This book challenged the Roman Catholic Church's (most powerful organization of the time) views and teachings. The middle 1500's was a time of revolution, great thinkers were rising up in natural science and in philosophical thought. It was an exciting time, men of that day travelled a great deal, spoke many languages, exposed themselves to many ideas.
This is what happens, I think; when people are completely shut down by a tyranny, told what to think and what not to think....this conditioning can persist for centuries...but in one generation, as though a volcano erupts, great thinkers and movers appear and light up the night sky, people who challenge the crushing dogma and lay a foundation for modern science. I think the fact that these events happen speaks to the inherent greatness and genius of humanity, our essential inner spark defies convention, yearns for truth and freedom, refuses to bow down. The embodiment of the will and desire to be free, which is Satanic.
Bruno is and should be, listed as foremost among these; he was the brightest star to appear in the all pervading gloom of that time of oppression. He was like a Herald of the Dawn, the Light Bringer. He championed the Copernican system of astronomy, opposed the exhausting and devitalizing oppression, mind control and authority of the church and its dogma. His life stands as testament to the drive for truth, knowledge and the freedom of thought necessary to explore and to discover. He was passionate and brilliant. He was known for his profound insights, great knowledge and memory.
Copernicus inspired Bruno who was excited by the concept that all those stars he saw in the sky at night might actually be other suns, with planets like ours rotating around them....people like himself on those planets......the universe must be infinite! What a liberating concept!
He was educated as a priest at the monastery of Saint Dominico. He eventually became a dominican friar (which I would add meant he was in a minority of people who were able to read both latin and Italian. Latin, in particular, was the language of an elite group, Italian the language of the people).
What happened was he was very intelligent, and eventually his reason rebelled against the dogma of transubstantiation: which is a teaching of the catholic church meaning the whole substance of bread in communion changes into the substance of the body of christ and the wine into the blood of christ.
Which is a ridiculous notion. Also cannibalistic. It's no wonder he rebelled.
Inspired by Copernicus, he wrote and published (around 1584) in his mid thirties a book entitled "Dell Infinito, universo e mondi" ("Of Infinity, the Universe, and the World"). His book did not sit well with the church, to say the least. What is most emblematic of Bruno is his tireless appeal to reason and logic rather than parroting religious dogma and refusing to think for oneself, as the basis for determining truth, which is what makes him a Satanist, even if he didn't think of himself as such:
“He who desires to philosophize must first of all doubt all things. He must not assume a position in a debate before he has listened to the various opinions, and considered and compared the reasons for and against. He must never judge or take up a position on the evidence of what he has heard, on the opinion of the majority, the age, merits, or prestige of the speaker concerned, but he must proceed according to the persuasion of an organic doctrine which adheres to real things, and to a truth that can be understood by the light of reason." (1)
Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo (1591)
Satan has told us to doubt everything.
Bruno's ardent and earnest discussions of philosophy such as this earned the admiration of the most advanced thinkers of his time and the hatred of the Church, whose authority was being jolted to it's core by intellectual assaults such as these. The Copernican system challenged the church 's cosmological views and teachings; it also challenged the rigid social hierarchy of feudalism. The churches view of the universe with earth at the center served to reinforce the rigid order of serfs at the bottom and the pope at the pinnacle.
This was considered dangerous think by the church who feared that if their view of cosmology could be challenged, it was a short step to challenging its position at the pinnacle of society. People might begin to question. And the church was already being questioned. For example in 1517 martin luther nailed his ninety five theses to a church door in Germany which denounced the practices of the roman catholic church leading to the protestant reformation. And in 1542 the church established the roman inquisition to enforce its edicts of heresy (the crime of speaking against the churches doctrine) with torture and execution.
Bruno came to the attention of the authorities for his unorthodox religious views while still a student. He utilized his time to acquaint himself with philosophical works of ancient Greece, which was when he also discovered Copernicus. He was caught reading philosophical texts annotated by the dutch humanist philosopher Erasmus and, knowing he'd be denounced, skipped town and for the rest of his life, he wandered Europe, promoting and teaching his ideas. He is described as a philosopher, astronomer, occultist and magician.
He believed and taught that the universe is spatially infinite, possessing an infinite number of worlds similar to earth. It has been stated by science daily that there may be as many as six billion earth like planets in our galaxy.
He talked about how substance can neither be created nor destroyed. This is quantum physics.
He stated that the Earth and the stars are animate (possess rational souls). And while I can't prove this, I also believe it.
He stated the human soul is to the body like a pilot is to a ship. I know from just over a decade of study and practice of lucid dreaming that this appears to be correct.
He claimed evidence exists that there were humans before Adam and Eve. The bible indicates the earth is only three to six thousand years old, meanwhile the us military found evidence of a technology (and thus civilization) that dates to the last time Antarctica was free of ice. Which was 34 million years ago.
