51 Facts About Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist.

Giordano Bruno is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then novel Copernican model.

Giordano Bruno proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism.

Giordano Bruno insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no "center".

Giordano Bruno was later tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation.

Giordano Bruno's pantheism was not taken lightly by the church, nor was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul.

Some historians contend that the main reason for Giordano Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views.

Giordano Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.

Historian Frances Yates argues that Giordano Bruno was deeply influenced by the presocratic Empedocles, Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Genesis-like legends surrounding the Hellenistic conception of Hermes Trismegistus.

Giordano Bruno continued his studies there, completing his novitiate, and ordained a priest in 1572 at age 24.

Such behavior could perhaps be overlooked, but Giordano Bruno's situation became much more serious when he was reported to have defended the Arian heresy, and when a copy of the banned writings of Erasmus, annotated by him, was discovered hidden in the monastery latrine.

Giordano Bruno first went to the Genoese port of Noli, then to Savona, Turin and finally to Venice, where he published his lost work On the Signs of the Times with the permission of the Dominican Remigio Nannini Fiorentino.

Rather than apologizing, Giordano Bruno insisted on continuing to defend his publication.

Giordano Bruno went to France, arriving first in Lyon, and thereafter settling for a time in Toulouse, where he took his doctorate in theology and was elected by students to lecture in philosophy.

Giordano Bruno attempted at this time to return to Catholicism, but was denied absolution by the Jesuit priest he approached.

Giordano Bruno's talents attracted the benevolent attention of the king Henry III; Bruno subsequently reported.

In Paris, Giordano Bruno enjoyed the protection of his powerful French patrons.

Giordano Bruno published a comedy summarizing some of his philosophical positions, titled Il Candelaio.

Giordano Bruno lived at the French embassy with the lexicographer John Florio.

Giordano Bruno lectured at Oxford, and unsuccessfully sought a teaching position there.

Giordano Bruno's views were controversial, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College and subsequently bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Some works that Giordano Bruno published in London, notably The Ash Wednesday Supper, appear to have given offense.

John Bossy has advanced the theory that, while staying in the French Embassy in London, Giordano Bruno was spying on Catholic conspirators, under the pseudonym "Henry Fagot", for Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State.

Giordano Bruno is sometimes cited as being the first to propose that the universe is infinite, which he did during his time in England, but an English scientist, Thomas Digges, put forth this idea in a published work in 1576, some eight years earlier than Giordano Bruno.

An infinite universe and the possibility of alien life had been earlier suggested by German Catholic Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in "On Learned Ignorance" published in 1440 and Giordano Bruno attributed his understanding of multiple worlds to this earlier scholar, who he called "the divine Cusanus".

Giordano Bruno went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt, but had to flee again in 1590 when he was excommunicated by the Lutherans.

Giordano Bruno published De Imaginum, Signorum, Et Idearum Compositione.

At the time the Inquisition seemed to be losing some of its strictness, and because the Republic of Venice was the most liberal state in the Italian Peninsula, Giordano Bruno was lulled into making the fatal mistake of returning to Italy.

Giordano Bruno went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, and applied unsuccessfully for the chair of mathematics, which was given instead to Galileo Galilei one year later.

Giordano Bruno defended himself skillfully, stressing the philosophical character of some of his positions, denying others and admitting that he had had doubts on some matters of dogma.

The numerous charges against Giordano Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology.

Giordano Bruno defended himself as he had in Venice, insisting that he accepted the Church's dogmatic teachings, but trying to preserve the basis of his cosmological views.

Giordano Bruno's trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused.

All of Giordano Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603.

The inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were Cardinal Bellarmino, Cardinal Madruzzo, Camillo Cardinal Borghese, Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel and Cardinal Santorio.

The measures taken to prevent Giordano Bruno continuing to speak have resulted in his becoming a symbol for free thought and speech in present-day Rome, where an annual memorial service takes place close to the spot where he was executed.

The earliest likeness of Giordano Bruno is an engraving published in 1715 and cited by Salvestrini as "the only known portrait of Giordano Bruno".

Giordano Bruno predicted that neither were the rotational orbits circular nor were their movements uniform.

In 1584, Giordano Bruno published two important philosophical dialogues in which he argued against the planetary spheres and affirmed the Copernican principle.

Giordano Bruno suggested that some, if not all, of the objects classically known as fixed stars are in fact suns.

Giordano Bruno wrote that other worlds "have no less virtue nor a nature different from that of our Earth" and, like Earth, "contain animals and inhabitants".

In 1942, Cardinal Giovanni Mercati, who discovered a number of lost documents relating to Giordano Bruno's trial, stated that the Church was perfectly justified in condemning him.

Giordano Bruno's work is an essential part of the scientific and philosophical developments that he initiated.

Giordano Bruno suggests that we can now recognize the universal law which controls the perpetual becoming of all things in an infinite universe.

Edward Gosselin has suggested that it is likely Giordano Bruno kept his tonsure at least until 1579, and it is possible that he wore it again thereafter.

An idealized animated version of Giordano Bruno appears in the first episode of the 2014 television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

The Last Confession by Morris West is an unfinished, posthumously published fictional autobiography of Giordano Bruno, ostensibly written shortly before Giordano Bruno's execution.

Hans Werner Henze set his large scale cantata for orchestra, choir and four soloists, Novae de infinito laudes to Italian texts by Giordano Bruno, recorded in 1972 at the Salzburg Festival reissued on CD Orfeo C609 031B.

Giordano Bruno is the central character in Roger Doyle's Heresy - an electronic opera.

The Giordano Bruno Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in Germany that pursues the "Support of Evolutionary Humanism".

The Giordano Bruno Foundation is critical of religious fundamentalism and nationalism.