Bruno, Giordano

History

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was Italian heterodox philosopher and a theologian. Because of his ideas and writings, Giordano Bruno left Naples, his home town, in 1576. In 1583, he abandoned his Dominican habit and left Italy, living thereafter in France, England, and Germany.

A supporter of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, of which he became a staunch supporter, Giordano Bruno collected countless enemies for their unorthodox ideas. In his book De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi (1584), he argued that the universe was infinite, that it contained an infinite number of worlds, and that these are all inhabited by intelligent beings.

In 1591, he left to Venice, where in 1592 he got arrested and tried by the Inquisition. After he recanted, Bruno was sent to Rome, in 1592, for another trial. After 8 years of successive interrogations, he was declared a heretic. In 1660, Bruno was burned at the Inquisitorial stake because of his Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited...