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Giordano BrunoItalian philosopher and poet. Accused of heresy and burned at the stake by the Inquisition.
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 Italy |
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Biography of Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher and poet who was accused of heresy and burned at the stake by the Inquisition. He was born in a village near the city of Nola, close to Naples, in 1548. Bruno studied at a monastery school in Naples, where he joined the Dominican order in 1565 and became a priest in 1572.
Accused of heresy in 1576, Bruno first fled to Rome, and then outside of Italy. He moved from city to city, giving lectures and writing numerous works, and was accepted at the courts of Henry III and Elizabeth. In 1592, he was invited to Venice by Giovanni Mocenigo, a Venetian patrician who then reported him to the Inquisition. Bruno was arrested, and an investigation was initiated against him, first in Venice, and then in Rome after he was handed over by the Venetian authorities in 1593.
He faced numerous charges of blasphemy, immoral behavior, and heretical views on dogmatic theology. Some of his philosophical and cosmological ideas were also condemned. Despite being ordered to retract his main theories, Bruno refused to do so. He was sentenced to death by Clement VIII and was burned at the stake in Campo de' Fiori, Rome, on February 17, 1600.
Works and Contributions
Among Bruno's early works is the Italian comedy "Il Candelaio" (The Candlestick, 1582), and several treatises on the theories of Ramon Llull regarding the art of mechanical thinking and memory ("the great art"). Important works from this period include his Italian dialogues written in England and his Latin poems written in Germany.
Bruno's metaphysical teachings are presented in his work "De la causa, principio e uno" (On Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584). In this work, he asserts that God (the Infinite) encompasses or combines all attributes, while particular phenomena are nothing more than concrete manifestations of the unified infinite principle. The universal matter and the universal form, or soul, are the immediate principles of all individual things.
His cosmology is presented in his work "De l'infinito, universo e mondi" (On the Infinite, Universe, and Worlds, 1584). In this work, he refutes traditional Aristotelian cosmology and argues that the physical Universe is infinite and consists of an infinite number of worlds, each with a sun and several planets. Thus, the Earth is just a small star among others in the infinite Universe.
Bruno's metaphysics serves as a link between the views of Nicholas of Cusa and Spinoza, and it also had a direct influence on German classical idealism. While following Lucretius and Copernicus in his cosmology, Bruno draws far more radical conclusions from the Copernican system than its author. More than any other Italian philosopher of his time, Bruno deserves the title of a precursor, if not a founder, of modern science and philosophy. His ideas and works demonstrate boldness and rich imagination, rather than precision and caution in his conclusions, yet the coincidence of his ideas with later scientific and philosophical theories is striking. Giordano Bruno's tragic death made him a martyr for freedom of thought.
Among Bruno's other important works are "Cena de le ceneri" (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584), "Spaccio de la bestia trionfante" (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584), "Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo" (The Cabala of Pegasus, 1585), "Degli eroici furori" (On Heroic Frenzies, 1585), "Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo adversus Peripateticos" (One Hundred and Twenty Articles on Nature and the Universe against the Peripatetics, 1586), "Articuli centum et sexaginta" (One Hundred and Sixty Articles, 1588), "De triplici minimo et mensuro" (On the Triple Minimum and Measure, 1589), "De monade, numero et figura" (On the Monad, Number, and Figure, 1589), and "De immenso, innumerabilibus et infigurabilibus" (On the Immense, Innumerable, and Unfigurable, 1589).
