Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition

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by Alberto A. Martinez


  (New York, 1967), pp. 405–8.

  297 Finocchiaro, ‘Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion’, pp. 78, 81–2.

  298 Mayer, The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, p. 124. Francesco Beretta, ‘Giordano Bruno e l’Inquisizione Romana: Considerazioni sul

  proceso’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, vii (2001), pp. 15–49.

  299 Bellarmino, Disputationes: De controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos, 2nd edn (Ingolstadt, 1588), pp. 145, 359; Bellarmino, Disputationum: De controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis

  haereticos, iv (Naples, 1858), pp. 33, 122, 136, 161, 164, 278, 384, 398, 639, 654, 678, 683.

  300 Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy, pp. 94–5.

  301 Schoppe to Rittershausen, 17 February 1600, in Macchiavellizatio, p. 32.

  302 Herbert Jaumann, Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649), Philologe im Dienste der Gegenreformation (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), p. 202.

  303 J.W.S., ‘Scioppus, Shoppius, or Schoppe, Caspar’, The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, vol. iii (Glasgow, 1857), p. 746.

  304 Frances Huemer, Rubens and the Roman Circle (New York, 1996), p. 11.

  305 For example, Gregory noted that fovebat aquas is another translation of ferebatur super aquas (without referring to Bruno or Schoppe); Gregory,

  Anima Mundi, p. 126.

  306 Marsilii Ficini, In Plotini epitomae, seu argumenta, commentaris & annotationes, in Ficini, Operum [ Opera]: in quo compraehenduntur ea, quae ex Graeco in Latinum Sermonem doctrissime transtulit, exceptis Platone

  atque Plotino Philosophis, ii (Basel, 1561): ‘In librum De coelo [Plotinus], Comment. Summa Totius Libri’, p. 1597.

  307 In an unpublished manuscript, Bruno wrote Virgil’s words: ‘Principio coelum et terras, camposque liquentes, Lucentemque globum lunae,

  296

  References

  Titaniaque astra, Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per arctus, Mens

  agitat molem’, followed by the biblical line: ‘Spiritus Domini replevit

  orbem terrarium et hoc quod contient omnia.’ See Lutoslawski, ‘Jordani

  Bruni Nolani opera inedita’, p. 539.

  308 Irenaei, Adversus haereses, i, chap. 25, sec. 4, pp. 264–5.

  309 Paula Fredriksen, Sin: The Early History of an Idea (Princeton, nj, 2012), pp. 1, 99–100.

  310 Jerome, Epistle to Pammachius.

  311 ‘The Anathematisms of the Emperor Justinian Against Origen’, in The Fifth Ecumenical Council, Second Council of Constantinople (553 ce),

  in Callisti, Ecclesiasticæ historiæ, p. 893.

  312 Schoppe to Rittershausen, 17 February 1600, in Macchiavellizatio, p. 34.

  313 Martínez, ‘Giordano Bruno and the Heresy of Many Worlds’, p. 362.

  314 Philosophers often used other expressions, such as: ‘multos mundos’,

  ‘mundos alios’, ‘pluribus mundis’, ‘plures esse mundos’, ‘mundos asserit

  innumerabiles’; and in Italian, ‘innumerabili mondi’, ‘molti mondi’,

  ‘infiniti mondi’, and so on.

  315 Schoppe to Rittershausen, 17 February 1600, in Macchiavellizatio, p. 31.

  316 For example, Crowe, Extraterrestrial Life Debate (1986), p. 8. Crowe’s important book focused on the period from 1750 onwards, so he did

  not take into account the evidence presently discussed; he mainly

  echoed Dick, Plurality of Worlds, p. 69. However, Dick later moved away

  from that opinion: Steven Dick, Extraterrestrial Life and Our World

  View at the Turn of the Millennium (Washington, dc, 2000), p. 9; and

  Dick, Life on Other Worlds: The 20th­century Extraterrestrial Life Debate

  (Cambridge, 1998), p. 10.

  317 Pope Zacharias (748 ce), paraphrased in Caesare Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici, ix (Rome, 1600), p. 191.

  318 Joannis Heckij [Joannes Heckius], ‘Super Plinij. ii. Historias Na[tura]

  les’ (Archivio Linceo, Rome, MS. 21), p. 11 verso. The title page seems to

  superimpose two dates: ‘Incepi die i9a, Septembris anno i600’ or ‘i60i’.

  319 Stobaeus wrote: ‘Metrodorus [of Chios], the teacher of Epicurus’, spoke of the production of the infinite, and Stobaeus noted that ‘Anaximander,

  Anaximenes, Archelaus, Xenophanes, Diogenes [of Apollonia],

  Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, [posited] infinitely many in infinity

  according to the entire circuit.’ See Ioannis Stobaei, Eclogarum

  physicarum et ethicarum (Göttingen, 1792), i, pp. 497–8; see also pp. 57, 293, 491. Also, Metrodorus had reportedly argued: ‘It would be strange if

  a single ear of corn grew in a large plain or if there were only one world

  in the infinite,’ according to Simplicius, quoted in Francis Cornford,

  ‘Innumerable Worlds in Presocratic Philosophy’, Classical Quarterly,

  xxviii/1 (1934), p. 13.

  320 See also Iain Gardner and Samuel Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 12, 16, 57, 85, 88, 199–208, 218, 221, 224.

  321 Heckij, ‘Super Plinij’, p. 18 verso, emphasis added.

  322 Ibid., p. 38 verso.

  323 Lucio Vero Clarimontano [pseudonym], Nova Apocalypsis inqua Innocentia Cæsaris Augusti et Fidelium Imperio Principum et Noxa

  Rebellium (Luxembourg, 1626), p. 160.

  297

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  324 The Works of Aurelius Augustine, v: Writings in Connection with the Manichaean Heresy, trans. Richard Stothert (Edinburgh, 1872), pp. 110–11, 116, 191, 277, 281.

  325 Epiphanius, Panarion, secs ii 4:3, 5:4, v 2:6, xxv 2:1, and xxvi 3:6, 9:9–

  10:0. Filastrii [Philaster], Diversarum hereseon liber, in Fridericus Marx, ed., Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, xxxviii (Prague, 1898), p. 18.

  326 Ibid., Scholion 24(b), and p. 236.

  2 Aliens on the Moon?

  1 Several outstanding books provide such a comprehensive account, for example: Annibale Fantoli, Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church, trans. George Coyne (Notre Dame, in, 1994); William Shea

  and Mariano Artigas, Galileo in Rome (Oxford, 2003); J. L. Heilbron,

  Galileo (Oxford, 2010); David Wootton, Galileo, Watcher of the Skies (New Haven, ct, 2010); Maurice Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A

  Documentary History (Berkeley, ca, 1989). Much of the material that will now be discussed is not found in any of those works, and vice versa.

  2 Francisci Piccolominei, Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium, partes quinque (Frankfurt, 1597), part 2: ‘De Coelo’, chaps 5–10,

  pp. 420–30.

  3 Ibid., chap. 13, p. 521.

  4 Ibid., chap. 5, p. 506, emphasis added.

  5 Ibid., chap. 29, p. 463.

  6 [Anon.], c. May–July 1600, quoted in Tiziana Provvidera, ‘A New English Document on Giordano Bruno’, Bulletin of the Society for

  Renaissance Studies, xix (2002), p. 25. The spelling has here been

  modernized.

  7 Guilielmi Gilberti, De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure (London, 1600), v, chap. 12, pp. 208–9.

  8 Ibid., p. 209.

  9 Ibid., p. 228.

  10 Ibid., p. 210.

  11 Ioannis de Pineda, Commentariorum in Iob libri tredecim (Seville, 1598), chap. 9, p. 461 [462]. See also Pineda, Commentaria in Job (Antwerp,

  1612), p. 416.

  12 Augustino Petreto, D. O. M. turris Babel, et totius civitatis Babilonis haeresos vasta destructio (Reggio nell’Emilia, 1601), n.p., item 52.

  13 Ibid., item 250.

  14 Ibid., item 165.

  15 Ibid., item 25.

  16 Ioh. Keppleri, Somnium [ c. 1609], seu Opus posthumum de astronomia lunari, divulgatum à Ludovico Kepplero filio (Žagań and Frankfurt, 1634).

  17 Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. C. Hellman (London, 1959), pp. 58–60.

  18 Ibid., p. 62.

  19
Ibid., p. 63.

  20 Max Caspar, Johannes Kepler, 4th edn (Stuttgart, 1995), p. 109.

  21 Caspar, Kepler (1959), p. 93.

  298

  References

  22 Ioanne Keplero, Prodromus dissertationum cosmographicum, contiens mysterium cosmographicum, de admirabili proportione orbium coelestium

  (Tübingen, 1596), pp. 1, 4, 6, 23. According to the Placita (see above,

  chap. 1, n.15), Pythagoras taught that the world was formed of the five

  regular solid figures. De placita philosophorum, i, chaps 9 and 24; ii,

  chap. 6.

  23 Kepler, letter to Maestlin, quoted in Caspar, Kepler (1959), p. 69.

  24 Keplero, Mysterium cosmographicum, p. [ii].

  25 Kepler to Duke Frederick of Württemberg, 17 February 1596, in Johannes Kepler, Gessamelte Werke, ed. G. Dyck and Max Caspar, xiii

  (Munich, 1938), p. 218.

  26 For a discussion of Bruce’s friendship with Kepler and Galileo, see Massimo Bucciantini, Galileo e Keplero, filosofia, cosmologia e teologia

  nell’età della Contrariforma (Turin, 2005), pp. 93–116.

