Background

Giordano Filippo Bruno was born in 1548 in the little town of Nola, in Campania. His father, Giovanni Bruno, was a professional soldier, who married Fraulissa Savolino. The parents named their son Filippo at his baptism but he was later called “Il Nolano,” after the place of his birth.

Education

In 1562 Bruno went to Naples to study the humanities, logic, and dialectics (argumentation). He was impressed by the lectures of G.V. de Colle, who was known for his tendencies toward Averroism - i.e., the thought of a number of Western Christian philosophers who drew their inspiration from the interpretation of Aristotle put forward by the Muslim philosopher Averroes - and by his own reading of works on memory devices and the arts of memory (mnemotechnical works).

When Filippo was thirteen years old he began to go to school at the Monastery of Saint Domenico. In 1565 he entered the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples and assumed the name Giordano. This name he took after Giordano Crispo, his metaphysics teacher. Bruno continued to study theology, completing his discipleship, and became a priest in 1572 when he was 24. During the same year, he was sent back to the Neapolitan convent to continue his study of theology. In July 1575 Bruno completed the prescribed course, which generated in him an annoyance at theological subtleties.

Career

Giordano Bruno freely discussed the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ, and, as a result, a trial for heresy was prepared against him by the provincial father of the order, and he fled to Rome in February 1576. There he found himself falsely accused of a murder, so in April 1576 he fled again to avoid another inevitable attempt to excommunicate him.

Bruno passed through Rome and other northern Italian cities before reaching Geneva, Switzerland, where the famous Geneva Academy flourished. But Bruno was not allowed to teach there, and to get the right to study was possible on condition that he would accept Calvinism. In May 1579 his name was included into the Rector's Book of the University of Geneva. There Bruno was amazed by the ignorance of the professor of philosophy Antoine de la Faye, who was considered to be the pride of the Academy. So Bruno wrote the book in which he criticised the professor’s teaching. After publishing the book, Bruno was arrested. Bruno soon discovered that Geneva was no more tolerant of free thinkers than was the Roman Catholic Church. Arrested in Geneva, he found himself excommunicated from the Calvinist Church but after retracting he was allowed back into that Church and was then free to leave Geneva.

He moved to France where he attempted to rejoin the Catholic Church while in Toulouse but his application was refused. At Toulouse Bruno briefly taught philosophy and mathematics. From there he went to Lyons where he wrote Clavis Magna on the art of remembering which was a topic he specialized in. Moving on to Paris in 1581 Bruno became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Paris where he continued to develop his art of memory-training.

In Paris Bruno at last found a congenial place to work and teach. Despite the strife between the Catholics and the Huguenots (French Protestants), the court of Henry III was then dominated by the tolerant faction of the Politiques (moderate Catholics, sympathizers of the Protestant king of Navarre, Henry of Bourbon, who became the heir apparent to the throne of France in 1584). Bruno’s religious attitude was acceptable and he received the protection of the French king, who appointed him as Royal Lecturer. Bruno declared the course of mnemonics, which was in fashion. These lectures brought him renown. During that period, he published three mnemotechnical works, including De umbris idearum (On The Shadows of Ideas, 1582), Ars Memoriae (The Art of Memory, 1582), and Cantus Circaeus (Circe's Song, 1582), in which he explored new means to attain an intimate knowledge of reality. He also published a vernacular comedy, Il Candelario (1582; “The Candlemaker”), which, through a vivid representation of contemporary Neapolitan society, constituted a protest against the moral and social corruption of the time.

In the spring of 1583, Bruno went to London with a letter of introduction from Henry III for his ambassador Michel de Castelnau. Oxford seemed a place of learning that looked attractive to Bruno who visited there in the summer of 1583 and gave a series of lecturers on Copernicus's theory that the Earth rotated around the fixed Sun. But the innovative ideas were found unacceptable by the scholars of Oxford University. However, one undergraduate student who attended his lectures in Oxford was Francis Godwin, who, as a consequence, wrote the first story of space travel in English literature The Man in the Moone. Bruno had to move back to London as the guest of the French ambassador. He frequented the court of Elizabeth I and became associated with such influential figures as Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester.

