March 23, 2022 • 39 mins
Bruno was a mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, occultist, and according to the Catholic church of 16th-century Italy, a heretic. He met a bad end because of his views, but he started out as a friar.
Research:
- Aquilecchia, Giovanni. "Giordano Bruno". Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Feb. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno
- “Giordano Bruno.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. May 30, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bruno/
- Martinez, Alberto A. “Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition.” Reaktion Books. 2018.
- Rosenthal, Erwin I.J.. "Averroës". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Averroes
- Alberto A. Martinez Giordano Bruno and the heresy of many worlds, Annals of Science. 73:4, 345-374. 2016. 10.1080/00033790.2016.1193627
- Rowland, Ingrid D. “Giordano Bruno Philosopher, Heretic.” Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2008.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's
subject was a mathematician, a philosopher, and astronomer, and occultist, and,
(00:23):
according to the Catholic Church of the sixteenth century Italy,
a heretic uh. He was also really comfortable writing pretty
scathing critiques of people he disagreed with. We are going
to talk about Giordano Bruno today, who spoiler alert met
a bad end because of his views. But there's actually
been some debate over what exactly was the thing that
(00:45):
caused him to be finally found officially to be a
heretic uh. And we'll talk about that a bit at
the very end. He's an interesting story because he has
the trajectory of starting out in a religious career and
then because coming a heretic. So we're gonna jump right
(01:05):
into how Bruno went from being a friar to his
heretical life. Yeah. So Bruno was born Philippo Bruno in
and Nola, Italy. That's about thirty kilometers east of Naples.
His father was a soldier and at the age of fourteen,
Bruno left Nola to travel to Naples for his studies.
(01:29):
Among the many areas of education he had focusing on
humanities and dialectics, Bruno was also exposed to the work
of the Muslim philosopher Ebben Roused more commonly known to
European scholars as Avarroas. Avroas had lived in the twelfth
century and sought to combine the work of Greek philosophers
(01:49):
with the ideologies of Islamic traditions. He had written extensively
on the works of Aristotle and Plato and was deeply
influential for the philosophers who came after him. Bruno also
studied memory and recall and the way humans can teach
themselves to remember things using mnemonic devices and other prompts. Yeah,
all of this is interesting because he was exposed to
(02:12):
it so early on in his life, and these kinds
of ideas of like combining science and religious ideology, his
his memory, teaching to other people all comes back throughout
his life and becomes really important. So while he was
studying in Naples, Bruno made an impression on his teachers
for his astonishing memory. In fifteen sixty nine, he was
(02:34):
sent to perform for the Pope, showing off his recall ability,
and then three years after moving to Naples for his education,
Bruno joined the Dominican Order and moved into the convent
of San Domenico Maggiore. It was at this point that
he took the name Giordano. He was ordained as a
friar in fifteen seventy two after seven years with the Order,
(02:55):
but he continued his studies in Naples, finishing his religious
scholarship program in fifteen seventy five. Though Bruno had been
ordained and had been encouraged to continue his studies, there
had been from the beginnings of his life with the
Dominican Order some concerns about his heretical leanings, and he
did want to discuss heretical ideas. One that was of
(03:18):
interest to him is what's known as the Arian heresy,
named for the third century priest from Alexandria named Arius.
This heretical doctrine put forth the idea that Christ was
not divine, but was an instrument of the divine. Yeah,
we'll talk so much more about his his thoughts and
writings about Christ and why those upset people. Uh, because
(03:43):
you're donno. Bruno openly discussed this idea and others as
worthy of consideration, and of course, because questioning the Holy
Trinity was very dangerous, he found himself charged with heresy
for the first time by the Neapolitan leaders of the
Order in early fifteen seventy six, But rather than face
a heresy trial, Bruno decided he would just leave the
(04:05):
city and he headed to Rome. That only lasted a
couple of months because when additional heretical texts were found
among the things he left behind in Naples, including works
of Erasmus which questioned the powers of the papacy, and
the entire structure of the Catholic Church, which Bruno had
notated himself in the margins, so they knew he had
(04:26):
read it. The search for the heretical fugitive intensified, and
Rome was no longer safe, so Bruno was once again
on the run. This time he left behind all of
his ties to the Catholic Church and his life as
a friar. For a couple of years, Bruno was on
the move, traveling around northern Italy. He said to have
made his way by picking up odd jobs like teaching
(04:48):
Latin or basic astronomy to students and interested adults. Then
in fifteen seventy eight he left Italy and went to Geneva, Switzerland.
For a while, he survived there taking copy, editing and
proofing work. But though he had been branded a heretic
by the Catholic Church and had left his life in
the Naples clergy, he still really sought a religious haven
(05:12):
for himself. He briefly thought he might have found it
in Calvinism. So for context, John Calvin had been born
just a little less than forty years before Bruno, and
he had died fourteen years before the former Dominican found
himself in Geneva. Bruno saw so much potential in the
reformist ideas of Calvin's book, Institute of the Christian Religion,
(05:36):
which had first been published in the mid fifteen thirties
and had been reissued already many times in the intervening decades.
So Gjordano Bruno converted to Calvinism while he was in Switzerland,
but he continued to have a questioning nature, and he
got into trouble with the Calvinist Church just as he
had the Catholic Church. He wanted to examine doctrine rather
(05:58):
than follow it, and while he had believed that approach
would be more welcomed in his new church, he was
ultimately incorrect. The final straw was a pamphlet he published
which openly criticized a prominent Calvinist. Soon he was arrested
and excommunicated. He retracted the writing which had caused the
rift with the church to get out of any serious repercussions,
(06:21):
but once again he was a man with no religious affiliation.
After that, strife with the Calvinist Church in Geneva was
more or less resolved. Bruno moved on once again, and
this time he headed to France. While spending time first
and to lose, he continued to be troubled by his
rift with the Catholic Church, and to rectify the situation,
(06:41):
he formally requested absolution. He wanted to make amends with
the church and offer penance in the hopes of being
officially forgiven, but he was denied, despite the fact though
that he was still considered a heretic, which of course
had considerable weight. In the fifteen seventies, Giordano Brune was
able to find work teaching philosophy and to lose, and
(07:03):
that was something that he did for roughly two years.
In fifteen eighty one, Bruno moved on to Paris after
escalating tensions between Huguenos and Catholics Interlus made that city
too dangerous to stay in. This ultimately led to the
fifteen sixty two riots of to Lose, But Jordano Bruno
was long gone by the time that happened, and those
(07:25):
issues and to Lose were reflective of a bigger issue
in France. In the fifteen eighties, France was smack dab
in the middle of its wars of religion. At this point,
it was actually sort of a perfect time for Bruno
to move to Paris. Though the Hugueno massacre at Vassi
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day were well in
(07:45):
the past, the Huguenots had been granted the freedom to
worship Henry the Third, who was one of Catherine de
Medici's sons and had been one of the conspirators, and
the St. Bartholome Use Day massacre, was king of France
when Bruno moved to Paris, and Henry the Third really
liked Jordano Bruno so much so that he made him
(08:06):
a royal lecturer. Bruno had fallen in with the politiques,
that's the faction in the religious words that was Catholic
but moderate and wanted compromise in religious matters as a
means for unity for France, rather than the emergence of
any single religion as dominant in ruling. While in Paris,
Bruno wrote and published a great deal. He had finally
(08:29):
kind of found like where he might have belonged, at
least for a moment. He produced several works that were
rooted in his study and fascination with memory, which elaborated
far beyond the idea of recall and kind of focused
on how a person could use their memory to develop
a deeper understanding of reality. He wrote a comedy in
fifteen eighty two called The Candle Maker. This play, if stage,
(08:53):
would run at an estimated five hours, and the author
in the original is listed as Bruno the Nolan, the
academic of No Academy, nicknamed the Exasperated. His exasperation was
with society as a whole. He felt there was corruption
all around and that people claiming morality were often lax
(09:14):
and upholding it. It was essentially a protest play. We
should point out Bruno was kind of exasperated with a
lot of people. A lot of the time, if you
thought somebody was foolish or frivolous or pompous, he did
not hesitate to write scathing critiques of them. Now, he's
a little bit of a firebrand in this regard, and
(09:35):
I think he kind of liked the conflict like it.
