It was in my usual quest to find more things to research for my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and answers that a particular episode spoke of this man who was regrettably unknown to me. As always, I turned on my iPad as the hosts of the show spoke and looked up Giordano Bruno. I was immediately enthralled. I don't even remember what the rest of the episode was about because at that moment and onward late into the night, I researched this man and his unmitigated gall to dare challenge the Vatican's stance on the Earth being the center of the universe.
Through his own endeavors to discover the mysteries of the universe outside of the sanctioned education of the Dominican priesthood (of which he was a member for 11 years), he came to find God was more in nature and within our own minds and hearts than in the words of man. He broadened his experiences by seeking truth in science, which lead to his insane notions that our planet not only isn't the center of our universe but only one of perhaps millions of other planets in creation.
"Heresy!" they screamed and threw him in prison, where he remained faithful to real Truth and determined to share the real wisdom of our existence with anyone he could reach. Even upon his death as yet another of Rome's victims burned at the stake, he refused to betray what he knew in his heart and soul was truth. (Because of this, I have since wondered why the infamous Anonymous insists upon idolizing Guy Fawkes, the failed terrorist hired by the Vatican to kill the king. Bruno was murdered for seeking knowledge by the tyrannical powers Guy Fawkes emulated. A bit of a contradiction to what Anonymous stands for, isn't it?)
Giordano Bruno was a human being only wishing the freedom to be his own person and seeking the truth in science and creation to be shared with those wishing to follow that path, while the Vatican was the governing force determined to silence Truth and oppress freedom.
There is some recent expected absurdity from the Vatican. Although Pope John Paul II "forgave" Galileo for insisting the Earth revolves around the sun, the Vatican refuses to acknowledge any wrong-doing on the part of Bruno. They say it is because he was disrespectful of the Church and not because of his "heretical claims" about the universe (as Galileo had once proclaimed). However, it was Bruno's unapologetic push for citizens and clerics alike to consider Science as a voice of reason that angered the Vatican because they saw it as an attack on their beliefs. Science, remember, was always religion's enemy.
Bruno never suggested Science replace religion or even the Church. He merely tried to reason that both could exist in harmony. One does not have to be ignorant of a scientific and rational education to be spiritual, and it was this opinion that condemned him to be burned at the stake.
Further fanatical hypocrisy: Though Bruno's only crime was to encourage free-thinking, it is he who was burned and still condemned while child rapists continue to be protected behind vestments and crucifixes.
When speaking at a Jesuit symposium in 2000, Cardinal Paul Poupard said Bruno's beliefs were "incompatible with Christian thought." How sad that in this one statement, the Cardinal declared one must be an uneducated simpleton to qualify as a Christian.
His hypocritical drivel sanctioned by the Vatican continued: "I don't think, therefore, that you can or should speak of rehabilitation because, as regards the Giordano Bruno case, there are no grounds for such a hypothetical operation as instead did happen, for example, for Jan Huss and for Galileo." [The Church must regret his death] "because the use of coercion and of violent methods is absolutely incompatible with a sincere and authentic search for truth and with the affirmation of the Evangelic truth."
So while he acknowledges the ineffective futility of the Inquisition's notorious torture to garner conversions and confessions of sins that most times were never committed, he makes it known that the Vatican still condemns Bruno for his opinions and lessons in Science - simply, one must realize, because they made the Vatican look ignorant.
It is true that Bruno set out to spread the evil of education and enlightenment against the vehement orders of the Church. He attempted to teach on the subjects of the universe and of God in nature everywhere he was hired. This resulted in excommunication by the Catholic church, Calvinists, Protestants and Lutherans.
It didn't help his cause when he openly and mockingly accused Oxford professors of knowing more about beer than Greek. Bruno's book, "The Supper of Ashes," attacks such professors and lends support to Copernicus' theory of the planets revolving around the sun. He demonstrated the unlikelihood of Aristotle's decree of ours being a closed universe. Such things at that time were heresy because the Vatican had already agreed with philosophers who believed the Earth was flat, we are the only solar system in creation, and the Earth was the center of our universe. To declare the opposite of anything the Vatican supported was a sin against God, even if it was right.
He was an outspoken proponent of learning and knowledge, and anyone who purposefully or by their own limitations hampered the education of those seeking it would come under his wrath. It's unfortunate there aren't more Giordano Brunos in the world today.
In spite of the attempts by the Church to silence Bruno and stop his contamination of their ignorance with knowledge, there was still a number of followers who refused to let his 8 year imprisonment and slander by the church stop his efforts to enlighten the world. The numbers of his supporters steadily grew after his death, perhaps because of his death, and there were secret members of his failed personal sect, Giordanism, who carried on his words and traditions in private.
