Feb 17--Giordano Bruno--A Day to Remember

[Goblinmonger]

Today marks the anniversary of the Catholic Church's burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, sometimes thought of as the first martyr for free thought and science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Some highlights of that article:

A list of the "crimes" he committed.

Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
Dealing in magics and divination.
Denying the Virginity of Mary.

His sentencing.

At his trial he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." A month or so later he was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600.

The Catholic Church's take on it?

The Vatican webpage about Bruno's trial provides a different perspective: "In the same rooms where Giordano Bruno was questioned, for the same important reasons of the relationship between science and faith, at the dawning of the new astronomy and at the decline of Aristotle’s philosophy, sixteen years later, Cardinal Bellarmino, who then contested Bruno’s heretical theses, summoned Galileo Galilei, who also faced a famous inquisitorial trial, which, luckily for him, ended with a simple abjuration."

Yeah, actually burning Bruno at the stake might have provided some incentive for Galileo to back down a little more than Bruno did. Funny how the threat of horrific pain will do that.

One of my favorite quotations from Bruno.

"I fought, and that's a lot. I thought I could win ... but nature and luck curbed my endeavour. But it's already something that I took up the struggle, because I see that victory is in the hands of Fate. In me was what was possible and what no future century will be able to deny to me: what a winner could give from his own; that I did not fear death, that I did not submit, my face firm, to anyone of my breed; that I preferred courageous death to pavid life."

I will drink a toast to him tonight.