It fueled him. That's my speculation. When we come back,
we're going to talk a little bit more about political
and religious strife in France, as well as Bruno's time
in England. But first we are going to pause for
a quick sponsor break. In four, Henry the Third's brother,
(10:04):
Francis Dudanjou died, and this made Henry of Navarre air
presumptive to the throne of France, and that catalyzed a
new rise in the conflict among France's religious factions, in
what became known as the War of the Three Henry's.
But Bruno was lucky enough to have left the country
before that happened. In three he had moved from Paris
(10:25):
to London, and King Henry the Third had sent along
with him a letter of recommendation, which Bruno took to
Michele de Caston. Now the French ambassador to Queen Elizabeth
the First Court. For a while, Bruno went to Oxford
where he lectured on astronomy. But Bruno's views did not
go over well at Oxford, so he quickly returned to Court,
(10:47):
convinced that the alleged intellectuals of Oxford were beneath him.
That cracks me up. Returning to Elizabeth's Court connected him
to another recent podcast subject, that was Mary Sidney Herbert,
because Bruno became friends with her brother, Sir Philip Sidney.
He apparently did not thank Sir Philip Sidney was beneath him,
just the so called intellectuals of Oxford. Yeah, it was
(11:12):
basically like, um, you know, if you don't believe me,
clearly you are a ding dong. Sydney, of course, had
a wide circle of intellectual acquaintances, and through them Bruno
was invited to speak once again with scholars from Oxford.
It once again did not go well. A fight actually
(11:32):
broke out in which Bruno called one of the men
that he had met with a pig. Bruno started writing
a comprehensive explanation of his thoughts on morality and cosmology
in the wake of the skirmish at Oxford. This resulted
in a six volume set that's referred to as the
Italian Dialogues. Three of the volumes, the Ash Wednesday Supper,
(11:55):
concerning the Cause Principle in one and on the Infinite
Universe and World's Examined the Universe and Our Understanding of It.
And the other three, which were The Expulsion of the
Triumphant Beast, Cabal of the Horse Pegasus, and the Heroic Frenzies,
work through Bruno's views on morality, often in a way
(12:16):
that's highly critical of society. Yeah, he was a critical
gent in the Ash Wednesday Supper. Bruno is a character
in the writing. He calls himself the Nolan, which we
had mentioned him using before that signified his birthplace of Nola,
and another character, tail Field, serves as the purveyor of
Bruno The writer's ideas, including the idea that there are
(12:39):
innumerable worlds. He subscribed to the idea that the universe
was infinite and that there could be other solar systems
like ours. He wrote of the belief that space could
be finite. Quote supposed now that all space were created
finite if one were to run on to the end
to its furthest coasts and throw a flying dart. Would
(13:01):
you have it that the dart hurled with might and
main goeth on whether it is sped flying afar, or
thank you that something can check and bar its way
for whether there be something to check it and bring
about that it arriveth not whether it was sped and
planteth not itself in the goal, or whether it fareth
(13:23):
forward yet it's set not forth From the end. He
continued his argument with quote, we cannot deny infinity merely
because we do not sensibly perceive it. Ya. So in
case that um definitely uh older style of writing was
in any way confusing, and blessed Tracy for reading it.
(13:45):
He's basically like, if you go to the edge of
space and throw a dart, is it gonna doink back
and hit you? Like? What do you think happens? Because
the we've never found that. So all of this meant
that Bruno so supported helio centrism. Now that idea was
of course not new in the sixteenth century. As early
(14:06):
as the fifth century b c. There were philosophers in
Greece that were suggesting that the earth might be revolving
around a central fire, but that concept and theories that
built on it had not become accepted, in part because
it was just so difficult to reconcile the idea of
the planet being in motion while we are also able
(14:26):
to see what appeared to be fixed objects in the
night sky, like star clusters that were observed night after night.
By the time Bruno was writing about helio centrism, it
had come once again to the forefront of cosmological discussion.
In the mid fifteenth century, the German religious scholar Nicholas
of Cusa had worked on an idea that Earth was
(14:49):
influential in the movement of the universe, but that it
was not the center around which other things revolved. Copernicus
had published six books can earning the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Orbs, just a few years before Bruno's birth. It's
really when heliocentrism started gaining a foothold in cosmological circles.
(15:09):
So though Bruno's writing was just supporting what other intellectuals
at the time were already espousing, he was definitely doing so.
When the idea was far from a settled matter, it
was still really controversial to put it in context on
the historical timeline. Galileo was put on trial by the
Inquisition over his support of the Copernical heliocentric theory, almost
(15:32):
fifty years after Bruno wrote in support of it. But
Bruno's writing integrates this idea of an infinite universe with
the idea of a God that held dominion over infinity.
This was absolutely not a rejection of Christian beliefs. For him.
Bruno wrote in on the Infinite Universe and World quote,
(15:53):
so great is God's excellence that it is manifested in
the greatness of his empire. It is not glorified in
one but in innumerable suns, not in one earth, one world,
but in ten hundred thousand, I say, in infinite. A
very controversial view that Bruno held and included in the
(16:13):
Italian Dialogues is his case that the Bible is great
as a guide for a moral life, but it's not
a text that should be used as the basis of
astronomical information. He made lots of assertions about there being
other worlds in the cosmos which would probably support life,
none of which had ever been mentioned in biblical writing.
(16:35):
He got a lot of things wrong in his guesses
about how things might work, but he was able to
grasp the idea that the Earth might not be all
that singular in the vastness of space. For these ideas
and others, Bruno knew the Italian Dialogues would not be
welcomed in Italy, so he published them outside of his
(16:56):
home country. Yeah, there's some cute additional on that where
he kind of still wanted to make it seem like
they were published in Italy that we could talk about
in the behind the scenes um. In the fall of five,
Bruno decided to return to France. But in that short
time he had been away, that conflict among the Henry's
(17:17):
had started, and he did not find himself in a
group of moderates as he had before. His moderate friends
had gotten a little more hardline in their beliefs, Henry
the Third had taken a stronger stance against all non Catholics. Uh,
it would have been smart on Bruno's part to kind
of keep his head down and maybe dial back his
constant critiques of just about everyone in an environment like this,
(17:41):
But instead he got in a very public argument with
Fabrizio mor Dente, an Italian mathematician who was also Catholic
and well connected to Catholic political leaders in France at
the time. Bruno also made a focused attack on the
work of Aristotle in six with the writing of twenty
articles on nature and the World against the Peripatetics. Because
(18:05):
of his ongoing strife with so many Catholics and his
increasingly unpopular views, the politics distanced themselves from Bruno. He
next moved on to Germany. He taught and wrote as
he traveled the country, and produced the work A hundred
and sixty articles in fifty eight. In this he asserted
that all religions could coexist peacefully if they would stop
(18:28):
attacking one another and foster communication. In early fifteen eighty nine,
Bruno was banished from yet another religious sect, this time
the Lutherans, who he tried to join up with briefly.
