Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

by Alberto A. Martinez

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