Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

After Galileo’s death some Catholics continued to denounce

  Pythagorean heresies. In November 1642 the Jesuit Pierre La Cazre

  wrote to Pierre Gassendi warning him to reject Galileo’s theories.

  Gassendi had discussed the Earth’s motion hypothetically. La Cazre

  complained that such a belief entailed that the stars are inhabited,

  which was dangerous to Christianity:

  Now consider not what you might think, but what others

  will conjecture, who on your authority or reasons will be

  persuaded that the Earthly globe moves among the Planets.

  First they will conclude that without doubt Earth is one

  of the Planets, which since it has inhabitants, then it will

  be easy to also believe that in the other Planets too, and

  even in the fixed Stars, inhabitants are not lacking, and

  how much preferable, if the other Stars exceed the Earth

  in magnitude and perfection. Here Genesis would become

  suspect, for saying that Earth was made before the other

  Stars, established only on the fourth day [of Creation], to

  illuminate the Earth, to measure times and years. Thus the

  entire Economy of the Incarnate Word and the truth of

  the Gospel would become suspect, indeed and the whole

  Christian faith, which presupposes and teaches that all Stars

  are not dwellings [ habitationem] for men, or other creatures,

  but only to illuminate the Earth with their light, fertilizing,

  to be produced by the creator God. You see therefore how

  dangerous it is to divulge this in public, and especially by

  men whose authority seems to generate faith; and how not

  undeservedly since the time of Copernicus the Church has

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  Marble statue of Pope Urban viii, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his assistants,

  at the Musei Capitolini, Rome, c. 1635–40.

  always opposed itself to this error, even very recently, not

  only some Cardinals (as you say) but the supreme head of

  the Church, condemned Galileo in a Pontifical decree, and

  that teaching it be solemnly prohibited in future words

  or writing.54

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  This Jesuit thus explained that the Pope and cardinals had condemned the theory of the Earth’s motion because it led to dangerous anti­Christian ‘absurdities’, such as that the stars are inhabited.

  In a manuscript published in 1658, posthumously, Gassendi discussed whether many worlds exist. He credited such views to many authors, from the Pythagoreans to ‘Jord. Brun.’, and he quoted crit iques by Hermias and Augustine. 55 Gassendi also discussed the

  notion of the soul of the world. He said that Pythagoras and the

  Stoics believed that if anything is warm it absolutely has a soul, a

  mind that penetrates all.56 And Gassendi quoted Virgil:

  Spirit nourishes within, totally infused in the limbs

  a Mind moves the mass, and intermixes itself with the

  great body.57

  Gassendi argued that it was permissible to think of God as the ‘soul

  of the world’ only inasmuch as God is the powerful presence that

  penetrates all things, governs and thus animates them, but not as

  a material component. Gassendi tolerated the expression ‘soul of

  the world’ also to describe the heat that propagates throughout the

  universe. But Gassendi noted that these two meanings were just

  ‘an improper sense, as an analogy; but to be willing to properly say,

  or admit that in the whole World there is a soul, without abusing

  the word soul, namely which is vegetative, or sensitive, or reasoning, it does not seem easy, wherein lawful’. 58 Two centuries later, Christian readers debated whether Gassendi believed in the soul of

  the world, ‘the monstrous doctrine’ that embodied ‘the fatalist and

  immoral pantheism that weighed upon antiquity from Pythagoras

  to Plotinus’, or whether this was a ‘deplorable calumny’ against

  Gassendi, that ‘in the 17th century, a proper savant, a Christian,

  a priest, Gassendi . . . wil remain plunged into one of the most

  shameful errors of paganism. ’59

  Meanwhile in 1633 the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Scheiner

  finished a manuscript of a book criticizing Galileo’s errors, but it lingered unpublished for many years until 1651.60 Similarly, Inchofer’s Vindication . . . against the Neo­Pythagoreans was never published.

  In January 1636 the internal reviewers within the Society of Jesus

  at the Collegio Romano did not approve it for publication.61 Most importantly, they claimed that the subject seemed to require a

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  mathematical approach, but that Inchofer had instead provided

  a theological and historical argument, which might not meet the

  potential readers’ expectations. 62 The Jesuit reviewers also complained that the proposed book title suggested that Inchofer officially spoke for the institutions that he defended, whereas it was just his

  own work. Finally, the Jesuit reviewers complained that Inchofer had

  not written with the ‘dignity’, ‘seriousness’ and ‘solidity’ used by other

  writers in their Society. Inchofer promptly responded. He offered

  to shorten the title to Vindication of the Holy Authorities.63 Inchofer acknowledged that his arguments were theological and historical,

  not mathematical. He said that his new book would vindicate the

  claims made in his Summary Treatise, which for the most part was

  not mathematical either. He explained that he followed ‘the Holy

  Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Justin and others’, as well as historical