So if you're keeping score, he had now been excommunicated
by the Catholics, the Calvinists, and the Lutherans, and after
(18:49):
his fallout with the Lutheran Church, Bruno worked on a
book about the connection between mathematics and magic, although that
was not published In his lifetime, he also continued to
reiterate his idea is from the Italian Dialogues in new
writings specifically three poems that he wrote in Latin, on
the threefold minimum and Measure, on the monad number and figure,
(19:10):
and on the Immeasurable and Innumerable. Bruno also included some
new ideas in these poems alongside the concepts that he
was echoing from his previous work, and one of these
new ideas was the concept of matter being made up
of tiny, tiny particles. This was essentially an early exploration
of the idea of Adams. Although he was doing all
(19:31):
this writing, he couldn't publish any of it because of
all of his fallouts with basically everyone he knew. He
couldn't publish in Italy, so in fifteen ninety he asked
to be granted residency in Frankfurt, where he hoped to
publish his work, but that request was denied. He tried,
it seems, to get around that denial by moving into
(19:52):
a Carmelite convent in Frankfurt. The head of the convent
didn't really seem to love that arrangement because he felt
that Bruno was actually religious at all and had become
vain and obsessed with quote novelties in his work. In Fife,
Bruno traveled once again to Italy, not to roam more Naples,
(20:13):
where he still would have certainly been an outcast, but
he was just traveling across northern Italy en route to
the Republic of Venice, which was not part of Italy
at this time. This was a move that was catalyzed
by being asked to come to Venice by a nobleman
of the city, and this might sound like a pretty
rash move to head back through a country where he
(20:34):
had been a wanted man for a long time at
this point for his heretical ideas, but the circumstances were
such that it probably didn't seem all that dangerous for Bruno.
Gregory had been pope when Bruno had become a fugitive
in the fifteen seventies. He had died in fifteen eighty
five and was replaced by Sixtus the Fifth, but six
(20:57):
of the Fifth had died in fifteen ninety, and after
that there were three popes in rapid succession. Urban the
seventh was pope for only twelve days, and then Gregory
the fourteenth had become pope in December off and while
Bruno couldn't have known it when he made his way
to Venice in late summer of Gregory the fourteenth also
(21:20):
would not be pope that much longer. He died in October,
he would be replaced by Innocent the ninth, who was
pope for only twelve months. We're mentioning all of this
because it probably would have seemed like any of the
concerns about Bruno's heresy would have been lost in the
shuffle of just so many rapid shifts in leadership. Additionally,
(21:42):
he was going to what was a fairly liberal state. Yeah,
Venice at this point was all about exploration and new ideas,
and so he thought, like, it'll be cool. I'll just
run across artern Italy be fine. And Bruno also had
his eyes on a job in this move, the University
of Padua, and he did ahead of their mathematics department,
and if he could secure it, the position would grant
(22:04):
him some stability and it would make it possible for
him to publish. So if you are familiar with this
time in European history and or with the work of Galileo,
you might already know that Bruno did not get the job,
because Galileo did. Bruno had really campaigned for it, though
he had even given a private lecture series on geometry
and other mathematical subjects in Padua to prove his abilities.
(22:28):
After the position went to Galileo, Bruno returned to the
city of Venice and to the nobleman who had invited
him in the first place, which was Giovanni Mochanigo. This
is not the Giovanni Mochanigo who was the Doja of
Venice in the fifteenth century. This was a later member
of the same family. Moenego had been the one to
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tell Bruno about the position in Padua and had hoped
that Bruno would instruct him in the art of memory.
But these two had a falling out, and there are
a couple of different take on what exactly caused this rifted,
depending on what Sorcier reading. One version is that the
Venetian Mochanigo was not satisfied with the lessons that he
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had received from Bruno, and he was also irritated that
Bruno was talking about his intention to move back to
Frankfurt again, something that Mochenego apparently took as an insult.
Another version is that in teaching Mochenego about mnemonics and philosophy,
Bruno had maybe overshared his ideas and it troubled the
Venetian a great deal because those ideas were so at
(23:34):
odds with mores of society and especially the Church. Regardless
of the specific cause of the friction between the two
of them, Motionenego turned his house guest into the Venetian
Inquisition in May of two via a letter. He included
a list of twenty one alleged instances in which Bruno
(23:54):
had committed heresy, including accusations that Bruno had said that
the virgin Mary could not have been a mother and
that miracles ascribed to Christ were not miracles at all,
but magic tricks used to dupe the foolish. I can
see how this would have been upsetting. Yes, we're going
to talk about Bruno's trials for heresy. That was plural
(24:18):
after we hear from some of the sponsors that keep
stuff you missed in history class going. So, after Mochenego
turned him in, Bruno was formally accused of heresy again
and was arrested, and the trial that followed in Venice
(24:40):
actually went pretty well for him. Initially, he explained that
he was always working from a philosophical viewpoint rather than
a religious one, and he did walk back some of
the statements he had made about religion, clarifying that he
had said some things and error when he really meant
to talk about theoretical ideas and just examine them in
relation to religion. And the Venetian Inquisition sounds like it
(25:03):
was kind of initially receptive to this defense, but even
though there had been those several changes in popes, once
word reached the Vatican that Bruno was being tried in Venice,
it was demanded that he be extradited into Rome to
stand trial there for heresy. His charges were even more
(25:24):
serious than heresy, though, because he was also accused of
converting other Catholics into heretics as well, and total, he
was charged with more than four dozen different heresies by
the Roman Inquisition, including speaking ill of Catholicism, having contempt
for holy relics, practicing divination, apostasy, believing that souls could transmigrate,
(25:49):
asserting that there could be other worlds like Earth in
the cosmos, and even eating meat on days that it
was prohibited. So many accusations of varying degrees of intensity.
He arrived in Rome on January and he spent the
rest of his life there. His trial spooled out over
the next seven years, and while he went with the
(26:12):
same philosophy and theory approach to his defense against the
heresy charges, that explanation was not as welcomed in Rome
as it may have been in Venice. What the inquisitors
of Rome wanted was a full retraction of everything he
had said about religion, full stop. Bruno, though thought he
(26:32):
could maybe convince his accusers that really the things he
had said were not in conflict with the teachings of
the Catholic Church. He believed that in presenting himself as
a philosopher, he would have to be granted leeway to
conjecture about just about anything, but that was not appreciated.
Attempting to separate philosophy from theology for discussion was actually
(26:55):
considered heretical in its own right, according to some writings,
because it could lead anyone down the path to heresy,
and while Venice had not been quite so finicky on
that point, Rome really dug in. This was also in
part because he could call himself a philosopher all he wanted,
but the inquisition viewed him as a friar who had strayed.
(27:16):
A retraction, as we said, was what the Church was after,
but Bruno was adamant that he didn't have anything to retract.
He said he didn't even understand what they wanted because,
in his opinion, he had done nothing wrong, but the
latest Pope, Clement the Eighth, did not concur Bruno was
found guilty of heresy on February four in a proclamation
(27:37):
which read quote, our most Holy Lord decrees and ordains
that it be intimated to the Apostate brothers Giordano Bruno
of Nola, by the Theologian fathers, namely Father Bellarmine and
the Father Commissary, that these propositions are heretical, and not
only heretical as now declared, but by the most ancient
fathers of the Church and the Apostolic See. There was
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apparently a list of eight heretical points for which he
was absolutely found guilty, but that list has been lost,
so we don't know what of the many dozens of
accusations were really the ones. But he was given several
weeks to recant, like they kind of gave him an out,
but he didn't. The inquisitors extended that opportunity to recant
(28:21):
several times, but Bruno consistently denied that his work was
in any way heretical. Bruno received his death sentence on
February eight, six hundred. The inquisitors also condemned all of
his writings, and his books were added to the index
of forbidden books. While it's often reported that his last
words before execution were quote, perhaps you who pronounced my
(28:45):
sentence are in greater fear than I who received it,
that was actually his reaction to the sentencing. Nine days later,
on February seventeen, sixteen hundred, Bruno was taken to the
public square known as Camp Defjure in Rome, gagged and
burned alive. Okay, we have talked about Bruno's philosophy and
(29:06):
religious views in regard to his being judged a heretic,
and you will also see accounts of his life that
say he was actually executed for believing that there were
other solar systems and that ours was not really the
center of the universe. Sometimes this is also as like
the sun is a star or the sun is one
of many stars, and the disparity of whether this was
(29:27):
a cosmological issue or a philosophical one has been a
matter of debate among historians and scholars for quite a while.