In February 1584 he was invited by Fulke Greville, a member of Sidney’s circle, to discuss his theory of the movement of Earth with some Oxonian doctors, but the discussion degenerated into a quarrel.

Still, the English period was a prolific one. During that time Bruno completed and published some of his most important works, six brilliant "Italian Dialogues," including the cosmological tracts La Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584), De la Causa, Principio et Uno (On the Cause, Principle and Unity, 1584), De l'Infinito Universo et Mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584) as well as Lo Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante(The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584) and De gl' Heroici Furori (On Heroic Frenzies, 1585), Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo (The Cabala of the Horse Pegasus).

In October 1585 Bruno returned to Paris, where he found a changed political atmosphere. The tolerant face which he had experienced before had gone and in its place, there were struggles between the various religious factions. Bruno was never one to keep his head down, and he lectured publicly opposing the views of Aristotle. He also attacked a young Catholic mathematician Fabrizio Mordente, publishing four dialogues that made fun of Mordente's views. Bruno was forced to leave Paris and he went to Germany where he wandered from one university city to another, lecturing and publishing a variety of minor works, including the Articuli centum et sexaginta (1588; “160 Articles”) against contemporary mathematicians and philosophers.

At Helmstedt, however, in January 1589 he was excommunicated by the local Lutheran church. He remained in Helmstedt until the spring, completing works on natural and mathematical magic (posthumously published) and working on three Latin poems - De triplici minimo et mensura (“On the Threefold Minimum and Measure”), De monade, numero et figura (“On the Monad, Number, and Figure”), and De immenso, innumerabilibus et infigurabilibus (“On the Immeasurable and Innumerable”) - which reelaborate the theories expounded in the Italian dialogues and develop Bruno’s concept of an atomic basis of matter and being. To publish these, he went in 1590 to Frankfurt am Main, where the senate rejected his application to stay.

The year of 1591 found him in Frankfurt, where the seller of books Bruno had befriended, handed him over a letter from Mocenigo, inviting Bruno to Venice as a teacher of mnemonics. Giordano Bruno for a long time had not seen Italy. The Venice Republic was mostly liberal in religion, and Bruno decided to go there in March 1592, believing that the Inquisition might have lost some of its power. For about two months he functioned as an in-house tutor to Mocenigo, who himself appeared to be a stupid, secretive and suspicious person. He thought that Bruno was a magician and started to compile a dossier on him. There Bruno was arrested on May 22, 1592.

In January 1593 Bruno arrived in Rome and his trial began which was to drag on for seven years. At first, Bruno defended himself with the same arguments as he had used when tried by the Venetian Inquisition. The Roman Inquisition, however, declared that his views on physics and cosmology were theological and demanded that he retract. Bruno answered quite honestly that he did not know what he was being asked to retract, trying to convince the Inquisition that his views were in accord with Christianity. Pope Clement VIII demanded that Bruno be sentenced as a heretic and the Inquisition passed the death sentence on him. On hearing the sentence he responded: "Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it."

On February 17, 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, he was burnt at the stake.

In 2000, Pope John Paul II apologized for the execution.

Achievements

• 

  Giordano Bruno is primarily known for being a staunch supporter of Copernican heliocentrism, contributing to the development of the heliocentric model of the Universe. According to this model, the Sun was simply one more star, and other stars had its own planets. Bruno saw a solar system of a star with planets around as the basic unit of the universe. He put forward the idea that the stars are distant suns with their own planets moving around. He also described Universe as infinite.
  
  Another sphere of Bruno's scientific interest was mnemonics, the science about memory. He was improving techniques of mnemonics, based on organized knowledge and chain of associations. Bruno taught that there are no limits to human thoughts, feelings, and actions. Through its intellect, the human organism is capable of living in harmony with this universe. He also stressed that both reason and emotion are necessary for the total human being. As a symbol of the freedom of thought, Bruno inspired the European liberal movements of the 19th century, particularly the Italian Risorgimento.
  