When Bruno stayed in Paris he wrote three books, two on mnemonics and one a play in which he denounced the church. Giovanni Gentiles observation of the content of the play is as follows:
"You will see, in mixed confusion, snatches of cutpurses, wiles of cheats, enterprises of rogues; also delicious repulsiveness, bitter sweets, foolish decisions, mistaken faith and crippled hopes, niggard charities, judges noble and serious for other men's affairs with little truth in their own; virile women, effeminate men and voices of craft and not of mercy so that he who believes most is most fooled—and everywhere the love of gold." (2)
Sounds like an accurate assessment.
He was forced to leave France, lived in England for a while where he wrote six more books, all in Italian, in which he really went into detail on his philosophical and scientific ideas. He published in the vernacular, that is, in the language the common people knew, in order to make knowledge more accessible. This was an affront to the church, of course. They were trying to limit wider dissemination of intellectual discourse by publishing only in latin! So this really pissed them off, no doubt. The printers were so afraid they didn't identify their printing houses in the books.
A German philosopher had this to say of his work:
"This doctrine ... was the first and decisive step toward man's self-liberation. Man no longer lives in the world of a prisoner enclosed within the narrow walls of a finite physical universe. He can traverse the air and break through all the imaginary boundaries of the celestial spheres which have been erected by a false metaphysics and cosmology. The infinite universe sets no limits to human reason; on the contrary, it is the great incentive of human reason. The human intellect becomes aware of its own infinity through measuring its powers by the infinite universe."(3)
Bruno's other works included a scathing indictment of the church and its repression. In this passage from theology to philosophy all forms of religion got harsh treatment but none more so than the roman catholic church. His six dialogues in Italian are considered a turning point towards the philosophy and science we enjoy now in the modern world. The ability to believe as we do now, he was denied and paid for with his life.
In 1591 Bruno was lured to Italy by an agent of the church and seized by the inquisition. He was interrogated and tortured for seven years in prison, before they finally charged him with eight acts of heresy. These charges have never been made public to this day. And Bruno refused to cooperate with them; he refused to recant!
A witness to the sentencing reported that when he was sentenced; he said:
"I neither ought to recant, nor will I."
and
"In pronouncing my sentence, your fear is greater than mine in hearing it."
immediately after the sentence of death was announced (Feb 16th 1600), they pierced his tongue with an iron spike, clamped his jaw shut with an iron gag, securing it in place with another iron spike into his palate. And then they wrapped some cloth around his head to stem the flowing blood (hence some reports say he was gagged) and he was forced to walk like jesus to his cross to the Campo dei fiori where a stake awaited him and a pyre. whereupon he was tied to it upside down. And they then lit the pyre and burned him to death, naked, before a gaping crowd.
Can one even imagine the horror? Seven long years of torture, deprivation and pressure to break down and comply; but he didn't. The utter loneliness of his situation, the physical and mental agony he must have endured and the terror? The final agonizing walk to his death in the Campo dei Fiori, knowing what was to come?
What courage he possessed! To defy those tyrants to the end! He was a brave and noble man. They offered him a crucifix just before the end, trying to get him to kiss it.
He refused.
What the church did to this man of reason and science was beyond barbaric. This was a crime against humanity, because it wasn't just a crime against Bruno, but a calculated move to stifle anybody else who might dare to think for themselves. Oppressive tyrants use intimidation, physical force and censorship. His written work is still to this day on the Vatican's forbidden texts list.
This is what tyrants do to attempt to silence people. They made an example of him in order to cow everybody else. So the violence wasn't just against Bruno, but all who witnessed this and heard of it.
But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.
From Czeslaw Milosz, Compo Di Fiori
The church didn't succeed in silencing Bruno, because in 1849 a monument to him was erected in the square where they'd executed him, just over 400 years ago now. The pope had it torn down, of course.
But guess what? Another monument for him was put up. It's a beautiful sculpture by a roman sculptor named Ettore Farrari. Bruno's image now stands on a pedestal in the Campo de Fiori where he met his brutal end. The pedestal holds medallions in remembrance of other free thinkers also persecuted by religious fanaticism. The brutes who did this atrocity's names are dust, while Bruno's courage and his story live on.
His statue has become a symbol of defiance. Defiance of the pope, the church and it's dogma and most importantly, an enduring monument to FREEDOM.
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(1) De triplici minimo by Giordano Bruno as quoted in Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science by Hilary Gatti, 1998, page 4
(2) Quoted in Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thought by Dorothea Waley Singer, 1950, page 22
(3) Quoted in The Infinite Worlds of Giordano Bruno by Antoinette Mann Paterson, 1970, pages 33-34
(4) https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/brun-f16.html
(5) https://www.aastro.in/2010/02/giordano- ... r-his.html