In the second half of the twentieth century, most scholars
had landed at the conclusion that, yes, issues of cosmology
were part of the heresy of Giordano Bruno, but they're
really The biggest problem in his work was his assertion
(29:48):
that Christ was not divine. You can see with the
Church sure would dislike that. But in recent years there
has been a deeper look at Bruno's trial that adds
a little more nuance and brings the cosmology back into focus,
and an article published in Annals of Science in historian
Alberto A. Martinez made the case that a many worlds
(30:10):
cosmology had been well established as heretical going back through
the centuries leading up to Bruno's trial. For example, he
notes that the laster who was the Bishop of Brescia,
Italy in the fourth century made this very clear, writing
quote Another heresy is to say that worlds are infinite
and innumerable, following the Assinine opinion of the philosophers, whereas
(30:34):
scriptures say that the world is one and it teaches
us that it is one. Martinez also points out that
closer to the time of Bruno's trial, in the mid
sixteenth century, there was a move to define heresy but
also debate about it. Long lists of heretical offenses that
were punishable by death were published, and the idea of
(30:58):
innumerable world was one of them. And in fifteen eighty two,
Pope Gregory, for whom the Gregorian Calendar is named and
who was Pope when Bruno was first accused of heresy,
had an updated edition of Corpus of canon Law published,
and appearing in that updated edition was the following heresy quote,
(31:19):
having the opinion of innumerable worlds. From the beginning of
Bruno's heresy trial in Venice, his belief in the idea
of infinite worlds was part of his accusations that had
been on the list that Machnego had sent the inquisition,
and unlike some of the other accusations, Bruno never denied
(31:40):
this one. In fact, he asserted it's verity repeatedly, telling
inquisitors quote, I affirm an infinite universe, which is the
consequence of the infinite divine power, because I regard it
as unworthy of the divine goodness and power that being
able to produce, in addition to our world, another and
infinitely many others, to produce one finite world. Yes, I
(32:05):
have asserted infinite particular world similar to the Earth, which
with Pythagoras, I consider a star similar to which is
the Moon, other planets and other stars, which are infinite,
and that all these bodies are worlds and numberless, which
thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space, and
(32:26):
this is called the infinite universe, and which are innumerable worlds.
Thus the fortune that is double from the infinitude and
greatness of the universe and the multitude of worlds, but
without indirectly meaning to reject the truth according to the faith.
Some of that is so poetic, and I know that's
a translation, but I love it. According to Martinez's research,
(32:49):
at least five witnesses who testified against Bruno and Venice
mentioned specifically his cosmological beliefs in multiple worlds as part
of his heresy. Four of the five repeated this testimony
at the trial in Rome, and when tallied up, it
is the accusation of this belief in many worlds that
appears most frequently in Bruno's trial Summarine, and the summary
(33:12):
also reflects that he was specifically ordered to abandon his
quote delusions regarding many worlds. Additionally, a witness to his
execution recounted that one of the heresies read aloud before
Bruno was killed was his belief that quote, worlds are innumerable.
So it does seem that the idea of this sort
(33:33):
of plurality of worlds was a significant part of the
accusations that led to Bruno's fate and execution. In his time,
Bruno became infamous, denounced by philosopher Marin Marcin twenty four
years after his death as quote, one of the most
evil men that the earth has ever borne. But Bruno's
expansive view of the cosmos and religion, and his efforts
(33:56):
to create a philosophy that combined the two also fascinated
scholars and later philosophers and scientists built on various ideas
that he had put forward. Yeah, I mean we talked
about many things that are that we're pretty ahead of
their time when he was saying them, but unfortunately, very
(34:17):
angering to the church. The inquisition did not appreciate. He's
another figure that I love, despite the fact that I
think I wouldn't enjoy hanging out with him at all.
I have a much more delightful listener. Mail from our
listener Francis uh it's kind of a long e and
(34:38):
Francis even says all the things I've been meaning to
tell you as the subject line, which starts off with,
first off, thank you so much for all your work
on the podcast, I mean, my friends over the years.
I started listening to podcast back in Tleven, Uh, and
the podcast helped me through some stuff. I'm I'm paraphrasing
because I don't want to give up her personal information.
Stuff he missed in history was one of the first
(34:59):
I found. And I've loved how the show has evolved
over the years. Y'all have brought so much nuance to
the show and have been so intentional about representation, and
I appreciate it so much. The next thing is, I've
been meaning to write since the episode on the Possession
Case of Roland Doe. Not because I'm into horror movies,
I'm a big baby, but because I live in the
city of Mount Rainier. She fixes my pronunciation there. You
(35:20):
can tell that I grew up for a time in
the Pacific Northwest because I say Rainier, but it's apparently
rainier when you're over in the eastern side where this
story took place. And there is a duplicate name shred
says a story we're all familiar with in the area,
and there's a bit of friendly rivalry between all the
tiny cities that claimed to be the place where it happened.
(35:41):
One of the most read stories in our regional newspaper
in was about a couple getting a really good deal
on a house that is purported to be the house
where it happened. Honestly, with the housing market in the area,
I might have snapped up a deal like this in
a potentially haunted house to uh. She also mentioned that
her family is hosting in a Alion exchange student for
the year. She went for a walk through town to
(36:03):
find Satan's lot and explore it. She said it was
kind of fun to be there. This also brings this
email to the story of Feta Cheeni Alfredo Srates. When
our exchange student first arrived, I took her to the
grocery store to see what she'd like to buy, and
because an American grocery store is quite the cultural experience.
We were walking through the Italian island when she saw
(36:24):
jars of Alfredo sauce on Michelle. She pointed at them
in horror and said, is that Italian? That's not Italian.
Blew my mind when she told her classmates they were
also shocked. Cut to me listening to the third eponymous
food episode and starting out with feta chini alfredo. I
was so excited to finally understand everything that had been
lost in translation. We talked about the Italian name for it,
(36:46):
and she said that was something very common, but it
was nothing like the American version that she had been
served for school lunches, which, to be fair, is a
school lunch, so that's not a good representation of anything. Uh.
And then this is really why I wanted to read this,
because she talks about my favorite charity. Uh. The third
thing that forced me to fight my A d h
D long enough to actually write an email I've been
(37:08):
writing in my brain the Behind the Seeds episode on
Edgerton and Nico. When Holly compared Francis Edgerton's chef to
Jose Andres cooking for her cats, I laughed out loud.
I agree so much with the assessments of his restaurants
everything is delicious, and his work as a philanthropist and
activist I'm Puerto Rican, and his work on the island
after Hurricane Maria. Told me everything I needed to know
(37:29):
about the type of person he is. My family went
about six to eight months without electricity, and my aunt
only had an electric stove. It was virtually impossible for
her to get any healthy, hearty food during that time,
and it gave me comfort to know he was out
there working with local restaurateurs to provide food for so many.
I'm also a teacher at a private school that's exclusively
(37:50):
for low income students. Our students work at an entry level,
white collar job one day a week as part of
a work study program that subsidizes their education and provides
them with four years of work experience. That means that
we are always raising funds. Last school year, jose Andres
did a fundraiser for us. It was fantastic and he
is now a supporter of our school. UM. I love
(38:11):
this so much, and she mentions that he was connected
to the school through an alum who has their own
restaurant which a small tak area and they now have
five restaurants and a few Michelin stars. Um, this is
so wonderful, she says. I didn't mean for this email
to get so long, but that is what happens when
you wait too long to write, I'm attaching a picture
of my adorable cats. Epo as in Hiccups in Spanish.
(38:34):
That is a great name for a cat, by the way, uh,
and Julius as in Caesar. He is the regal striped boy.
They are the most doglike cats of all time, which
means I've got the best of both worlds and my
sweet boys. These cats are like I can't even They're
cuddled up in a little heart shape. It's so sweet. Francis,
thank you so much for this absolutely beautiful email. And
I love when people save it up and give us
(38:54):
a big, a big long list of fun things. Um,
and I always, like I said, love to talk about
Jose Andres because World Central Kitchen remains my favorite charity. Uh.