  After the execution, Bruno gained considerable fame, being regarded as a martyr for science.
  
  There are several astronomical objects named after Bruno, including impact crater Giordano Bruno on the far side of the Moon, the main belt Asteroids 5148 Giordano and 13223 Cenaceneri.
  
  The SETI League established an award honoring the memory of Giordano Bruno. The Bruno Award will be presented annually to a person or persons making significant technical contributions to the art, science, or practice of amateur SETI.

Works

More photos

• book

  • De Umbris Idearum

    (To memorize anything, distribute vivid, emotionally stirr...)

    1582
  • Cantus Circaeu 1582
  • De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lulli 1582
  • Candelaio 1582
  • Sigillus sigillorum 1583
  • La cena de le ceneri 1584
  • De la Causa, Principio et Uno 1584
  • De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi 1584
  • Spaccio De La Bestia Trionfante 1584
  • Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo 1585
  • De gl'heroici furori 1585
  • De progressu et lampade venatoria logicorum 1587
  • Due orazioni: Oratio Valedictoria, Oratio Consolatoria

Religion

Early in his life, Bruno studied the Holy Scripture. In search for truth, he read a lot of theological treatises and other research. He challenged traditional beliefs and grew disappointed in most of them. The philosopher held opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, Incarnation, the virginity of Mary, Transubstantiation, and Mass.

The Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), the first dialogue of his moral trilogy, is a satire on contemporary superstitions and vices, embodying a strong criticism of Christian ethics - particularly the Calvinistic principle of salvation by faith alone, to which Bruno opposes an exalted view of the dignity of all human activities.

Bruno’s religion was the moving force behind both his wandering career and his philosophical and cosmic speculations. He believed that he was reviving the magical religion of the ancient Egyptians, a religion older than Judaism or Christianity, which these inferior religions had suppressed but of which he prophesied the imminent return. It included a belief in the magical animation of all nature, which the magus could learn how to tap and to use, and a belief in metempsychosis.

Discarding the belief in Hermes as a Gentile prophet, which sanctified the Hermetic writings for pious Christian Neoplatonists, Bruno accepted the pseudo-Egyptian religion described in the Hermetic texts as the true religion; he interpreted the lament in the Asclepius over the decay of Egypt and her magical worship as a lament for the true Egyptian religion, which had been suppressed by Christianity, although various signs and portents were announcing its return.

It is one of the most extraordinary features of Bruno’s outlook that he seems to have believed that his religion could somehow be incorporated within a Catholic framework in the coming new dispensation. He never lost his respect for Thomas Aquinas, and his preaching of his new religion retained traces of Dominican preacher’s training. Although Christ was for him a benevolent magus, as were Thomas Aquinas, Paracelsus, Ramón Lull, and Giordano Bruno himself, he proclaimed in the Spaccio della bestia trionfante that Christ was to remain in heaven as an example of a good life.

Bruno also claimed that different Christian Churches should be allowed to coexist and that they should respect each other's views. His teachings of peace between churches led to his being excommunicated from the Lutheran Church in January 1589.

Politics

Bruno stood against the absolute power of the Church. The society should be based on the authority of the Law and people should have iqual rights and charges.

Views

Bruno can claim to be the first thinker since antiquity to integrate metaphysics, physics, psychology, and ethics into an original, if unsystematically presented, philosophy, one that aspired to go beyond the reelaborations of Platonism, Aristotelianism or scepticism within a Christian context that had hitherto prevailed. The outcome was a radical alternative to medieval and Renaissance interpretations of human nature, the cosmos, and God. His philosophy remained, however, in one decisive respect a creation of the Renaissance: neither celestial nor terrestrial mechanics were reducible to mathematical abstractions.

