quoted that God commanded: ‘waters produce living reptile

  souls, and volatile’ (Genesis 1:20), and that God commanded: ‘Earth

  produce living souls’ (Genesis 1:24). 314 Thus Campanella construed many biblical statements very literally, wherever it suited his purpose, and contrary to orthodox Catholic interpretations. Campanella insisted that souls do not come from nothing nor from a substance,

  but from the soul of the world. He argued that heat animates all,

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  that there is a spirit in the bodily humours, a kind of animal heat: in

  humore spiritus (calor animalis). He quoted Aristotle on how animals

  are generated from solar heat. He did not mention that others such

  as Kepler and Julius Caesar Scaliger had echoed the same argument.

  Campanella clarified that although the universal mind animates the

  world, animals gain their senses from the etherial heat. Again, to

  substantiate his argument that the soul is conceived in the air and

  diffused in the body, he cited passages from ancient and religious

  authorities, including Moses, Augustine, Lactantius, Aristotle, Pliny,

  Averroes and Galen.315

  By stressing the sense and soul of all things, Campanella

  claimed to oppose atheism. Meanwhile, still in 1637, a Greek

  priest living in Paris, Athanasios Rhetor, drafted a book attacking Campanella’s ‘errors’. Rhetor promptly sent his manuscript to Rome for approval and publication. He also extracted an abridged

  version, which the Sorbonne approved for publication in 1638,

  titled Anti­Campanella, A Summary Written against the Book On the

  Sense of Things and Magic. Rhetor explained that he had written his

  tract to defend the Catholic truth and to warn Christians against a

  nefarious doctrine. He argued that the thesis that ‘things have sense’

  was a heresy. His main complaint was against the notion of the soul

  of the world. He complained that this was a dogma ethnicum, that

  is, a pagan doctrine.

  Campanella had said that the conscious and intelligent world

  was ‘the most noble, the best, and the most beautiful of beings’, and

  that it was ‘the son of the sovereign good’, and even the first instrument of God’s wisdom. 316 Therefore Father Rhetor argued that this doctrine was heretical, because it conflated the world with Christ,

  the only true son of God. 317 It was also heretical to claim that the world was a being with a soul superior to those of humans, he said,

  because humans were the only beings who had been created in the

  image of God. The Greek priest further argued that God, in order to

  create and act, did not need any mediator or instrument such as the

  soul of the world.318 Bellarmine had made that argument. Rhetor also criticized Campanella’s City of the Sun as indecent and im pious,

  and noted the disrespectful way in which the author had named

  Jesus Christ and the Prophets merely in a list containing impious

  and atheist legislators. Rhetor said that Campanella actually taught

  atheism while pretending to do the opposite.319

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  The Enemies of Galileo

  In his dedicatory preface to the Chancellor of the Sorbonne,

  Father Rhetor asked the Chancellor to rage against Campanella’s

  pestilent doctrine potentially capable of dragging many souls to perdition. Rhetor demanded that Campanella be punished, and that the reading, printing and sale of his books be rigorously prohibited.320

  Meanwhile, despite all misfortunes, old Campanella remained

  optimistic. One of his Parisian friends, Nicolas Chorier, wrote down

  an anecdote that conveys Campanella’s positive outlook and his

  notion of the soul of the world as the warm, divine breath:

  He [Campanella] was a joyful and festive man: when he

  walked in the farmland or in the garden, all he did and said

  was that he was glad to have remissions from serious labours,

  which relax the mind. He chased birds, trying to run, with

  the heavy mass of his old and obese body, tossing his hat

  into the air, he turned to them and said, ‘Inhale, inhale, life

  from the life of the world. Air is the life of the world’, he

  said, ‘which is the soul of nature. ’321

  In May 1639 Campanella suffered colic pains for three weeks. He

  then died, long before Rhetor’s critique was finally printed.