You would like to email us, you can do that.
It's easy as pie at History podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History and if you would like to subscribe,
(39:15):
that is also super duper simple. You can do that
on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to
your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's
subject was a mathematician, a philosopher, and astronomer, and occultist, and,
(00:23):
according to the Catholic Church of the sixteenth century Italy,
a heretic uh. He was also really comfortable writing pretty
scathing critiques of people he disagreed with. We are going
to talk about Giordano Bruno today, who spoiler alert met
a bad end because of his views. But there's actually
been some debate over what exactly was the thing that
(00:45):
caused him to be finally found officially to be a
heretic uh. And we'll talk about that a bit at
the very end. He's an interesting story because he has
the trajectory of starting out in a religious career and
then because coming a heretic. So we're gonna jump right
(01:05):
into how Bruno went from being a friar to his
heretical life. Yeah. So Bruno was born Philippo Bruno in
and Nola, Italy. That's about thirty kilometers east of Naples.
His father was a soldier and at the age of fourteen,
Bruno left Nola to travel to Naples for his studies.
(01:29):
Among the many areas of education he had focusing on
humanities and dialectics, Bruno was also exposed to the work
of the Muslim philosopher Ebben Roused more commonly known to
European scholars as Avarroas. Avroas had lived in the twelfth
century and sought to combine the work of Greek philosophers
(01:49):
with the ideologies of Islamic traditions. He had written extensively
on the works of Aristotle and Plato and was deeply
influential for the philosophers who came after him. Bruno also
studied memory and recall and the way humans can teach
themselves to remember things using mnemonic devices and other prompts. Yeah,
all of this is interesting because he was exposed to
(02:12):
it so early on in his life, and these kinds
of ideas of like combining science and religious ideology, his
his memory, teaching to other people all comes back throughout
his life and becomes really important. So while he was
studying in Naples, Bruno made an impression on his teachers
for his astonishing memory. In fifteen sixty nine, he was
(02:34):
sent to perform for the Pope, showing off his recall ability,
and then three years after moving to Naples for his education,
Bruno joined the Dominican Order and moved into the convent
of San Domenico Maggiore. It was at this point that
he took the name Giordano. He was ordained as a
friar in fifteen seventy two after seven years with the Order,
(02:55):
but he continued his studies in Naples, finishing his religious
scholarship program in fifteen seventy five. Though Bruno had been
ordained and had been encouraged to continue his studies, there
had been from the beginnings of his life with the
Dominican Order some concerns about his heretical leanings, and he
did want to discuss heretical ideas. One that was of
(03:18):
interest to him is what's known as the Arian heresy,
named for the third century priest from Alexandria named Arius.
This heretical doctrine put forth the idea that Christ was
not divine, but was an instrument of the divine. Yeah,
we'll talk so much more about his his thoughts and
writings about Christ and why those upset people. Uh, because
(03:43):
you're donno. Bruno openly discussed this idea and others as
worthy of consideration, and of course, because questioning the Holy
Trinity was very dangerous, he found himself charged with heresy
for the first time by the Neapolitan leaders of the
Order in early fifteen seventy six, But rather than face
a heresy trial, Bruno decided he would just leave the
(04:05):
city and he headed to Rome. That only lasted a
couple of months because when additional heretical texts were found
among the things he left behind in Naples, including works
of Erasmus which questioned the powers of the papacy, and
the entire structure of the Catholic Church, which Bruno had
notated himself in the margins, so they knew he had
(04:26):
read it. The search for the heretical fugitive intensified, and
Rome was no longer safe, so Bruno was once again
on the run. This time he left behind all of
his ties to the Catholic Church and his life as
a friar. For a couple of years, Bruno was on
the move, traveling around northern Italy. He said to have
made his way by picking up odd jobs like teaching
(04:48):
Latin or basic astronomy to students and interested adults. Then
in fifteen seventy eight he left Italy and went to Geneva, Switzerland.
For a while, he survived there taking copy, editing and
proofing work. But though he had been branded a heretic
by the Catholic Church and had left his life in
the Naples clergy, he still really sought a religious haven
(05:12):
for himself. He briefly thought he might have found it
in Calvinism. So for context, John Calvin had been born
just a little less than forty years before Bruno, and
he had died fourteen years before the former Dominican found
himself in Geneva. Bruno saw so much potential in the
reformist ideas of Calvin's book, Institute of the Christian Religion,
(05:36):
which had first been published in the mid fifteen thirties
and had been reissued already many times in the intervening decades.
So Gjordano Bruno converted to Calvinism while he was in Switzerland,
but he continued to have a questioning nature, and he
got into trouble with the Calvinist Church just as he
had the Catholic Church. He wanted to examine doctrine rather
(05:58):
than follow it, and while he had believed that approach
would be more welcomed in his new church, he was
ultimately incorrect. The final straw was a pamphlet he published
which openly criticized a prominent Calvinist. Soon he was arrested
and excommunicated. He retracted the writing which had caused the
rift with the church to get out of any serious repercussions,
(06:21):
but once again he was a man with no religious affiliation.
After that, strife with the Calvinist Church in Geneva was
more or less resolved. Bruno moved on once again, and
this time he headed to France. While spending time first
and to lose, he continued to be troubled by his
rift with the Catholic Church, and to rectify the situation,
(06:41):
he formally requested absolution. He wanted to make amends with
the church and offer penance in the hopes of being
officially forgiven, but he was denied, despite the fact though
that he was still considered a heretic, which of course
had considerable weight. In the fifteen seventies, Giordano Brune was
able to find work teaching philosophy and to lose, and
(07:03):
that was something that he did for roughly two years.
In fifteen eighty one, Bruno moved on to Paris after
escalating tensions between Huguenos and Catholics Interlus made that city
too dangerous to stay in. This ultimately led to the
fifteen sixty two riots of to Lose, But Jordano Bruno
was long gone by the time that happened, and those
(07:25):
issues and to Lose were reflective of a bigger issue
in France. In the fifteen eighties, France was smack dab
in the middle of its wars of religion. At this point,
it was actually sort of a perfect time for Bruno
to move to Paris. Though the Hugueno massacre at Vassi
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day were well in
(07:45):
the past, the Huguenots had been granted the freedom to
worship Henry the Third, who was one of Catherine de
Medici's sons and had been one of the conspirators, and
the St. Bartholome Use Day massacre, was king of France
when Bruno moved to Paris, and Henry the Third really
liked Jordano Bruno so much so that he made him
(08:06):
a royal lecturer. Bruno had fallen in with the politiques,
that's the faction in the religious words that was Catholic
but moderate and wanted compromise in religious matters as a
means for unity for France, rather than the emergence of
any single religion as dominant in ruling. While in Paris,
Bruno wrote and published a great deal. He had finally
(08:29):
kind of found like where he might have belonged, at
least for a moment. He produced several works that were
rooted in his study and fascination with memory, which elaborated
far beyond the idea of recall and kind of focused
on how a person could use their memory to develop
a deeper understanding of reality. He wrote a comedy in
fifteen eighty two called The Candle Maker. This play, if stage,
(08:53):
would run at an estimated five hours, and the author
in the original is listed as Bruno the Nolan, the
academic of No Academy, nicknamed the Exasperated. His exasperation was
with society as a whole. He felt there was corruption
all around and that people claiming morality were often lax
(09:14):
and upholding it. It was essentially a protest play. We
should point out Bruno was kind of exasperated with a
lot of people. A lot of the time, if you
thought somebody was foolish or frivolous or pompous, he did
not hesitate to write scathing critiques of them. Now, he's
a little bit of a firebrand in this regard, and
(09:35):
I think he kind of liked the conflict like it.