  writers such as Cardinal Baronio, and writers against heretics, such

  as Bellarmine. Inchofer denied that there was any lack of solidity in

  his historical and theological accounts. He expected that ‘matters of

  faith’ should trump alleged mathematical demonstrations.64

  Despite his command of theology and Church history, Inchofer

  was out of his depth in the area of mathematical astronomy. In addition, his tone was too bitter and combative. For whatever reason, Inchofer did not edit and resubmit his long manuscript. Regarding

  the difference between Inchofer and some of his fel ow Jesuits,

  historian Michael Gorman remarks that ‘Inchofer’s style of argumentation from scripture and the Church Fathers’ deviated from astronomy and logical demonstrations and thus threatened ‘to place

  the mathematicians of the Jesuit order outside a global republic of

  astronomical practitioners that they had helped to create’.65

  Still, Inchofer became increasingly close with Cardinal

  Francesco Barberini, who consulted him on several occasions. 66

  Between 1637 and 1647 Inchofer served as ‘one of the Cardinal’s

  intimate ad visors on two matters: Spanish intrigues in Sicily and

  the Jansenist movement in Belgium’.67

  Meanwhile Inchofer became increasingly disgruntled with some

  fellow Jesuits. In 1645 an anonymous volume criticizing the Jesuits

  was published in Venice. For one, it accused them of indulging in

  excessive freedom in matters of philosophy. In 1648 the Jesuits put

  Inchofer on trial for having co­authored or contributed to that

  offensive book.68 He confessed to some of the charges and was 258

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  incarcerated. He died a few months later. Blackwell writes: ‘This

&nb
sp; story could hardly be more ironic. Galileo’s foremost critic at his

  trial, who was the sharpest and most damaging in his denunciation

  of the Dialogue, was fated himself fifteen years later to undergo a

  trial, condemnation, and sentence which had eerie similarities to

  what happened to Galileo. ’69

  Catholic orthodoxy extended also to the Spanish portions of

  the New World. Perhaps nothing is quite as compelling in showing that a particular belief was truly heretical as to find the record that someone was executed for such a belief. For decades writers

  have mistakenly downplayed the importance of Bruno’s belief in

  many worlds in leading to his execution. Thus it is essential not

  only to know that this belief was in fact heretical, but that apparently another clergyman in Rome had been previously executed for believing in ‘many suns’, as we saw. But furthermore, subsequently,

  the theory of the plurality of worlds was involved in the execution of

  yet another heretic. It happened in 1659, in a faraway land: Mexico.

  Just as the Catholics had denounced the transmigration of souls in

  distant India, they also denounced it in Mexico City.

  The case in question involved Sebastian Alvarez (or Albarez),

  born in Bayona de Galicia, Spain, but residing in Mexico. The record

  of 1659 stated that he was then ‘more than sixty­three years old’, so he

  had been born around 1595. He had been incarcerated allegedly ‘for

  being a sectarian of Luther, the Sacramentarians, and other heretics,

  and for inventing many and new heresies’. In his third depos ition,

  Alvarez said that thirty years earlier (roughly around 1629) he had

  written some texts that had many errors; but that once he finally read

  the Bible he realized that he himself was actually Jesus Christ. The

  Inquisitors inferred that sometimes he was possessed by the Devil.

  On the night before his auto­de­fé, the Inquisition’s public ritual of

  penance, Alvarez insisted that he truly was Christ and would resurrect in three and a half days to judge both the living and the dead.

  And then immediately, as the Inquisition’s report notes:

  He said that there exist thousands of worlds, and that in each

  of them Jesus Christ would die twice; and that having once

  died on the cross, it was now his turn to die a death by fire,

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  and he added: ‘Look, fathers, if after three days you do not

  see me resurrect, then don’t believe me’, and that he rejoiced

  to die in order to be resurrected. He insisted on the heresy

  of the transmigration of souls from some bodies to others,

  and for the many heretical blasphemies that he said, the

  clergymen asked that he wear a gag even while in prison.70

  Alvarez claimed that God had given him the ability to interpret

  scriptures, and that he actual y had within him the soul of Solomon.

  Like Bruno, Alvarez was turned over to the government so that

  he would be burned alive without using a garrotte to first kill him.

  This was the most severe kind of execution, for the gravest heresies.

  However, when Alvarez was being taken to the funeral pyre, he was

  moved by seeing a priest who cried for him. The priest then said that

  Alvarez was ‘walking toward Hell’. Alvarez asked him: ‘Father, why

  are you crying?’ The priest replied that it was for the loss of his soul.

  Alvarez then said: ‘Well, what do you want me to do, Father?’ The

  priest begged him to recant his errors. So finally Alvarez agreed, and

  retracted and confessed everything that they asked him. Afterward,

  the executioner killed Alvarez with a noose, and then threw him

  into the bonfire.71

  Records show that from 1540 until 1700 the Spanish Inquisition

  executed a total of seventeen individuals in Mexico, out of the 950

  who were put on trial for heresies. In the same time period, the

  Secretariat of Aragon (which included Mexico), plus the Secretariat

  of Castille, both constituting all of Spain and its distant lands, executed a total of 826 persons, out of more than 44,000 who were put on trial.72 The case of Alvarez holds remarkable similarities to that of Bruno. Both men allegedly voiced blasphemies about Jesus;

  both were accused of being possessed by the Devil or by demons,

  and of being Lutherans. They both spoke about many worlds and

  transmigration, both reportedly accepted their sentence fearlessly,

  and both were gagged and sentenced to execution by fire. Whether

  in Rome or in distant lands, the Catholic Inquisition suppressed

  impenitent heretics.