  27 Edmund Bruce to Kepler, 5 November 1603, in Kepler, Opera Omnia, ed. Christian Frisch, vol. ii (1923), p. 568. Kepler, Gesammelte Werke,

  ed. Max Caspar, iv (Munich, 1938), p. 450; trans. Robert Westman.

  28 Robert Westman, The Copernican Question (Berkeley, ca, 2011), p. 375.

  29 Joannis Keppleri, De stella nova in pede serpentarii (Prague, 1606), chap.

  24, p. 121, emphasis in the original. Also in Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, i, p. 267.

  30 Kepler to David Fabricius, 11 October 1605, in Gesammelte Werke, xv, p. 258.

  31 Corn. Gemma, De naturæ divinis characterismis (Antwerp, 1575), p. 34.

  For discussion, see Hiro Hirai, Cornelius Gemma: Cosmology, Medicine,

  and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Louvain (Rome, 2008), p. 24.

  32 Ibid., p. 77.

  33 Cornelii Gemmae, De arte cyclognomica, iii (Antwerp, 1569), pp. 91–2.

  34 Kepler to Johannes Brengger, 30 November 1607, in Opera Omnia, ii (Frankfurt, 1859), pp. 591–2.

  35 Kepler to Brengger, 5 April 1608, in ibid., p. 592.

  36 Kepler, Astronomia nova de motibus stellæ Martis ex observationibus Tychonis Brahe (Prague, 1609), trans. William Donahue as New

  Astronomy (Cambridge, 1992), p. 66.

  37 Nicolai Serarii, Iosue, ab utero ad ipsum usque tumulum (Paris, 1610), chap. 10, p. 1006.

  38 It has become common to translate Sidereus Nuncius as Starry Messenger.

  The word ‘messenger’ is a possible translation for nuncius, but other

  translations are ‘news’ or ‘message’. Albert Van Helden and others

  choose to read it as ‘messenger’ partly because Kepler titled his reply:

  Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (1610). Kepler wrote about his ‘Discussion with the Starry Messenger’, namely Galileo. Evidently Kepler meant

  messenger by nuncio, yet the word he used was different from nuncius in Galileo’s book title. Yet following the principle that I do not use

  later sources to explain previous sources, I therefore don’t agree that

  Galileo titled his own book Starry Messenger; instead, news (novelties)

  or message from the stars seems more appropriate to its contents since

  it is not about any messenger. Accordingly some translators, such as

  William Shea, have recently rendered the title as A Sidereal Message. For 299

  burned alive

  discussion, see Edward Rosen, ‘The Title of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius’, Isis, xli/3–4 (December 1950), pp. 287–9. Rosen notes that Galileo’s early drafts and later writings show that his book’s purpose was ‘simply to

  report the news about recent developments in astronomy, not to pass

  himself off solemnly as an ambassador from heaven’.

  39 In 1609 Cosimo ii became Grand Duke of Tuscany. By portraying the four satellites of Jupiter as emblems of the rising Medici

  dynasty, corresponding to Cosimo ii and his three brothers, Galileo

  gained Cosimo’s favour and advanced his career: from being a mere

  mathematician at the University of Padua he became appointed as

  philosopher of the noble Medici court. For analysis, see Mario Biagioli,

  Galileo, Courtier (Chicago, il, 1993), pp. 103–57.

  40 Bruno, De immenso et innumerabilibus, seu de universo et mundis, iii, in Jordani Bruni, Opera latine conscripta, ed. F. Fiorentino, vol. i/2

  (Naples, 1879), p. 324.

  41 Galileo Galileo [Galilei], Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1610), title page.

  42 Bruno, De immenso, i and ii, in Opera, vol. i, pp. 210, 269.

  43 Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius, p. 28 reverso.

  44 Giordano Bruno, De l’infinito universo et mondi ([Venice], 1584), p. 66.

  45 Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius, p. 28 reverso.

  46 Bruno, De l’infinito universo et mondi, pp. 71, 87, 111.

  47 Giordano Bruno, De gli heroici furori (Paris, 1585), Fifth Dialogue (n.p.).

  48 Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius, p. 9. See also Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger, trans. Albert Van Helden (Chicago, il, 1989), p. 43.

  49 Giordano Bruno, La cena delle Ceneri (London, 1584), pp. 10–11, 55, 65, 69–70.

  50 Galilei, letter to Giuliano de’ Medici, 1 January 1611, in Antonio Favaro, ed., Le opere di Galileo Galilei. Edizione Nazionale, 20 vols (Florence, 1890–1909, repr. 1929–38), xi, p. 12.

