Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition
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however, to be the Sun circumvolving but the Sun central,
which was also the secret of Pythagoras.82
Herbert used the name ‘Solipses’ to refer to those mystics accused of
being Mithraics, that is, worshippers of the Pythagorean Sun, atheists
and alchemists like Pythagoras, who believed in the transmigration
of souls.83
Thus ends my account of how the Copernicans used Pythagorean
ideas, not entirely to their own advantage. By the 1590s such ideas
seemed very offensive to Catholic censors who struggled against
the tide of Protestant beliefs. In 1616 the Inquisition denounced the
Pythagorean doctrines about the Earth and the Sun. Later, some
prominent writers, including Rusca, Campanel a, Holste, Froidmont
and Inchofer, knew well the questionable or heretical beliefs of the
Pythagoreans, including the beliefs that Bruno had tried to defend.
But Galileo seems mostly oblivious to the questionable ideas that
were blamed on Pythagoras and his followers, pagan ideas that
Christians had damned for more than a thousand years.
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Conclusion
Eventually the Catholic Church changed its views on Galileo. 84
All censures against books discussing the Earth’s motion were
removed. Yet the Church did not forgive Giordano Bruno. Even
nowadays most astronomers hardly appreciate Bruno’s importance
in the history of cosmology. Likewise, most historians of science
don’t mention Bruno when discussing Galileo’s troubles with the
Inquisition. Likewise, astronomers and historians discussing the
Copernicans sometimes mention Pythagoras merely as an ancient
mathematician or astronomer who pioneered the theory that the
Earth moves. That story is fiction, like many other claims about
Pythagoras. But historical fictions exert powerful effects on people.
By pulling together accounts by Aristotle, Diogenes, Porphyry,
Hippolytus, Macrobius and other ancient writers, we can now sketch
an ancient Pythagorean cosmology and theology:
The universe is eternal. It was not created by God. Many
gods exist – the Sun, Moon and the stars are all gods. The
stars are worlds in infinite space. The Earth has a soul. It
is alive. It moves around a central fire: the guardhouse
or prison of Jupiter. The Sun is the Creator and a Great
Geometrician, and the Moon and planets are worlds like
the Earth. Human souls descend from the Moon and are
reborn successively, even in animal bodies. Souls spend
time on each planet, and those who philosophize rise to
a kindred star. Finally, souls go to the Sun. The infernal
regions start at the Milky Way, where souls have withdrawn from the heavens, but can slip into Earthly bodies.
Pythagoras was related to the Sun god Apollo. Pythagoras
was the first philosopher. His soul was reborn multiple
times, and he remembered his past lives: he came from
Jupiter and also lived on the Moon, on Earth and in Hell.
He performed miracles and spoke to gods and the dead.
He practised silence to teach that philosophy’s treasures
should be kept secret. Measures and numbers can be used
to predict future events and to explain religion. Knowledge
by reason is super ior to knowledge by faith. Apollo exposed
the corruption of the Christians, a confused and vicious sect
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that suffers for its emphasis on faith and unreason. Jesus of
Nazareth was not God incarnate.
It is important to note that this synthesis is not found in any one
source, and that these beliefs evolved over time. Nevertheless,
this aggregate of Pythagorean views conveys a sum of ancient
accounts that, for the most part, were available and widely read in
the Renaissance. Hence parts of it came together in the minds of
readers back then.
Had it not been for the Protestant Reformation, we might
imagine that such pagan notions could have remained as fanciful, harmless legends, much as they sound to our ears today. But Rome in the 1590s was a very different world. Similarly, the times
of the early Church Fathers, around 200 to 400 ce, were tumultuous. Pagan notions threatened Christianity so they were vigorously suppressed.
Those early confrontations between Christians and the
Pythagoreans were not forgotten in the Renaissance. Catholic clergymen adhered to many writings by the ancient Church Fathers, including Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, John Chrysostom,
Jerome, Augustine and Isidore. The Church Fathers had vehemently denied that the soul of Pythagoras had been reborn or had lived in Hell. They accused Pythagoras and his disciples of faking
their deaths and resurrections. They denied the ‘Pythagorean doctrine’ that living men are formed from dead ones, and that souls are imprisoned in bodies. Such lies ‘were sent forth by Satan to
bring dishonour upon the Church’. They complained that the belief
in transmigration was shameful, indecent, and had caused ‘profane
corruptions of Christianity’ contrary to the Christian promise of
Resurrection. Such ‘perverse falsehoods’ threatened people’s faith
in Jesus Christ.
Tertullian blamed philosophers as ‘the patriarchs of heretics’,
saying that every heresy originates from them. The Church Fathers
complained that pagan philosophy was full of contradictions and was
the source of all mischief. Allegedly, philosophers disparaged faith
by seeking knowledge from too many sources, rather than having
complete faith in the words of God and Christ. The Church Fathers
denied the powers of numbers and monads, along with the supposed
eternity of the world, and the belief in unconditional immortality.
