Author's Introduction
- Go to Campo dei Fiori in Rome on 17 February and you will find yourself surrounded by a motley crowd of atheists, pantheists, anarchists, Masons, mystics, Christian reformers and members of the Italian Association of Free Thinkers, all rubbing shoulders with an official delegation from City Hall.
- Every year, this unlikely congregation gathers to lay wreaths at the foot of the 19th-century statue that glowers over the piazza from beneath its friar’s cowl; flowers, candles, poems and tributes pile up against the plinth whose inscription reads: ‘To Bruno, from the generation he foresaw, here, where the pyre burned.’ In the four centuries since he was executed for heresy by the Roman Inquisition, this diminutive iconoclast has been appropriated as a symbol by all manner of causes, reflecting the complexities and contradictions inherent in his ideas, his writings and his character.
- Giordano Bruno was born in Nola, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, in 1548, a soldier’s son who joined the prestigious Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in nearby Naples at the age of 17. He excelled in philosophy and theology, but his precocious intellect proved as much a liability as an asset; he was constantly in trouble with his superiors for questioning orthodoxies and seeking out forbidden reading material.
- In 1576, he was forced to flee the convent under the cover of darkness to avoid an interrogation by the local Inquisitor after being discovered reading Erasmus in the privy (he had thrown the book down the hole to hide the evidence, but someone was determined enough to fish it out).
- So began an itinerant life that saw Bruno progress north through Italy to France, transforming himself along the way from defrocked friar (he was excommunicated in absentia for his unauthorised flight), to university teacher, to personal tutor to King Henry III of France, all in little more than five years.
- This remarkable rise illustrates Bruno’s audacity and charisma but, although he began to move in influential circles, gaining a reputation for his prodigious memory and the artificial memory system he devised, his position always remained precarious; he made enemies with as much alacrity as he attracted admirers, and was thrown into prison in more than one city for giving offence in his public lectures. He published books that further consolidated his notoriety as a dangerous thinker.
- Bruno moved from Paris to London, back to Paris, then on to Wittenburg, Prague, Zurich, Frankfurt, Padua and Venice, charming his way into the service of ambassadors, archdukes, kings and emperors, always seeking the sympathetic patron who would allow him to develop his philosophy without fear of reprisals from the authorities, but eventually his luck ran out. In Venice, he was betrayed and arrested by the Inquisition. After eight years in prison and two lengthy trials, he was led out to Campo dei Fiori on the morning of 17 February 1600, where he was burned alive, reportedly turning his face from the proffered crucifix in his final moments.
- The German Catholic convert Gaspar Schoppe, who witnessed Bruno’s final trial and his execution, wrote an account afterwards to a friend in which he reported that, after the death sentence was pronounced: ‘He made no other reply than, in a menacing tone, [to say], “You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it.”’
- The length of Bruno’s imprisonment and trials suggests an unease on the part of the Holy Office, a recognition that the case against him was far from clear-cut. Bruno’s defiance and integrity in refusing to recant have lent an air of martyrdom to his death – something he might even have sensed at the time, to judge by his response. But the nature of that martyrdom – if such it was – is less easy to pin down.
Author's Conclusion
- Bruno might have become the figurehead of choice for the students of a Rome newly independent of Papal authority after the Risorgimento (‘the generation he foresaw’); there might be piazzas, streets and colleges named after him all over Italy now, but his relationship to authority remains uneasy. His successor Galileo, who did recant when condemned by the Inquisition, was officially pardoned by Pope John Paul II in 1992, but as recently as 2000, on the 400th anniversary of Bruno’s death, the same Papal authority declared that the Nolan had deviated too far from Christian doctrine to be granted Christian pardon. Even now, he remains an outsider, and perhaps that is what gives his story its enduring power.
- Last Christmas, a friend sent me a photograph from Cosenza in Calabria: a poster stuck to a public sculpture in the shape of a pile of books growing wings and taking flight. The poster showed a picture of Bruno’s statue, superimposed with the words ‘Ricordando Giordano Bruno, Contro Vecchi e Nuovi Inquisitori’ (Remembering Giordano Bruno, Against Old and New Inquisitors).
- A few weeks earlier, I had heard him mentioned by the exiled Russian activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, at a fundraising gig for the Belarus Free Theatre, as part of a rousing speech about the past heroes who had given her courage to continue her protests. Perhaps the Inquisition is still with us, in different shapes, and each new generation he foresaw must not take its freedom of thought for granted. For as long as there are those who dare to voice their ideas aloud and are imprisoned or exiled for it, Bruno persists as a symbol of intellectual courage. Long may his flame burn.
Author Narrative
- Stephanie Merritt is an English writer and novelist. She was deputy literary editor of The Observer from 1998-2005 and is the author of a bestselling series featuring the 16th-century heretic philosopher and spy, Giordano Bruno. She lives in Sussex.
Notes
- This is an old Paper (by Aeon standards!) and arrived on my list because it was cited in "Lau (Graham) - The ‘panzoic effect’: the benefits of thinking about alien life".
- It would actually have been more relevant had it been cited by "Mills (Sam) - Requeering Wilde", as there is a parallel in pressure groups adopting their version of a historical figure without being too scrupulous as to historical accuracy.
- It was written by a novelist who has written a series with a fictionalised Gordiano Bruno as a protagonist, so is doubtless a plug for her books (though they are not cited explicitly). Indeed, it seems from Wikipedia: Stephanie Merritt that the 8 novels in the series were written under the name of S. J. Parris.
- The author claims not to be a Bruno scholar, so maybe Wikipedia: Giordano Bruno may be best for the facts.
- It's doubtful whether Gordiano Bruno was right on many things so he's mainly revered - where he is - as a hero for free speech.
- There are 19 Aeon Comments, mostly sensible, which deserve study.
- I suppose this relates - vaguely - to my Notes on Narrative identity and Naturalism.
Comment:
- Sub-Title: "For anyone who dares to voice dangerous ideas and risk imprisonment or exile, Giordano Bruno remains a hero"
- For the full text see Aeon: Merritt - Bruno the brave.
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