It fueled him. That's my speculation. When we come back,
we're going to talk a little bit more about political
and religious strife in France, as well as Bruno's time
in England. But first we are going to pause for
a quick sponsor break. In four, Henry the Third's brother,
(10:04):
Francis Dudanjou died, and this made Henry of Navarre air
presumptive to the throne of France, and that catalyzed a
new rise in the conflict among France's religious factions, in
what became known as the War of the Three Henry's.
But Bruno was lucky enough to have left the country
before that happened. In three he had moved from Paris
(10:25):
to London, and King Henry the Third had sent along
with him a letter of recommendation, which Bruno took to
Michele de Caston. Now the French ambassador to Queen Elizabeth
the First Court. For a while, Bruno went to Oxford
where he lectured on astronomy. But Bruno's views did not
go over well at Oxford, so he quickly returned to Court,
(10:47):
convinced that the alleged intellectuals of Oxford were beneath him.
That cracks me up. Returning to Elizabeth's Court connected him
to another recent podcast subject, that was Mary Sidney Herbert,
because Bruno became friends with her brother, Sir Philip Sidney.
He apparently did not thank Sir Philip Sidney was beneath him,
just the so called intellectuals of Oxford. Yeah, it was
(11:12):
basically like, um, you know, if you don't believe me,
clearly you are a ding dong. Sydney, of course, had
a wide circle of intellectual acquaintances, and through them Bruno
was invited to speak once again with scholars from Oxford.
It once again did not go well. A fight actually
(11:32):
broke out in which Bruno called one of the men
that he had met with a pig. Bruno started writing
a comprehensive explanation of his thoughts on morality and cosmology
in the wake of the skirmish at Oxford. This resulted
in a six volume set that's referred to as the
Italian Dialogues. Three of the volumes, the Ash Wednesday Supper,
(11:55):
concerning the Cause Principle in one and on the Infinite
Universe and World's Examined the Universe and Our Understanding of It.
And the other three, which were The Expulsion of the
Triumphant Beast, Cabal of the Horse Pegasus, and the Heroic Frenzies,
work through Bruno's views on morality, often in a way
(12:16):
that's highly critical of society. Yeah, he was a critical
gent in the Ash Wednesday Supper. Bruno is a character
in the writing. He calls himself the Nolan, which we
had mentioned him using before that signified his birthplace of Nola,
and another character, tail Field, serves as the purveyor of
Bruno The writer's ideas, including the idea that there are
(12:39):
innumerable worlds. He subscribed to the idea that the universe
was infinite and that there could be other solar systems
like ours. He wrote of the belief that space could
be finite. Quote supposed now that all space were created
finite if one were to run on to the end
to its furthest coasts and throw a flying dart. Would
(13:01):
you have it that the dart hurled with might and
main goeth on whether it is sped flying afar, or
thank you that something can check and bar its way
for whether there be something to check it and bring
about that it arriveth not whether it was sped and
planteth not itself in the goal, or whether it fareth
(13:23):
forward yet it's set not forth From the end. He
continued his argument with quote, we cannot deny infinity merely
because we do not sensibly perceive it. Ya. So in
case that um definitely uh older style of writing was
in any way confusing, and blessed Tracy for reading it.
(13:45):
He's basically like, if you go to the edge of
space and throw a dart, is it gonna doink back
and hit you? Like? What do you think happens? Because
the we've never found that. So all of this meant
that Bruno so supported helio centrism. Now that idea was
of course not new in the sixteenth century. As early
(14:06):
as the fifth century b c. There were philosophers in
Greece that were suggesting that the earth might be revolving
around a central fire, but that concept and theories that
built on it had not become accepted, in part because
it was just so difficult to reconcile the idea of
the planet being in motion while we are also able
(14:26):
to see what appeared to be fixed objects in the
night sky, like star clusters that were observed night after night.
By the time Bruno was writing about helio centrism, it
had come once again to the forefront of cosmological discussion.
In the mid fifteenth century, the German religious scholar Nicholas
of Cusa had worked on an idea that Earth was
(14:49):
influential in the movement of the universe, but that it
was not the center around which other things revolved. Copernicus
had published six books can earning the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Orbs, just a few years before Bruno's birth. It's
really when heliocentrism started gaining a foothold in cosmological circles.
(15:09):
So though Bruno's writing was just supporting what other intellectuals
at the time were already espousing, he was definitely doing so.
When the idea was far from a settled matter, it
was still really controversial to put it in context on
the historical timeline. Galileo was put on trial by the
Inquisition over his support of the Copernical heliocentric theory, almost
(15:32):
fifty years after Bruno wrote in support of it. But
Bruno's writing integrates this idea of an infinite universe with
the idea of a God that held dominion over infinity.
This was absolutely not a rejection of Christian beliefs. For him.
Bruno wrote in on the Infinite Universe and World quote,
(15:53):
so great is God's excellence that it is manifested in
the greatness of his empire. It is not glorified in
one but in innumerable suns, not in one earth, one world,
but in ten hundred thousand, I say, in infinite. A
very controversial view that Bruno held and included in the
(16:13):
Italian Dialogues is his case that the Bible is great
as a guide for a moral life, but it's not
a text that should be used as the basis of
astronomical information. He made lots of assertions about there being
other worlds in the cosmos which would probably support life,
none of which had ever been mentioned in biblical writing.
(16:35):
He got a lot of things wrong in his guesses
about how things might work, but he was able to
grasp the idea that the Earth might not be all
that singular in the vastness of space. For these ideas
and others, Bruno knew the Italian Dialogues would not be
welcomed in Italy, so he published them outside of his
(16:56):
home country. Yeah, there's some cute additional on that where
he kind of still wanted to make it seem like
they were published in Italy that we could talk about
in the behind the scenes um. In the fall of five,
Bruno decided to return to France. But in that short
time he had been away, that conflict among the Henry's
(17:17):
had started, and he did not find himself in a
group of moderates as he had before. His moderate friends
had gotten a little more hardline in their beliefs, Henry
the Third had taken a stronger stance against all non Catholics. Uh,
it would have been smart on Bruno's part to kind
of keep his head down and maybe dial back his
constant critiques of just about everyone in an environment like this,
(17:41):
But instead he got in a very public argument with
Fabrizio mor Dente, an Italian mathematician who was also Catholic
and well connected to Catholic political leaders in France at
the time. Bruno also made a focused attack on the
work of Aristotle in six with the writing of twenty
articles on nature and the World against the Peripatetics. Because
(18:05):
of his ongoing strife with so many Catholics and his
increasingly unpopular views, the politics distanced themselves from Bruno. He
next moved on to Germany. He taught and wrote as
he traveled the country, and produced the work A hundred
and sixty articles in fifty eight. In this he asserted
that all religions could coexist peacefully if they would stop
(18:28):
attacking one another and foster communication. In early fifteen eighty nine,
Bruno was banished from yet another religious sect, this time
the Lutherans, who he tried to join up with briefly.
So if you're keeping score, he had now been excommunicated
by the Catholics, the Calvinists, and the Lutherans, and after
(18:49):
his fallout with the Lutheran Church, Bruno worked on a
book about the connection between mathematics and magic, although that
was not published In his lifetime, he also continued to
reiterate his idea is from the Italian Dialogues in new
writings specifically three poems that he wrote in Latin, on
the threefold minimum and Measure, on the monad number and figure,
(19:10):
and on the Immeasurable and Innumerable. Bruno also included some
new ideas in these poems alongside the concepts that he
was echoing from his previous work, and one of these
new ideas was the concept of matter being made up
of tiny, tiny particles. This was essentially an early exploration
of the idea of Adams. Although he was doing all
(19:31):
this writing, he couldn't publish any of it because of
all of his fallouts with basically everyone he knew. He
couldn't publish in Italy, so in fifteen ninety he asked
to be granted residency in Frankfurt, where he hoped to
publish his work, but that request was denied. He tried,
it seems, to get around that denial by moving into
(19:52):
a Carmelite convent in Frankfurt. The head of the convent
didn't really seem to love that arrangement because he felt
that Bruno was actually religious at all and had become
vain and obsessed with quote novelties in his work. In Fife,
Bruno traveled once again to Italy, not to roam more Naples,
(20:13):
where he still would have certainly been an outcast, but
he was just traveling across northern Italy en route to
the Republic of Venice, which was not part of Italy
at this time. This was a move that was catalyzed
by being asked to come to Venice by a nobleman
of the city, and this might sound like a pretty
rash move to head back through a country where he
(20:34):
had been a wanted man for a long time at
this point for his heretical ideas, but the circumstances were
such that it probably didn't seem all that dangerous for Bruno.
