A Burning Question from 1600

 

Giordano Bruno

Recently over the transom, a poem protesting the death of Giordano Bruno: “423 years ago, on February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun.” Stunning. Brave. 

This, unfortunately, is part of the anti-Catholic “black legend,” about as historically legitimate as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although much more socially acceptable.

Bruno was burned at the stake, but not for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun. The Catholic Church had no position in 1600 on that matter. Copernicus, a Catholic cleric in good standing, had advanced the argument as early as 1514, and faced no opposition from church authorities.

According to the poem, Bruno was also killed for saying

that God is inside us, and not out there,

a bearded man looking on from a cloud

There is no evidence that Bruno believed this, other than that all Christians did. He would have faced no opposition from the Church if this were what he was preaching in the square. Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within.” The Christian concept of God is not a bearded man looking on from a cloud, but as God chose to reveal himself to us, as a thirty-something Jewish carpenter. However, it was precisely this, God’s humanity, and God’s immanence,  that Bruno denied.

Killing someone for their opinions or beliefs, or even silencing them, is always wrong; but Bruno was condemned for denying the existence of Hell, denying the Trinity, denying the divinity of Christ, denying transubstantiation, claiming the universe itself was eternal and infinite, and advocating reincarnation. It was these doctrines, for what they were worth, he was prepared to die for rather than renounce.

That, and he was also suspected of being the spy and agent of a foreign power, Calvinist Geneva.