In the Cena de le Ceneri (1584; "The Ash Wednesday Supper"), he not only reaffirmed the reality of the heliocentric theory but also suggested that the universe is infinite, constituted of innumerable worlds substantially similar to those of the solar system. In the first place, it disproved Aristotle’s doctrine that each sublunary element had a fixed "natural place" at the centre of the cosmos - the earth’s globe at the very centre, water in the sphere immediately surrounding it, followed by the air and fire spheres - and that particles of the elements, if displaced from these natural spheres, had an intrinsic impulse to regain them. On the contrary, since the earth, Bruno explained was a planet circling the sun, the elemental spheres of which it was constituted were continuously in motion. The elements did not have absolute "natural places"; and an elemental part, whether displaced from a whole or chancing to be near a whole, sought to attach itself to it because a whole was the place where it would be best preserved. Once united with a whole, elemental parts were no longer heavy or light and revolved with it naturally, that is, without resistance. This doctrine of gravity drew on Ficino’s Neoplatonic ideas of elemental motion, Copernicus’s doctrine of gravity, Lucretius’s comments on the weightlessness of parts in their wholes and scholastic notions of self-conservation.

Bruno saw the Universe as infinite, homogeneous expanse populated by an infinite number of solar systems like our own. The celestial or, as Bruno called them, "principal" bodies glided weightlessly within an infinite "receptacle" or "expanse" of aether like specks of dust in the sunlit air. In each solar system or, in Bruno’s terminology, "synod" the suns and earth regulated their motions autonomously to their mutual advantage. From the earths, the suns absorbed vaporous exhalations. In exchange, the sun produced the light and heat that the earths, as "animals," needed in order to host living things. No part of them remained forever barren thanks to the several approximately circular revolutions that they performed.

In keeping with these ideas, Bruno populated the principal bodies with life-forms of every kind. Each region of each principal body comprised matter which, circumstances permitting, became a plant or animal, even a rational animal. This last category included human beings and also demons, in other words, rational beings with rarefied bodies made of pure aether or combinations of aether with air, water, or earth. The latter, to judge by the demons frequenting the elemental regions of our globe, were generally, but by no means invariably, more intelligent than human beings.

Bruno’s theory of the elements drew on Pythagoreanism, ancient atomism, medieval discussions, pro and contra, of indivisible minims, and Nicholas of Cusa’s elemental doctrines. Corporeal things comprised two material principles, earth and water, and two immaterial ones, spirit and soul. By "earth" Bruno meant the discrete, identical, irreducible spheres of which physical things were made. He often called them "atoms" to emphasize their indivisibility. The circumferences and centres of these spherical atoms coincided. Hence, as some medieval authors had proposed, atoms were dimensionless bodies, unlike the atoms imagined by Democritus and other ancient atomists. They were, as Bruno said, the principles of spatial contraction, of solidity. Water, by contrast, was a continuum and the principle of corporeal extension. Two or more atoms, though dimensionless, bonded by water constituted a determinate body in space, just as two or more dimensionless points, in Bruno’s Pythagorean geometry, constituted a line. "The minimal body or atom was the substance of all things." Observation confirmed this theory: dry, dusty, earth congealed with the addition of water.

The soul that Bruno identified as one of the four principles of corporeality was the World or Universal Soul. The universe was an organism in which each principal body and the life sustained on it participated in a common animating principle, in the same way as the many parts of the human body were vivified by one and the same soul. Even supposedly inanimate things had a vestigial presence of life. Rocks, for example, were alive to the same degree as the bones or teeth of animals were. Bruno adduced several scriptural witnesses, notably the Book of Wisdom, thereby identifying the Universal Soul implicitly with the Holy Spirit: "For the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world: and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice."

The Universal Soul combined with Universal Matter to produce the universe; the former was the active power, form, and the latter its passive subject. Bruno conceived Universal Matter as indeterminate space, that is, the receptacle of Plato’s Timaeus, or more exactly Aristotle’s interpretation of it. In this respect, it was the motionless aether or spirit, devoid of any "specific quality" of its own, that served as the medium through which soul acted on the two corporeal principles, earth atoms and water. All Universal Matter was "accompanied" by form, that is, the Universal Soul. This simple picture was complicated by Bruno’s interpretation of the Universal or, synonymously, First Intellect. Like the Neoplatonic Intellect, Bruno’s Universal Intellect comprised the Ideas; but, unlike its Neoplatonic counterpart, it was not a hypostasis distinct from, and ontologically prior to, the Universal Soul.