Gregory had been pope when Bruno had become a fugitive
in the fifteen seventies. He had died in fifteen eighty
five and was replaced by Sixtus the Fifth, but six
(20:57):
of the Fifth had died in fifteen ninety, and after
that there were three popes in rapid succession. Urban the
seventh was pope for only twelve days, and then Gregory
the fourteenth had become pope in December off and while
Bruno couldn't have known it when he made his way
to Venice in late summer of Gregory the fourteenth also
(21:20):
would not be pope that much longer. He died in October,
he would be replaced by Innocent the ninth, who was
pope for only twelve months. We're mentioning all of this
because it probably would have seemed like any of the
concerns about Bruno's heresy would have been lost in the
shuffle of just so many rapid shifts in leadership. Additionally,
(21:42):
he was going to what was a fairly liberal state. Yeah,
Venice at this point was all about exploration and new ideas,
and so he thought, like, it'll be cool. I'll just
run across artern Italy be fine. And Bruno also had
his eyes on a job in this move, the University
of Padua, and he did ahead of their mathematics department,
and if he could secure it, the position would grant
(22:04):
him some stability and it would make it possible for
him to publish. So if you are familiar with this
time in European history and or with the work of Galileo,
you might already know that Bruno did not get the job,
because Galileo did. Bruno had really campaigned for it, though
he had even given a private lecture series on geometry
and other mathematical subjects in Padua to prove his abilities.
(22:28):
After the position went to Galileo, Bruno returned to the
city of Venice and to the nobleman who had invited
him in the first place, which was Giovanni Mochanigo. This
is not the Giovanni Mochanigo who was the Doja of
Venice in the fifteenth century. This was a later member
of the same family. Moenego had been the one to
(22:48):
tell Bruno about the position in Padua and had hoped
that Bruno would instruct him in the art of memory.
But these two had a falling out, and there are
a couple of different take on what exactly caused this rifted,
depending on what Sorcier reading. One version is that the
Venetian Mochanigo was not satisfied with the lessons that he
(23:10):
had received from Bruno, and he was also irritated that
Bruno was talking about his intention to move back to
Frankfurt again, something that Mochenego apparently took as an insult.
Another version is that in teaching Mochenego about mnemonics and philosophy,
Bruno had maybe overshared his ideas and it troubled the
Venetian a great deal because those ideas were so at
(23:34):
odds with mores of society and especially the Church. Regardless
of the specific cause of the friction between the two
of them, Motionenego turned his house guest into the Venetian
Inquisition in May of two via a letter. He included
a list of twenty one alleged instances in which Bruno
(23:54):
had committed heresy, including accusations that Bruno had said that
the virgin Mary could not have been a mother and
that miracles ascribed to Christ were not miracles at all,
but magic tricks used to dupe the foolish. I can
see how this would have been upsetting. Yes, we're going
to talk about Bruno's trials for heresy. That was plural
(24:18):
after we hear from some of the sponsors that keep
stuff you missed in history class going. So, after Mochenego
turned him in, Bruno was formally accused of heresy again
and was arrested, and the trial that followed in Venice
(24:40):
actually went pretty well for him. Initially, he explained that
he was always working from a philosophical viewpoint rather than
a religious one, and he did walk back some of
the statements he had made about religion, clarifying that he
had said some things and error when he really meant
to talk about theoretical ideas and just examine them in
relation to religion. And the Venetian Inquisition sounds like it
(25:03):
was kind of initially receptive to this defense, but even
though there had been those several changes in popes, once
word reached the Vatican that Bruno was being tried in Venice,
it was demanded that he be extradited into Rome to
stand trial there for heresy. His charges were even more
(25:24):
serious than heresy, though, because he was also accused of
converting other Catholics into heretics as well, and total, he
was charged with more than four dozen different heresies by
the Roman Inquisition, including speaking ill of Catholicism, having contempt
for holy relics, practicing divination, apostasy, believing that souls could transmigrate,
(25:49):
asserting that there could be other worlds like Earth in
the cosmos, and even eating meat on days that it
was prohibited. So many accusations of varying degrees of intensity.
He arrived in Rome on January and he spent the
rest of his life there. His trial spooled out over
the next seven years, and while he went with the
(26:12):
same philosophy and theory approach to his defense against the
heresy charges, that explanation was not as welcomed in Rome
as it may have been in Venice. What the inquisitors
of Rome wanted was a full retraction of everything he
had said about religion, full stop. Bruno, though thought he
(26:32):
could maybe convince his accusers that really the things he
had said were not in conflict with the teachings of
the Catholic Church. He believed that in presenting himself as
a philosopher, he would have to be granted leeway to
conjecture about just about anything, but that was not appreciated.
Attempting to separate philosophy from theology for discussion was actually
(26:55):
considered heretical in its own right, according to some writings,
because it could lead anyone down the path to heresy,
and while Venice had not been quite so finicky on
that point, Rome really dug in. This was also in
part because he could call himself a philosopher all he wanted,
but the inquisition viewed him as a friar who had strayed.
(27:16):
A retraction, as we said, was what the Church was after,
but Bruno was adamant that he didn't have anything to retract.
He said he didn't even understand what they wanted because,
in his opinion, he had done nothing wrong, but the
latest Pope, Clement the Eighth, did not concur Bruno was
found guilty of heresy on February four in a proclamation
(27:37):
which read quote, our most Holy Lord decrees and ordains
that it be intimated to the Apostate brothers Giordano Bruno
of Nola, by the Theologian fathers, namely Father Bellarmine and
the Father Commissary, that these propositions are heretical, and not
only heretical as now declared, but by the most ancient
fathers of the Church and the Apostolic See. There was
(28:01):
apparently a list of eight heretical points for which he
was absolutely found guilty, but that list has been lost,
so we don't know what of the many dozens of
accusations were really the ones. But he was given several
weeks to recant, like they kind of gave him an out,
but he didn't. The inquisitors extended that opportunity to recant
(28:21):
several times, but Bruno consistently denied that his work was
in any way heretical. Bruno received his death sentence on
February eight, six hundred. The inquisitors also condemned all of
his writings, and his books were added to the index
of forbidden books. While it's often reported that his last
words before execution were quote, perhaps you who pronounced my
(28:45):
sentence are in greater fear than I who received it,
that was actually his reaction to the sentencing. Nine days later,
on February seventeen, sixteen hundred, Bruno was taken to the
public square known as Camp Defjure in Rome, gagged and
burned alive. Okay, we have talked about Bruno's philosophy and
(29:06):
religious views in regard to his being judged a heretic,
and you will also see accounts of his life that
say he was actually executed for believing that there were
other solar systems and that ours was not really the
center of the universe. Sometimes this is also as like
the sun is a star or the sun is one
of many stars, and the disparity of whether this was
(29:27):
a cosmological issue or a philosophical one has been a
matter of debate among historians and scholars for quite a while.
