Giordano Bruno was born in Italy in 1548 and was burned at the stake in 1600. He was educated in Naples, tutored privately at the Augustinian Monastery. At age 17 he entered the Dominican Order, finished his studies, and became an ordained priest at age 24. Bruno supported the opinion of Copernicus, that the earth went round and the heavens stood still. The earth rotated on its axis and circled the sun once a year.
Bruno believed that the universe is endless, infinite, and limitless. That the stars in the heavens were other suns with planets, like the Earth, revolving around them. Bruno believed, that like the planets, among these contained animals, plants and inhabitants. He moved all around Europe barely avoiding
troubles caused by these beliefs but it was his opinions on the gospel that would eventually end his life. Alfonso Ingegno states that Bruno’s philosophy “challenges the developments of the Reformation, calls into question the truth-value of the whole of Christianity, and claims that Christ perpetrated a deceit on mankind.” Discover magazine said “The reason that he moved around so much was that he was argumentative, sarcastic and drawn to controversy…He was a brilliant, complicated yet difficult man.” Paterson writes that Bruno “ushers in a modern theory of knowledge that understands all natural things in the universe to be known by the human mind through the mind’s dialectical structure”
Poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne June 9, 1889
I
Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win,
No grace for guidance, no release from sin,
Save of his own soul’s giving. Deep and bright
As fire enkindled in the core of night
Burns in the soul where once its fire has been
The light that leads and quickens thought, inspired
To doubt and trust and conquer. So he said
Whom Sidney, flower of England, lordliest head
Of all we love, loved: but the fates required
A sacrifice to hate and hell, ere fame
Should set with his in heaven Giordano’s name.
II
Cover thine eyes and weep, O child of hell,
Grey spouse of Satan, Church of name abhorred.
Weep, withered harlot, with thy weeping lord,
Now none will buy the heaven thou hast to sell
At price of prostituted souls, and swell
Thy loveless list of lovers. Fire and sword
No more are thine: the steel, the wheel, the cord,
The flames that rose round living limbs, and fell
In lifeless ash and ember, now no more
Approve thee godlike. Rome, redeemed at last
From all the red pollution of thy past,
Acclaims the grave bright face that smiled of yore
Even on the fire that caught it round and clomb
To cast its ashes on the face of Rome.
Song from 2016 by Avenged Sevenfold about Bruno’s death
For more on Giordano Bruno read Wikipedia, Britannica, The Famous People, ThoughtCo. and New Advent.