  In the 1680s Daniel Morhof was a German professor of history and the chief librarian at the University of Kiel. He wrote an authoritative historical encyclopaedia in which he included a chapter on Bruno and other ‘recent innovators’. Morhof ’s first paragraph 260

  Worlds on the Moon and the Stars

  Statue of

  Giordano Bruno,

  in Mexico City,

  Mexico. Sculpted

  by José Ortiz and

  Josafat Chavez

  and unveiled

  1 February 1991.

  plainly stated why the Romans killed Bruno, and he linked Bruno

  with Galileo:

  Giordano Bruno, asserted a multitude of innumerable

  Worlds and Suns, and he paid for this opinion by being

  burned alive. A plurality of Worlds, and Moons, other

  Planets, homogeneous to the Earth, was defended before

  him by Nic. of Cusa and Nic. Copernicus, and after him by

  Galileo Galilei (forced to voice a Recantation), Johannes

  Kepler, Athan. Kircher, Tomm. Campanella and other

  mathematicians.73

  Also, while discussing the followers of Epicurus, Morhof noted

  again and again that Bruno was burned for his belief in other worlds,

  ‘although there are not lacking some who think that he was executed

  for some other reason’.74 After summarizing Bruno’s opinion that many worlds exist, Morhof immediately remarked:

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  Everywhere Galileo subtly argued and presented this opinion, as other Mathematicians too who, although they do not voice all the words of the speaker, tacitly conspire with

  him. But this miserable man [Bruno] paid for his audacious

  opinion by burning alive; which greatly injured that belief;

  for it made his writings become suspected of the crime of

  Atheism.75

  Morhof noted that Campanella had written an Apology to defend

  Galileo, in which he tried to use scriptures to prove the existence of

  men on the Moon.76

  In a book of 1705 a German librarian and theologian, Johann

  Albert Fabricius, also discussed the claim that the Moon and the

  stars are inhabited. He said that Orpheus was the first to assert this

  belief, followed by the Pythagoreans and others. Fabricius noted that

  Philaster, Augustine and Praedestinatus declared that this belief was

  a heresy, and he added that, ‘in the [Corpus of] Canon Law, Cause

  24, question 3, column 39, it is ascribed as a heresy, the Ophic heresy

  which some write as Orphic’. Fabricius added that Praedestinatus

  ‘called this the heresy of the Ametritarum, namely that which to

  an infinite power attributes infinite effects, introducing infinite

  worlds. The same was taught by the Manichaeans, about
which see

  Archelaeus with Epiphanius, vol. i, p. 645. ’77

  Immediately Fabricius listed the ‘recent writers who in some

  sense said that the stars are inhabited’, namely, ‘Nicolas of Cusa, the

  miserable Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Tommaso Campanella,

  William Gilbert, René Descartes, and those who follow him, and

  Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and David Fabricius, those who

  with their own eyes have dared to see the inhabitants of the Moon’.

  About Bruno, he added a footnote: ‘Burned in Rome on 9 February

  Year 1600. His teachings were first expounded in his eight books

  on the innumerable, the immense and shapeless or the universe and

  the worlds. ’78

  Finally, in 1829 and 1830 an English antiquarian, Algernon

  Herbert, published historical conjectures that included alleged links

  between the heresies of the Pythagoreans and the Copernicans.

  Herbert, who was Dean of Merton College at Oxford University,

  argued that Pythagoras was ‘a charlatan’ who travelled widely to

  learn mystic secrets, including the idea that Earth moves around

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  a central fire; he was a ‘corrupted mystic’ who pretended to be the

  god Apollo.79

  Herbert wrote that ‘Melchior Inchofer was privy to all the

  hidden motives which had animated Galileo and his friends, in

  republishing (at the time they did) the doctrines of Pythagoras; and

  from thence conceived such a hatred of those doctrines as he evinced

  in his Treatise de terrae solisque motu.’80 Furthermore, Herbert denounced Campanella for being ‘addicted to atheism and magic’,

  he called him ‘the Anti­Christ’, inspired by an ‘infernal muse’. 81

  Herbert criticized Campanella’s dream of a Philosophical Republic:

  it superabundantly shows how justly the schemes and doctrines of the Solipses are reprobated by Father Inchofer; and how closely those impious and immoral notions were at

  the time interwoven with the Galilean astronomy. It avows

  that they intended to worship the Sun, inculcate the law of

  nature, and renew the dæmonolatrous atheism of the city

  and tower of Babel. And moreover that a certain man was

  to reign over all nations, calling himself, and pretending

  to be, the Sun, as Pythagoras pretended to be Apollo; not,