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  four

  WORLDS ON THE MOON

  AND THE STARS

  Like Inchofer and Campanella, other writers associated Galileo

  with Pythagorean beliefs. In 1638, while Galileo was living

  under house arrest, an Anglican clergyman and Fellow of the

  Royal Society, John Wilkins, published a treatise titled The Discovery

  of a World in the Moon. Wilkins sought to prove that the Moon was a

  habitable world. He explained that many ancient and modern mathematicians had defended this thesis. He noted that some attributed this belief to the very ancient Greek poet Orpheus, followed by

  Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Democritus and Heraclitus. Wilkins then

  added ‘unto these agreed Pythagoras, who thought that our Earth was

  but one of the Planets which move round about the Sun, (as Aristotle

  relates it of him) and the Pythagoreans in general did affirm, that the

  Moon also was terrestrial, that she was inhabited as this lower world. ’1

  Then Wilkins echoed ‘Plutarch’s’ account in the Placita, about

  the creatures and plants living there. Wilkins wrote that Plato too

  had agreed with ‘this opinion of Pythagoras’, and that Aristotle

  had opposed it but that it had never been refuted with any solid

  reason. Wilkins said that Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno had

  asserted that every star is a world, but that the narrower propos ition,

  about the Moon being an inhabitable world, had been more directly

  substantiated by Maestlin, Kepler and Galileo.

  Wilkins argued that although some readers dismissed Kepler’s

  and Galileo’s remarks about the Moon being another world, by construing them as jests, such comments were real y meant seriously, because otherwise Campanella would not have had to apologize for

  Galileo, and ‘Galileo would never have suffered so much for it as

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  afterwards he did.’ Wilkins celebrated the invention of the telescope,

  he praised Galileo as ‘the new Ambassador of the Gods furnished

  with this perspective to unfold the nature of the Stars, and awaken

  the ghosts of the ancient philosophers’.

  Furthermore, Wilkins tried to prove the proposition that ‘a plurality of worlds does not contradict any principle or reason of faith.’

  To do so, he attacked Aristotle’s inferences and he listed alleged

  reasons why ‘some say�
� that such a proposition is contrary to scriptures: that Moses spoke only about one world, that St John had said that God made the world, in the singular, as Thomas Aquinas had

  argued, and that ‘The opinion of more worlds has in ancient times

  been accounted a heresy, and Baronius affirms that for this very

  reason, Virgilius was cast out of his Bishopric, and excommunicated

  from the Church’, and hence he was ‘condemned’.2 But Wilkins thoroughly disagreed, giving multiple arguments, even clarifying

  that Pope Zacharias had actually been concerned about there being

  a habitable world within the Earth.

  How Heretical, Really?

  In the end, the Pythagorean claims of the Copernicans are noteworthy in light of the pagan heresies that early Christian authorities had damned. An intriguing question remains: to what extent were

  the so­called Pythagorean beliefs considered heretical in the 1610s

  and thereafter? This broad question is difficult to answer mainly

  because there were disagreements about what constitutes a heresy.

  There was no single inquisitorial list that comprehensively itemized

  all propositions that were deemed heretical by all Catholics. Multiple

  compendiums had different lists, and individuals disagreed about

  which departures from orthodoxy were grave enough to be heretical.

  Yet we can get a sense of the answer by first discussing a narrower

  question: to what extent was the Earth’s motion around the Sun

  viewed as heretical? This question is a subset of the first, since the

  Inquisition and the Index had called it a ‘Pythagorean doctrine’.

  It was not merely a notion from astronomy. Instead, it was also

  a part of an eccentric religious conception that the Earth has a soul,

  and therefore it is a living animal that moves like other animated

  beings, as argued by Ovid, Origen, Ficino, Bruno, Gilbert, Kepler,

  Campanella and others.

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  Here are some of the disagreements, the wide spectrum of opinions, on whether this Pythagorean doctrine was heretical. In 1584

  Diego de Zúñiga said that ‘the statement of the Pythagoreans’ could

  be used to explain Holy Scriptures. Yet in 1597 the Catholic Consultors

  censured the proposition that Earth moves in the works of Giordano