Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, poet and cosmological theorist. [1] He extended the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus into a philosophy of an infinite universe containing countless stars and worlds, rejected central Christian doctrines, and was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. [2]
Early life and religious career
Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, near Naples in the Kingdom of Naples, and was given the name Filippo at birth. [1] He studied at the University of Naples Federico II and entered the Dominican order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, taking the name Giordano and being ordained a priest.
Within the order he acquired a formidable reputation for memory technique and for wide reading, including works placed on the Church's index of forbidden books. Suspicion of unorthodoxy accumulated around him, and in 1576 he left the order and Italy, beginning a period of wandering across Europe that lasted some fifteen years.
Travels and writings
Bruno taught and published in Geneva, Toulouse, Paris, London, Wittenberg, Prague, Helmstedt and Frankfurt, supporting himself through lecturing and patronage and repeatedly falling out with academic and religious authorities. [3] In Paris he won attention for his treatises on the art of memory, including De umbris idearum, and he later lectured at Oxford.
His most influential works were the Italian dialogues written in London in the 1580s: La cena de le ceneri ("The Ash Wednesday Supper"), De la causa, principio et uno ("On Cause, Principle and Unity") and De l'infinito, universo e mondi ("On the Infinite Universe and Worlds"). In them he defended Copernican astronomy and went considerably beyond it. [2]
Cosmology and philosophy
Bruno argued that the universe is infinite and has no centre, that the stars are distant suns attended by their own planets, and that those worlds may be inhabited. He denied that the heavens were a fixed sphere enclosing the Earth and rejected the ancient distinction between celestial and terrestrial matter. [3]
His metaphysics fused Neoplatonism, the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and the pantheistic idea of a divine principle immanent in all things. He also rejected doctrines central to Catholic teaching, including the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and transubstantiation.
Trial and death
In 1591 Bruno returned to Italy at the invitation of the Venetian patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, who denounced him to the Inquisition the following year. He was transferred to Rome, where his trial lasted some seven years. [1]
Refusing to recant, he was condemned as an obstinate heretic and burned alive at the Campo de' Fiori in Rome on 17 February 1600. The charges recorded against him were primarily theological, though his cosmological claims formed part of the case.
Legacy
Bruno's speculations about an infinite universe of other suns anticipated conclusions later reached by observational astronomy, and his death made him a symbol of free thought in conflict with institutional authority. [2] A monument to him was erected at the Campo de' Fiori in 1889, and his writings remain a subject of study in the history of philosophy and science. [3]