Quotations: "The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it."

"I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence."

"There are countless suns and countless earths all rotating around their suns in exactly the same way as the seven planets of our system."

"Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind."

"The universal Intellect is the intimate, most real, peculiar, and powerful part of the soul of the world."

"Anything we take in the Universe because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it."

"The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life."

Membership

• 

  Bruno entered the Dominican Order at the age of 17. Later he abandoned the order.

  Dominican Order

Personality

Giordano Bruno was independent in thinking and tempestuous in personality. His love for knowledge and hatred of ignorance led him to become a rebel, unwilling to accept traditional authority. The price he paid for this independence was persecution and condemnation in many countries.

The history of Bruno’s reputation is instructive. Abhorred by Marin Mersenne as an impious deist, he was more favorably mentioned by Kepler. Rumors of his diabolism seem to have been circulated and were mentioned even by Pierre Bayle in one of the footnotes to his contemptuous article on Bruno. The eighteenth-century deist John Toland revived interest in some of his works. It was not until about the mid-nineteenth century that a revival on a large scale began to gather strength and the legend of the martyr for modern science was invented - of the man who died, not for any religious belief, but solely for his acceptance of the Copernican theory and his bold vision of an infinite universe and innumerable worlds.

Physical Characteristics: The records of Bruno's imprisonment by the Venetian inquisition in May 1592 describe him as a man "of average height, with a hazel-colored beard and the appearance of being about forty years of age." Alternately, a passage in a work by George Abbot indicates that Bruno was of diminutive stature: "When that Italian Didapper, who intituled himself Philotheus Iordanus Brunus Nolanus, magis elaboratae Theologiae Doctor, etc. with a name longer than his body..."

Quotes from others about the person

• "Great in philosophy, great in science, - physical and moral, - he was greater still in practice, in life and in death. No man ever labored more or suffered more, in order to be free himself and help others to be so. No one ever met death more firmly and heroically. Among the martyrs for truth and freedom, - those first essentials of manhood, - he occupies the highest place." - Thomas Davidson
  
  "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. … 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 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." - William Boulting
  
  "It is reasonable to denounce Bruno as one of the most evil men that the earth has ever borne.” - Marin Mersenne
  
  "Bruno stood at the stake in solitary and awful grandeur. There was not a friendly face in the vast crowd around him. It was one man against the world." - George William Foote
  
  "Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body." - Dejan Stojanovic

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Hermes Trismegistus, Nicolaus Copernicus, Marsilio Ficino, Raimundus Lullus, Thomas Aquinas

• Politicians

  King of France Henry III

• Writers

  Cecco d’Ascoli

Connections

Giordano Bruno was not married.

Father:

Giovanni Bruno

Mother:

Fraulissa Savolino

prosecutor:

Roberto Belarmino

Robert Bellarmine was an Italian Jesuit who acted as an examiner of Bruno's beliefs. He also remembered for his role in the Galileo affair.

Acquaintance:

Giovanni Mocenigo

Giordano Bruno taught Giovanni Mocenigo the art of memory. Later, the relationship between them cooled and Mocenigo accused Bruno of heresy.

patron:

Michel de Castelnau

patron:

Henry III of France

Henry III was impressed by Bruno's lecture and invited him to his court.

Acquaintance:

Robert Dudley

Acquaintance:

Philip Sidney

Acquaintance:

Fulke Greville

Greville was close friends with Sir Philip Sidney, who admired Bruno and who the Nolan dedicated a book to.

Acquaintance:

George Abbot

George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, criticized Bruno for supporting Copernicus' theory.

References

• Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic
  2008
• Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
  1964
• Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance
  2002
• Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science
  1999
• Magic and Memory in Giordano Bruno
  2018
• The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy
  1927
• The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition
  2002
• Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Gallileo and the Inquisition
  2018
• The Forbidden History of Science
  2015
• Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
  2014