When his death sentence was read, Bruno first fell to his knees, then rose and said to the judges, "You who pronounce this sentence have more fear than I in hearing it." Eight days later, he was stripped and led naked to the square at dawn, where he was burned to death. The Jesuit theologian Roberto Bellarmino presided over his trial and later stated that he regretted the judgment and would regret the execution for the rest of his life.
In 1889, the city council of Rome erected a bronze statue to Bruno at Campo de'Fiori, the market square where he was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. The Vatican, of course, protested the statue, but the anti-clerical city council governing Rome had a greater voice after the deposition of Pope Pius IX by the forces that unified Italy. The funds to pay Ettore Ferrari to create the sculpture was raised by a student committee. To this day, wreaths are placed at the statue on the anniversary of his murder.
It's interesting to note that while his manuscripts, research, and all of his notes were analyzed during his 8 year incarceration and claimed to be burned at St. Peter's Square, they suspiciously re-appeared during a recent opening of vaults by the Vatican. These papers were to be on display to the public, but I doubt anything the Vatican released can be trusted as the real thing. How can you go from burning a document to all of a sudden being able to display it? I suspect it was never burned but I, also, suspect what is viewable to the public is false and only intended to quell speculation and diminish his ever-present influence.
I wonder how the Vatican felt about NASA bestowing the great honor of naming a moon crater after him. And what an exciting, poetic decision for such an historically significant part of our moon? http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast26apr_1/
I'm sure if they could, they would burn the moon and the NASA Space Center like they are now doing to the statue of Bruno in a disgusting new app: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=53708#.UZ46yCtoQ78 . If I was still a Catholic, I would be alarmed and ashamed and this might possibly be the straw that broke the camel's back.
As part of their unveiling of the supposed manuscript of the Inquisition of Bruno, the Vatican Secret Archives partnered with a mobile application company to create a visual of the statue of Bruno that a person must set on fire in order to access the documents through their device. What do you think would happen if such an app were to be released of the Pope being shot? For instance, in order to glimpse Pope John Paul's archives, one must fire a gun and hit him in the head. Or perhaps in order to unlock notes on Jesus, one must hammer him to the cross. This is a disgusting, abhorrent display by the Vatican that is nothing more than a tantrum reminiscent of a 3 year old child because of their protest of the statue. It is yet another reason I left the church and will never return!
As for Giordano Bruno, he is a hero to every intellectual who is being forced or coerced into a life of ignorant submission. Had I known about him sooner, I wouldn't have wasted so much of my life living the lies of the Vatican, and I could be so much farther along in my theological, philosophical, and cultural studies. At least I know him now and my daughter has the benefit of a parent no longer shackled to such an archaic, cruel, and ignorant institution.
A Few Giordano Bruno Quotes:
"There are countless suns and countless Earths all rotating around their suns in exactly the same way as the seven planets in our solar system. We see only the suns because they are the largest bodies and are luminous, but their planets remain invisible to us because they are smaller and non-luminous. The countless worlds in the universe are no worse and no less inhabited than our Earth."
"In general, all religions will disturb the peace and serenity of man, blind in the light of reason and fail to improve customs."
"The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it."
"Time is the Father of Truth. The Mother is our mind."
"The heroic soul shall seek truth and find it."
The idealogy of Bruno in his Eroici, by William Boulting:
"The intellectually disposed will discover no abiding home in the transitory world of sense or in ordinary piety; only by the exercise of intellect, which is a divine passion, shall these find anchorage for the soul. Such as would purify the will sprout "wings to the soul"; they already possess the divine spirit they seek after, and so are at once the lover and the loved; and their love shall enable these undaunted heroes to pass through suffering (which is no other than a golden spur), become spectators of Infinite Power and Act, and be at one, not indeed with the innermost being of God, but with God in the highest manifestations of his mind....
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Bruno is the first thinker who based the soul's duty to itself on its own nature: not on external authority, but on inner light
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To Bruno, philosophy and science were "musical as is Apollo's lute." He pursued them with, the passion of a lover. He holds that when once intellectual love is aroused nothing else will really satisfy.
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Of Bruno, as of Spinoza, it may be said that he was "God-intoxicated." He felt that the Divine Excellence had its abode in the very heart of Nature and within his own body and spirit. Indwelling in every dewdrop as in the [179] innumerable host of heaven, in the humblest flower and in the mind of man, he found the living spirit of God, setting forth the Divine glory, making the Divine perfection and inspiring with the Divine love. The Eroici is full of the pantings of his soul for intellectual enfranchisement and contact with Truth, the divine object. He breaks out into many a canzone to express the heroic rapture of the upsoaring soul.
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