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How Fact Becomes (Anti-Catholic)
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By: Robert P. Lockwood

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"Did you ever hear of Giordano Bruno?" a buddy asked me. "Some guy More like this
said the inquisition burned him, a great scientist and a hero in Italy."
The Statue in Campo
My response: "Giordano Bruno died from a massive ego, intellectual de' Fiori
pretension, a singular dishonesty, an overactive libido, and for being a
The work of miscreant priest who allowed himself to be ordained when he didnt Giordano Bruno
Catholic Answers believe any essential truths of the faith. Hes a walking billboard for the
was instrum ental in In the Name of Science
inquisition."
bringing m e back to Franz Jacob Clemens
the Church. With Okay, maybe Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the recently retired Secretary of
the help of God's State of the Holy See, said it more diplomatically on the 400th Bruno, Saint
grace, I was then anniversary of Brunos death in 2000: He called his death "a sad (Carthusian)
able to help bring episode," but refused to apologize for the actions of his inquisitors.
m y wife back too.
Giordano Bruno had been forgotten to history until he was resurrected
Keep up the good as a martyr for modern science in the late 19th century, though he
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work! was about as far from a scientist as one could get. His tale is a lesson
in how Catholic urban legends are made. Video
~ Daniel, Harrogate,
Tennessee Archeology
Bad Theology, Bad Science and History
can
Bruno was born in Nola, part of the Kingdom of Naples, in 1548. He enhance your faith!
entered the Dominican monastery and was ordained a priest at the age
of 24. Did the
Emperor
Early in his novitiate, Bruno demonstrated a distinctly odd theology. He Constantine
stripped his cell of all religious artparticularly art devoted to the found the Catholic
Blessed Motherand later criticized a fellow seminarian for his Church?
devotional reading.
Tracts
By the age of 18, he had already rejected the divinity of Christ and
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 belief in the Trinity. In contemporary understanding, that made Bruno The Galileo Controversy
not merely a heretic, but an atheist. (In the 16th century, atheism was
defined not as a complete rejection of the existence of Goda simply The Inquisition
incomprehensible positionbut rejection of Christ.)
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But Bruno kept these views to himself and was ordained a priest for the
Pope Fiction
Order of Preachers in 1572. At this point he began to develop a mish-
mash of ideas, a combination of Plato, Protestant theology, Hebrew Answ ering Myths and
mysticism, his own "atheism" and the philosophical wanderings of a Lies About the Church
15th-century German priest and cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa (1400-
1464). Quick Questions
Bruno had come to believe that God had createdand continues to How can I defend the
createan infinite number of worlds, both in an infinitely large outer Church against the
space, and an infinitely small inner space, if you will. It was that belief inquisition?
in an infinitely small "inner space" of creation that led some to see him W as the Baptist church
as the originator of modern science, with our understanding of a world kept "underground" by
made up of atomic and subatomic particles. the Catholic Church
until the Reformation?
But in this, he was simply regurgitating Cardinal Cusas speculations,
which were philosophical musings, not scientific investigations. Cusas
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goal was to find the proof of Godthe action of Gods creationin all
matter great and small. The Anti-Catholics
Trump Card
Brunos goal was different, describing an endless universe of endless
creating that God needed, rather than a universe that needed God. As Blog
one of his cellmates in Venice put it: "He said that God needed the
Smart Remarks Are
world as much as the world needed God, and that God would be
Rarely Smart
nothing without the world, and for this reason God did nothing but
create new worlds." Quotes and Rumors of
Quotes
If that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, its because it is mumbo-jumbo.

Trying to get to the root of Brunos beliefs is like wrestling with an eel.
The scientific methods employed by a true nascent scientist like
Nicholas Copernicus were processes the free-thinking Bruno loathed.

That is what makes him such an odd pick for a scientific martyr.
Though possessing knowledge of contemporary mathematics, Bruno had
little use for calculations or observation, preferring to borrow ideas from
across the landscape and to fuse them into unintelligibility. Brunos
"science" is as meaningless today as it was in his own time.

A Triple Excommunicate

Bruno gained what actual reputation he had in his own life from feats of
memory. From his Dominican training, he adapted mnemonic systems
that allowed for preaching that could last for hours but had a
remarkable orderliness to it. As a young priest, Bruno traveled to Rome

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 to demonstrate his skill to Pope Pius V.

But even here, Bruno was a failure. Apparently, he was unableor

unwillingto teach his mnemonic skills, either fearful that his "tricks"
would be stolen by others, or simply incapable of conveying his system
in an orderly fashion.

Bruno remained with the Dominican Order for roughly 10 years. In 1576,
fearing that his ideas would bring him face-to-face with Church
authorities, Bruno took to the hills.

He wandered about Italy and France until finally landing in Geneva in

1579, where he announced himself a Calvinist. He then proceeded to
insult a prominent Calvinist professor and soon became an
excommunicated Calvinist. Under those circumstances, he decided to
flee to Paris, where King Henry III engaged him in mnemonic training.

In France he published a number of works on mnemonics and works

meant to allegedly spell out his "natural philosophy." By then, though
he had expressed an interest in returning to his order, "his escape from
the convent also meant an escape from the vows of chastity and
obedience, and he pursued women with Falstaffian mater-of-factness
rather than poetic pining" (Ingrid D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno,
Philosopher Heretic, 159).