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The alleged feats of the Pythagoreans were false imitations of the
miracles of Christ.
The Christians denied the claim that souls travel between the
planets, the Earth or the stars. They vilified the claim that there
are many worlds, some with suns and moons, some inhabited.
Epiphanius scorned Pythagoras for saying that the Sun, the Moon,
stars and planets are parts of God’s body. John Chrysostom reviled
Pythagoras as extremely evil, saying that Pythagoras ‘practised ten
thousand kinds of sorcery’, to deceive fools with false doctrines
about the soul: ‘this is the snare of the Devil.’
Stil , Porphyry defended Pythagoras as divine, saying that he
was the most eminent man ever. Porphyry believed that many gods
and demons exist, and that the universe was eternal, not created.
He said that human souls spend time on the Moon and the planets
before final y going to the Sun. He said that Pythagoras taught that
the people of dreams are souls collected in the Milky Way. By comparison to his combative Fifteen Books against the Christians, it might seem that Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras was less poisonous to the
early Christians. However, one historian made the opposite point.
By the 1830s the English Reverend George Waddington explained
that by contrast to Against the Christians,
that which being more insidious, may have been more pernicious was his [Porphyry’s] ‘Life of Pythagoras’. Early in the
third century, one Philostratus, a rhetorician at Rome,
had composed a fabulous account of Apollonius of Tyana,
a celebrated philosopher and magician; and so wrought out
the supposed extraordinary incidents of his life, as to establish a close resemblance between them and the miracles of Christ. Porphyry imitated this example; and he represented
the peaceful Pythagoras as having worked by his own power
many stupendous prodigies – and having, moreover, imparted
the same power to his principal disciples, Empedocles,
Epimenides and others. Such is the weapon, which as it proceeds from the imagination, and eludes the grasp of reason, has proved at all times the most dangerous to Christianity.85
To the early Christians, the fictions of Ovid, Virgil and Porphyry
were not as harmless as they now seem. St Augustine criticized
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Pythagoras for being a necromancer who tried to divine the future
by communicating with the dead or with demons pretending to
be gods. Augustine repudiated Porphyry for communicating with
demons, for believing in transmigration and for being the bitterest
enemy of the Christians.
Such were the extensive religious accusations against the
Pythagoreans. It was against this background that Catholic clergymen in Renaissance Italy assessed claims about the confirmation of Pythagorean doctrines. To say that Pythagoras was right about
the Earth’s motion or the existence of other worlds was intimately
connected to heresies that had been denounced by the Church
Fathers.
Copernicus said that the Pythagoreans knew that the Earth
moves, he wrote as if planets are worlds, and for decades abstained
from publishing, arguing that philosophy’s secrets should be shared
only with friends, following Pythagoras. Copernicus was impressed
by the ancient letter of Lysis the Pythagorean, which portrayed
Pythagoras as godlike. The views of Giordano Bruno were even
closer to those of the Pythagoreans. He praised ‘saintly’ Pythagoras
as the first philosopher, and argued that knowledge is superior to
faith, and that a new science should be created based on Pythagorean
principles. Bruno argued that infinitely many stars exist, and that
stars and planets are worlds. He said that the universe is spatially
infinite and eternal; that it has a soul, and that it was not created. He
wrote that stars have souls, the Earth is a star, and it moves because it
has a soul. Apparently Bruno believed that human souls are repeatedly reborn, even in animal bodies. Thus Bruno defended ancient heresies, and he died for his Pythagorean convictions.
In 2008 I drafted an account titled ‘Galileo’s Pythagorean
Heresy’, which became a chapter in a book published in 2011.
Back then I did not know the many interconnections between
Pythagorean topics and the Copernican Revolution. I knew some
relevant points about Kepler and Galileo, but I had not analysed
Bruno’s case at all. Later, I was stunned to discover the extent to
which socalled Pythagorean notions featured in Bruno’s works
and trial. It led me to three important findings. First, that the ten
propositions the Inquisition censured in Bruno’s works during his
trial were not a disorganized assortment of eccentric beliefs; they
were actual y a coherent body of claims tightly interconnected
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by socalled Pythagorean notions. Second, that among dozens of
accusations, the ones that Bruno refused to recant were known as
Pythagorean beliefs. Third, that such beliefs had been official y listed
as heresies for centuries.