  51 Ioannis Kepleri, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo nuper ad mortales misso a Galilaeo Galillaeo (Prague, 1610), p. 1. For an account of Wackher

  and Kepler’s friendship, see ‘Kepler and Bruno on the Infinity of the

  Universe and of Solar Systems’, Journal for the History of Astronomy,

  xxxix (2008), pp. 469–95.

  52 Martin Hasdale to Galileo Galilei, 15 April 1610, in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, Prima edizione completa, 15 vols (Florence, 1842–56), viii (1851), p. 59.

  53 Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, pp. 25, 33.

  54 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

  55 Ibid., p. 25.

  56 A couple of historians who have not neglected this point are Saverio Ricci, La fortuna del pensiero di Giordano Bruno, 1600–1750 (Florence,

  1990), and Laura Varanini, ‘La Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo fra Galileo e Bruno’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, ix/1 (2003), pp. 207–15.

  57 Ibid., p. 22.

  58 Ibid., p. 24.

  59 Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, trans. E. Rosen, Kepler’s Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger (New York, 1965), pp. 27–8.

  60 Michaele Maestlino, Disputatio in multivariis motuum planetarum in 300

  References

  coelo apparentibus irregularitatibus (Tübingen, 1606), quoted in Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, p. 18.

  61 Martini Horky, Brevissima peregrinatio contra Nuncium Sidereum (Modena, 1610), reprinted in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei:

  Edizione Nazionale, iii/1, p. 141.

  62 General Inquisitor at Modena, Michael Angelus Lerrius, 18 June 1610, in ibid., p. 134.

  63 John Wedderburn, Quatuor problematum quae Martinus Horky contra Nuntium Siderum de quatuor planetis novis disputanda proposuit.

  Confutatio (Padua, 1610), reprinted in Favaro, ed., Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale, iii/1, p. 162.

  64 T., ‘Campanella (Thomas)’, in John Bernard et al., A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, iv (London, 1736), p. 85.

  65 Bernardino Telesio, De rerum natura iuxta propriis principiis (Naples, 1586).

  66 Tommaso Campanella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata (Naples, 1591).

  67 Ibid., pp. 322–3. Ficino worked on his Latin translation of the Enneads of Plotinus, with commentaries, from 1484 until 1490, which was finally

  published in 1492, in Florence. Previously the works of Plotinus had
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  been unavailable since late antiquity.

  68 Marsilii Ficini, Librum tertium de vita coelitus comparanda [1489] , compositus ab eodem inter Commentaria eiusdem in Plotinum [1490], in

  Marsilii Ficini, Opera & quae hactenus extitêre, i (Basel, 1561), iii, p. 535,

  [on Plotinus] chap. 2. For the words by Iarchas, see Philostratus, The Life

  of Apollonius of Tyana (Cambridge, 1948), iii, chap. 42, p. 322.

  69 Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno (Rome, 1993), p. 253.

  70 Campanella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, ed. Luigi de Franco (Naples, 1992), pp. 523–5. For discussion see Germana Ernst, Tommaso

  Campanella: The Book and the Body of Nature, trans. David Marshall

  (New York, 2010), pp. 12–13.

  71 Bernardini Telesii, Quod Animal vniversvm ab vnica Animae substantia gubernatur, adversvs Galenvm liber vnicus, ed. Antonio Persio (Venice,

  1590).

  72 Tommaso Campanella, ‘Proemio. A Gasparo Schioppo’ (1608), excerpt in Oeuvres choisies de Thomas Campanella, ed. Louise Colet (Paris,

  1844), p. 24. See also Germana Ernst, ed., L’ateismo trionfato: overo

  riconoscimento filosofico della religione universale contra l’antichristianesmo Macchiavellesco, i (Pisa, 2004).

  73 Léon Blanchet, Campanella (Paris, 1920), p. 25. Campanella had published this argument in his book De sensitiva rerum facultate, now

  lost.

  74 Thomas Mayer, The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640

  (Philadelphia, pa, 2014), p. 47. Mayer provides a thorough account of the

  political and bureaucratic events by which Campanella was processed.

  75 Ernst, Tommaso Campanella, p. 75.

  76 Campanella, ‘Proemio. A Gasparo Schioppo’ (1608), in Oeuvres choisies, pp. 23–4.

  77 Ernst, Tommaso Campanella, p. 77. Campanella did not specify his source for the story that Pythagoras faked his resurrection by hiding

  301

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  underground but that story had been criticized by ancient writers: by

  the Athenian satirist Hermippus, by Celsus, who argued that Jesus was

  not unique and was perhaps a magician, by Diogenes, the biographer

  of philosophers, and by Tertullian, the Christian critic of false prophets.

  For example, see Tertullian, ‘xvii. De Anima’ ( c. 215 ce), ed. J. H.

  Waszink, in Tertulliani Opera, ii, ed. E. Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout, 1954), chap. 28, pp. 824–5. This story is a

 

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