Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (1548 – February 17 1600), a.k.a. Bruno Nolano or Bruno the Nolan was an Italian philosopher, astronomer/astrologer, and occultist executed as a heretic, popularly regarded as a martyr to the cause of freedom of thought because his ideas went against church doctrine.

Life

He was born named Filippo in Nola, in Campania, the son of Giovanni Bruno, a soldier. In 1565 he took the name Giordano on becoming a Dominican friar at the Monastery of Saint Domenico near Naples. In 1572 he was ordained a priest.

Related Topics:
Nola - Campania - 1565 - Dominican - Monastery - Naples - 1572

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He was interested in philosophy and was, like Ramon Llull, an expert on the art of memory; he wrote books on mnemonic technique, which Frances Yates contends may have been disguised Hermetic tracts. The writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were, in Bruno's time, recently rediscovered and at that time were thought to date uniformly to the earliest days of ancient Egypt. They are now believed to date mostly from about 300 A.D. and to be associated with Neoplatonism. Bruno embraced a sort of pantheistic hylozoism, and not the Trinity.

Related Topics:
Philosophy - Ramon Llull - Memory - Mnemonic - Frances Yates - Hermetic - Egypt - 300 - Neoplatonism - Pantheistic - Hylozoism - Trinity

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Bruno was also heavily influenced by the ideas of Copernicus and by the newly rediscovered ideas of Plato. Other influences included Thomas Aquinas, Averroes, Duns Scotus, Marsilio Ficino, and Nicholas of Cusa.

Related Topics:
Copernicus - Plato - Thomas Aquinas - Averroes - Duns Scotus - Marsilio Ficino - Nicholas of Cusa

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In 1576 he left Naples to avoid the attention of the Inquisition. He left Rome for the same reason and abandoned the Dominican order. He travelled to Geneva and briefly joined the Calvinists, before he was excommunicated for his adherence to Copernicanism and forced to leave for France.

Related Topics:
1576 - Inquisition - Rome - Geneva - Calvinists - Excommunicated - Copernicanism - France

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In 1579 he arrived in Toulouse, where he briefly had a teaching position. At this time, he began to gain fame for his prodigious memory. Bruno's feats of memory were apparently based, at least in part, on an elaborate system of mnemonics, but many of his contemporaries found it easier to attribute them to magical powers.

Related Topics:
1579 - Toulouse

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For seven years, he enjoyed the protection of powerful French patrons, including Henry III. During this period, he published 20 books, including several on memory training, Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584), and De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584). In Cena de le Ceneri he defended the theories of Copernicus, albeit rather poorly. In De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi, he argued that the stars we see at night were just like our Sun, that the universe was infinite, with a "Plurality of Worlds", and that all were inhabited by intelligent beings (see the Drake equation). These two works are jointly known as his "Italian dialogues." In 1582, Bruno penned a play summarizing some of his cosmological positions, titled Il Candelaio ("The Torchbearer").

Related Topics:
Henry III - Copernicus - Sun - Infinite - Drake equation - 1582

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In 1583, he went to England with letters of recommendation from Henry III. He sought a teaching position at Oxford, but appears to have given offense and was denied a position there (and elsewhere in England).

Related Topics:
1583 - England - Oxford

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There is some reason to believe that during this period he acted from 1583 to 1585 as a secret agent in the household of the French ambassador to England (M Castelnau). John Bossy's Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (Yale UP, 2002), makes a case that Bruno is the previously unidentified 'Henry Fagot' whose reports to Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spy master, have been found in surviving records of Walsingham's organization. Bruno's effectiveness and value as a spy is not clear now and may not have been then; Henry Fagot's spy career seems to have begun and ended in three years.

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In 1585 he returned to Paris. However, his 120 theses against Aristotelian natural science and his pamphlet against the Roman Catholic mathematician Fabrizio Mordente soon put him in ill favor. In 1586, following a violent quarrel about "a scientific instrument", he left France for Germany.

Related Topics:
1585 - Aristotelian - Roman Catholic - Fabrizio Mordente - 1586 - Germany

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In Germany he failed to obtain a teaching position at Marburg, before obtaining permission to teach at Wittenberg, where he taught on Aristotle for two years. However, with a change of intellectual climate there, he was no longer welcome, and went in 1588 to Prague, where he obtained 300 talern from Rudolf II, but no teaching position. He went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt, but had to flee again when he was excommunicated by the Lutherans, continuing the pattern of Bruno's gaining favor from lay authorities before falling foul of the ecclesiastics of whatever sect.

Related Topics:
Marburg - Wittenberg - 1588 - Prague - Taler - Rudolf II - Helmstedt - Luther

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1591 found him in Frankfurt. Apparently, during the Frankfurt Book Fair, he received an invitation to Venice from one Zuane Mocenigo, who wished to be instructed in the art of memory, and also heard of a vacant chair in mathematics at Padua. With the death of the conservative Pope Sixtus V, Bruno apparently believed that the Inquisition might have lost some of its strength, and he concluded, erroneously, that it might now be safe to return to Italy.

Related Topics:
1591 - Frankfurt - Frankfurt Book Fair - Venice - Padua - Pope Sixtus V

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He went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, but the chair went instead to Galileo Galilei, so he continued on to Venice. He briefly functioned as a tutor to Mocenigo, who may have been disappointed that Bruno was merely teaching him a complex system of mnemonics rather than some form of magic. When Bruno attempted to leave Venice, Mocenigo denounced him to the Inquisition. He was arrested May 22, 1592, and tried before being extradited for trial in Rome in 1593.

Related Topics:
Galileo Galilei - May 22 - 1592 - 1593

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In Rome he was imprisoned for six years before he was tried, lastly in the Tower of Nona. He tried in vain to obtain an audience with Pope Clement VIII, hoping to make peace with the Church through a partial recantation. His trial, when it finally occurred was overseen by the inquisitor, Cardinal Saint Robert Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno refused. Consequently, he was declared a heretic and handed over to secular authorities on January 8 1600 and burned at the stake on February 17 1600 in Campo de' Fiori, a popular Roman square. Since 1889, there has been a monument to Bruno on the site of his execution.

Related Topics:
Tower of Nona - Pope Clement VIII - Saint Robert Bellarmine - Heretic - January 8 - 1600 - Burned at the stake - February 17 - Campo de' Fiori - 1889

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Although the actual charge against Bruno was docetism, adherence to the doctrine that Jesus did not actually have a physical body and that his physical presence was an illusion, the world of science has long claimed Bruno as a martyr. Like Galileo Galilei, his Copernicanism was a factor in his heresy trial. Unlike Galileo, some of his theological beliefs were also a factor. Also, unlike Galileo, he refused to renounce his beliefs.

Related Topics:
Docetism - Jesus - Science - Copernicanism

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At his trial, he said: Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it. Not long after, he was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, his tongue in a gag, and burned alive.

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All his works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. Four hundred years after his execution, official expression of "profound sorrow" and acknowledgement of error at Bruno's condemnation to death was made, during the papacy of John Paul II.

Related Topics:
Index Librorum Prohibitorum - 1603 - John Paul II

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