His works written in France are a mix of bombast, insults, bizarre

mysticism, and sheer crackpot ideology. In the midst of trying to
explain this disorganized philosophy, he celebrated "magic"which his
biographer Rowland wants to de-stigmatize by explaining it away as
some kind of earthly wisdom. But he embraced magic, believing in the
occult qualities of numbers and objects. He also claimed that demons
caused disease, which could be cured through a kings touch or by a
seventh sons spittle .

As King Henry began to assert his Catholic faith more strongly against
Huguenot claims, Bruno decided that France might not be the best
home for an excommunicated Dominican. In 1583, he arrived in England.
But in a rare example of good sense in Elizabethan England, Bruno was
laughed off the stage at an Oxford debate. By October 1585 he was
back in Paris, then onto Germany.
Book Of Saints And
In 1588 he served as a professor in Helmstedt but was then Heroes
excommunicated by the Lutheranswho accused him of being a These marvelous
Calvinist. legends and exciting
true stories of
Now excommunicated by the Catholic Church, the Calvinists, and the Christian saints and
Lutheransand never once based on his alleged "scientific" beliefs heroes will provide
Bruno traveled to Frankfurt, where he hoped to make a living among many hours of
the printers and booksellers. delightful reading to

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 At this point, he made clear once again his refusal to believe in the believers and non-
Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Christ as the Son of God, or believers alike!
original sin. But in 1591, he decided to return to Catholic Italy anyway.

Heretic on Trial
"Happy the m an who
He secured what appeared to be a pretty soft positiontutoring his bears within him a
Venetian host. Either because his host felt cheated or because of divinity, an ideal of
Brunos unseemly attention to his wife, he turned Bruno over to the beauty and obeys it;
Venice inquisition in 1592. an ideal of art, an
ideal of science, an
Most cases brought before the inquisition in Venice resulted in
ideal of country, an
acquittal. But this was different: Here was a renegade priest who faced
serious charges, including outright heresy and blasphemy. ideal of the virtues
of the Gospel."
Though Bruno subscribed (somewhat) to the Copernican view of the
~ Louis Pasteur, founder
universe with the rotating earth orbiting the sun, he was not
of physio-chemistry,
prosecuted for those beliefs. The Church had not condemned the father of bacteriology,
Copernican view in Brunos day. More than three decades after Brunos inventor of bio-
death, Galileo would be charged for holding similar views, but only therapeuties; devout
because he taught those views as absolute fact, rather than C atholic
hypothesis. Though Bruno loathed any kind of religious authority, he
had absorbed the heresies of his day and they infused his thinking and
writing.

The Holy Office in Rome, finding out that Bruno had been charged in
Venice, sought his extradition. Venice generally rejected such requests,
but in Brunos case, Venice wanted him out. Though Bruno made a
less-than-sincere offer to retract some of his views, Church officials
did not believe him. On February 20, 1593, Venice shipped him off to
Rome.

His trial in Rome would take seven years. At first Bruno relied on the
defense that most of his heresies were jests not to be taken seriously,
but as the process dragged on he grew more obstinate. He eventually
turned from what could be interpreted as negotiation over his views to
defiance. He refused to retract his heresies and maintained that the
judges had no authority over him. The judges had no choice but to
condemn him based on his own admissions and turned him over to the
secular authorities in Rome. He was executed on February 17, 1600.

A Martyr for "Science"

Thus would have ended the "sad affair" of Giordano Bruno. He died not
as a scientist or for scientific beliefs, but because he had rejected the
fundamental truths of the faith he had promised to uphold at his
ordinationthe divinity of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist, the Trinity. He had embraced every passing fancy from
reincarnation to divination.
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 While it is difficult today to understand how scandalous this would be
to his contemporaries, at that time such viewsespecially from a priest
who had fallen into "sins of the flesh"were seen as endangering the
salvation of souls and the basic harmony of the community. His fate
was sealed when he refused to recant.

Bruno essentially disappeared from history for 300 years, until he was
resurrected in anti-clerical Italy in the late 19th century.

The unification of Italy in the 19th century had been conducted by

confiscating the centuries-old Papal States, concluding with the
seizure of Rome in 1870.

But that didnt end the anti-clerical, anti-papal rioting, and

demonstrations which became an ordinary part of Roman life. In 1876,
a group of Roman students decided to raise funds to erect a statue in
Brunos honor, though no one but a few scholars had heard of him, his
works were unread, and even those few who ventured to do so found
him unintelligible.

But since he was deemed a victim of the inquisition and honoring him
seen as an insult to the papacy, anti-clerical forces throughout Italy
rallied to the cause.

Donations were solicited from all over secular Europe, and contributions
came in from the likes of Victor Hugo of France and Henrik Ibsen in
Norway. They had not a clue who was being honored but since the
statue was to be a potshot at the Catholic Church, they were willing to
lend their names.

Bruno was now reinvented as a martyr to science and reason. On June

9, 1889, over 2,000 anti-clerical organizations rallied at the erection of
the statue of Bruno. "Today," they announced, "the date of the religion
of reason is established."

Within a generation, Italy would be a Fascist state.

Robert P. Lockwood, director of communications for the

Diocese of Pittsburgh, is the author of A Faith for
Grown-Ups: A Midlife Conversation about What Really
Matters (Loyola Press).
more...

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 This article appeared in Volume 20 Number 8.

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