For a long time Bruno’s trial has intrigued writers in regard to
the Copernican theory. Historians know that Bruno’s partial support of Copernicus was not the principal point that irritated the Inquisition in the 1590s. Still, the doctrine that Earth moves was
one of ten censured propositions in Bruno’s works. Surprisingly,
nearly all of those censured propositions were widely viewed as
Pythagorean: that nothing is created (all transforms), that primal
substance is not vanity but is eternal like God, that the world has
an eternal soul (it was not created), that the universe is infinite like
God, that human souls are derived from a general principle, souls are
not form (but are captives in bodily prisons), even the Earth has a
soul and is alive, so it moves, and that there are many worlds. I know
of no evidence that such beliefs were originally held by Pythagoras –
so in that sense they were not really Pythagorean at all. However, by
the 1590s each of these beliefs had been prominently and repeatedly
characterized as Pythagorean, by writers, philosophers and clergymen, even by Bruno himself. Because so little about Pythagoras was known, the evolving misrepresentations became far more influential
than the real man.
Some of the final accusations against Bruno are unknown, five or
six of eight heresies selected by Cardinal Bellarmine. But we do know
which beliefs Bruno repeatedly refused to recant: the Pythagorean
beliefs about souls and the universe. Since he again refused to repudiate the next and final list of heresies, it seems that it included some of those Pythagorean beliefs. Indeed, after Bruno’s execution Schoppe
reported the heretical doctrines of which Bruno had been accused,
starting again with five Pythagorean beliefs: worlds are innumerable,
souls transmigrate to such worlds, one soul can take two bodies, the
Holy Spirit is the soul of the world, and the world exists eternally.
Therefore Bruno’s crime was that he obstinately advocated pagan
heresies that earlier Christians had denounced.
Other writers also entwined the Copernican and Pythagorean
beliefs. Kepler conjectured that the Pythagoreans truly knew the
structure of the heavens. He poetically wondered whether the soul
of Pythagoras had transmigrated into Copernicus or into himself.
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Kepler too imitated the Pythagoreans by keeping his opinions private. He too believed that the Moon and the planets are worlds like the Earth, and that beings live in such worlds. Writing to Galileo,
he praised Pythagoras and Plato as ‘our true masters’. Kepler tried
to decipher the Pythagorean harmony of the planets. He believed
that mathematics contains hidden divine knowledge, and he said
that Geometry is God, similarly as Hippolytus had said that the
Pythagoreans saw God as a Great Geometrician.
Campanel a agreed that Earth and the planets orbit the
Sun. He conspired to establish a similar heavenly order in society, in the Italian province of Calabria, which included the ancient Pythagorean city of Croton. Campanella envisioned a city in which
citizens would worship the Sun, without fearing death because souls
are immortal, and some are reborn. Such ‘Solarians’ would have only
one book: Wisdom, to read it like the Pythagoreans.
Galileo’s stunning discoveries gave credibility to the
Pythagoreans. His telescope provided evidence of other worlds.
Galileo noted that mountains and valleys on the Moon seemed
to revive the ‘Pythagorean’ belief that the Moon is another world.
Kepler spe
culated about its inhabitants. Galileo wrote that ‘with
absolute necessity’ the Pythagoreans were right that the planets
orbit the Sun. While Copernicus had credited some Pythagoreans,
Galileo took it a step further: he gifted credit to Pythagoras. Galileo
also saw that there are countless many more stars than previously
seen, which led some thinkers to theorize that innumerable stars
exist, as the Pythagoreans and Bruno had claimed. Galileo also
found that Jupiter might be another world, because it has moons.
Philostratus had described Pythagoras as the man who came from
Jupiter. Bruno had asserted that Jupiter is another world, and now
Kepler agreed.
Like Porphyry, Bruno, Foscarini and Campanella, now Galileo
too argued that the Church is not infallible in philosophical matters. Galileo argued that the Bible is not all literally true, like ancient pagans and recent Protestant reformers, along with other advocates
of Pythagorean doctrines: Copernicus, Zúñiga, Bruno, Kepler,
Foscarini and Campanella. They all transgressed Catholic authority,
committing the same ‘vanity’ that the Church Fathers had condemned in the Greek philosophers: they believed that philosophy can independently yield true knowledge.
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Some believers in the Earth’s motion also believed that the
Earth has a soul that is nourished by a universal spirit that vivifies
all beings. Versions of this belief were advocated by Gemma, Bruno,
Gilbert, Kepler and Campanella. Even Galileo secretly held some
such notion. Pagans and heretics had in fact or allegedly advocated
this belief, including Pythagoras, Porphyry, Origen, Novatian and
Peter Abelard. Many drew inspiration from Virgil’s Aeneid. Hence
the Copernicans faced a staggering opposition, including critiques
by Jerome, Augustine, Anselm, William of St Thierry, the Council of
Sens, Pope Innocent ii, Alfonso de Castro, Thomas Aquinas, Bishop
Tempier, Petreto, Piccolomini, Padiglia, Bellarmine and Inchofer.
Against Catholic authorities, the Copernicans thought that they
could uphold the Bible alongside the Pythagorean doctrines. They
thought that the ancient wisdom of Pythagoras could explain the
true meaning of God’s Word. This sinful lack of piety resembled
the heresies of the early Gnostics, who dared to set a portrait of