In the second half of the twentieth century, most scholars
had landed at the conclusion that, yes, issues of cosmology
were part of the heresy of Giordano Bruno, but they're
really The biggest problem in his work was his assertion
(29:48):
that Christ was not divine. You can see with the
Church sure would dislike that. But in recent years there
has been a deeper look at Bruno's trial that adds
a little more nuance and brings the cosmology back into focus,
and an article published in Annals of Science in historian
Alberto A. Martinez made the case that a many worlds
(30:10):
cosmology had been well established as heretical going back through
the centuries leading up to Bruno's trial. For example, he
notes that the laster who was the Bishop of Brescia,
Italy in the fourth century made this very clear, writing
quote Another heresy is to say that worlds are infinite
and innumerable, following the Assinine opinion of the philosophers, whereas
(30:34):
scriptures say that the world is one and it teaches
us that it is one. Martinez also points out that
closer to the time of Bruno's trial, in the mid
sixteenth century, there was a move to define heresy but
also debate about it. Long lists of heretical offenses that
were punishable by death were published, and the idea of
(30:58):
innumerable world was one of them. And in fifteen eighty two,
Pope Gregory, for whom the Gregorian Calendar is named and
who was Pope when Bruno was first accused of heresy,
had an updated edition of Corpus of canon Law published,
and appearing in that updated edition was the following heresy quote,
(31:19):
having the opinion of innumerable worlds. From the beginning of
Bruno's heresy trial in Venice, his belief in the idea
of infinite worlds was part of his accusations that had
been on the list that Machnego had sent the inquisition,
and unlike some of the other accusations, Bruno never denied
(31:40):
this one. In fact, he asserted it's verity repeatedly, telling
inquisitors quote, I affirm an infinite universe, which is the
consequence of the infinite divine power, because I regard it
as unworthy of the divine goodness and power that being
able to produce, in addition to our world, another and
infinitely many others, to produce one finite world. Yes, I
(32:05):
have asserted infinite particular world similar to the Earth, which
with Pythagoras, I consider a star similar to which is
the Moon, other planets and other stars, which are infinite,
and that all these bodies are worlds and numberless, which
thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space, and
(32:26):
this is called the infinite universe, and which are innumerable worlds.
Thus the fortune that is double from the infinitude and
greatness of the universe and the multitude of worlds, but
without indirectly meaning to reject the truth according to the faith.
Some of that is so poetic, and I know that's
a translation, but I love it. According to Martinez's research,
(32:49):
at least five witnesses who testified against Bruno and Venice
mentioned specifically his cosmological beliefs in multiple worlds as part
of his heresy. Four of the five repeated this testimony
at the trial in Rome, and when tallied up, it
is the accusation of this belief in many worlds that
appears most frequently in Bruno's trial Summarine, and the summary
(33:12):
also reflects that he was specifically ordered to abandon his
quote delusions regarding many worlds. Additionally, a witness to his
execution recounted that one of the heresies read aloud before
Bruno was killed was his belief that quote, worlds are innumerable.
So it does seem that the idea of this sort
(33:33):
of plurality of worlds was a significant part of the
accusations that led to Bruno's fate and execution. In his time,
Bruno became infamous, denounced by philosopher Marin Marcin twenty four
years after his death as quote, one of the most
evil men that the earth has ever borne. But Bruno's
expansive view of the cosmos and religion, and his efforts
(33:56):
to create a philosophy that combined the two also fascinated
scholars and later philosophers and scientists built on various ideas
that he had put forward. Yeah, I mean we talked
about many things that are that we're pretty ahead of
their time when he was saying them, but unfortunately, very
(34:17):
angering to the church. The inquisition did not appreciate. He's
another figure that I love, despite the fact that I
think I wouldn't enjoy hanging out with him at all.
I have a much more delightful listener. Mail from our
listener Francis uh it's kind of a long e and
(34:38):
Francis even says all the things I've been meaning to
tell you as the subject line, which starts off with,
first off, thank you so much for all your work
on the podcast, I mean, my friends over the years.
I started listening to podcast back in Tleven, Uh, and
the podcast helped me through some stuff. I'm I'm paraphrasing
because I don't want to give up her personal information.
Stuff he missed in history was one of the first
(34:59):
I found. And I've loved how the show has evolved
over the years. Y'all have brought so much nuance to
the show and have been so intentional about representation, and
I appreciate it so much. The next thing is, I've
been meaning to write since the episode on the Possession
Case of Roland Doe. Not because I'm into horror movies,
I'm a big baby, but because I live in the
city of Mount Rainier. She fixes my pronunciation there. You
(35:20):
can tell that I grew up for a time in
the Pacific Northwest because I say Rainier, but it's apparently
rainier when you're over in the eastern side where this
story took place. And there is a duplicate name shred
says a story we're all familiar with in the area,
and there's a bit of friendly rivalry between all the
tiny cities that claimed to be the place where it happened.
(35:41):
One of the most read stories in our regional newspaper
in was about a couple getting a really good deal
on a house that is purported to be the house
where it happened. Honestly, with the housing market in the area,
I might have snapped up a deal like this in
a potentially haunted house to uh. She also mentioned that
her family is hosting in a Alion exchange student for
the year. She went for a walk through town to
(36:03):
find Satan's lot and explore it. She said it was
kind of fun to be there. This also brings this
email to the story of Feta Cheeni Alfredo Srates. When
our exchange student first arrived, I took her to the
grocery store to see what she'd like to buy, and
because an American grocery store is quite the cultural experience.
We were walking through the Italian island when she saw
(36:24):
jars of Alfredo sauce on Michelle. She pointed at them
in horror and said, is that Italian? That's not Italian.
Blew my mind when she told her classmates they were
also shocked. Cut to me listening to the third eponymous
food episode and starting out with feta chini alfredo. I
was so excited to finally understand everything that had been
lost in translation. We talked about the Italian name for it,
(36:46):
and she said that was something very common, but it
was nothing like the American version that she had been
served for school lunches, which, to be fair, is a
school lunch, so that's not a good representation of anything. Uh.
And then this is really why I wanted to read this,
because she talks about my favorite charity. Uh. The third
thing that forced me to fight my A d h
D long enough to actually write an email I've been
(37:08):
writing in my brain the Behind the Seeds episode on
Edgerton and Nico. When Holly compared Francis Edgerton's chef to
Jose Andres cooking for her cats, I laughed out loud.
I agree so much with the assessments of his restaurants
everything is delicious, and his work as a philanthropist and
activist I'm Puerto Rican, and his work on the island
after Hurricane Maria. Told me everything I needed to know
(37:29):
about the type of person he is. My family went
about six to eight months without electricity, and my aunt
only had an electric stove. It was virtually impossible for
her to get any healthy, hearty food during that time,
and it gave me comfort to know he was out
there working with local restaurateurs to provide food for so many.
I'm also a teacher at a private school that's exclusively
(37:50):
for low income students. Our students work at an entry level,
white collar job one day a week as part of
a work study program that subsidizes their education and provides
them with four years of work experience. That means that
we are always raising funds. Last school year, jose Andres
did a fundraiser for us. It was fantastic and he
is now a supporter of our school. UM. I love
(38:11):
this so much, and she mentions that he was connected
to the school through an alum who has their own
restaurant which a small tak area and they now have
five restaurants and a few Michelin stars. Um, this is
so wonderful, she says. I didn't mean for this email
to get so long, but that is what happens when
you wait too long to write, I'm attaching a picture
of my adorable cats. Epo as in Hiccups in Spanish.
(38:34):
That is a great name for a cat, by the way, uh,
and Julius as in Caesar. He is the regal striped boy.
They are the most doglike cats of all time, which
means I've got the best of both worlds and my
sweet boys. These cats are like I can't even They're
cuddled up in a little heart shape. It's so sweet. Francis,
thank you so much for this absolutely beautiful email. And
I love when people save it up and give us
(38:54):
a big, a big long list of fun things. Um,
and I always, like I said, love to talk about
Jose Andres because World Central Kitchen remains my favorite charity. Uh.
You would like to email us, you can do that.
It's easy as pie at History podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History and if you would like to subscribe,
(39:15):
that is also super duper simple. You can do that
on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to
your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
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Hosts And Creators
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