know about what he should repent.’219 So they gave him even more time to recant. They submitted his books to the Index of Forbidden
Books, for heresies and errors.220
Fire and Smoke
On 20 January 1600 a Decree of the Congregation of the Holy
Office reported that Bruno had been asked to ‘recognize, detest and
abjure’ the ‘heretical propositions that were contained in his books
and that he had voiced in his depositions’. However, the Decree
reported: ‘Bruno did not want to agree, asserting that he never said
or wrote heretical propositions, but that the excerpts were done
wrongly by the ministers of the Holy Office, conveying the opposite.
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Because, he was prepared to give an account of all his writings, to
defend them against any theologians.’221 Since he did not recognize his heresies, the Decree stated that he would be sentenced and delivered to the secular Roman Court for punishment. On 8 February the Inquisitors issued their sentence against Bruno, including the
statement that ‘we condemn, reprove and prohibit all your books and
writings mentioned above and others as heretical and erroneous and
containing many heresies and errors.’
They ordered that his works be publicly burned in St Peter’s
Square and listed in the Index of Forbidden Books. In that document
the cardinals condemned Bruno as an ‘obstinate and impenitent
heretic’. Nine cardinals, including Bellarmine, approved the final
judgement, and it was sent to the governor of Rome, Ferdinando
Taverna. On the same day the Congregation of the Index duly noted
that Bruno’s books and writings would be prohibited.
Gaspar Schoppe, a virulent critic of the Protestants, described
Bruno’s final days. Schoppe was a young German humanist, almost
24 years old, who had quickly gained prominence in Rome thanks to
his very boastful conversion to Catholicism. In a letter to his former
teacher, the jurist Konrad Rittershausen, Schoppe said that he was
present at the court of the Inquisition on the day when Bruno
faced his Inquisitors on his knees, to receive his sentence. Schoppe
noted that first they gave an account of Bruno’s life, studies and his
doctrines. Schoppe said that many years ago Bruno had begun ‘to
doubt, or even deny’ the doctrine of transubstantiation. Next he
had doubted the virginity of Mary. Then he left his monastery and
travelled to Geneva and other places. The Inquisitors described their
efforts ‘to reclaim him’ to the Catholic faith, against his pertinacious
impiety. Then they degraded him, excommunicated him and turned
him over to the secular Roman magistrates to be punished. Schoppe
said that the Inquisitors ‘begged that he be punished very gently and
without profusion of blood’.
Right then, Bruno said just one thing: ‘Maybe you have more
fear in executing your sentence on me, than I in accepting it.’222
Here again Bruno spoke like a Pythagorean, one who did not fear
death. Was he convinced of the immortality or rebirth of the soul?
In his dialogue On the Cause, the Principle and the One, Bruno had
referred to the ‘saintly’ Pythagoras as one ‘who did not fear death,
but expected the mutation’.223 In the end, Bruno refused to recant 71
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The prison of Tor di Nona (centre top), on the edge of the Tiber River, across
from the Castel Sant’Angelo. Map by Antonio Tempesta, 1593.
his views. They declared him guilty of heresy and sentenced him
to death.
Bruno was transferred to the Roman authorities and locked
up in the Tor di Nona prison. 224 The Roman notary Giuseppe de Angelis wrote that Bruno was detained by Governor Taverna. The
Roman judge Giovanni Battista Gottarello was assigned the task of
carrying out the sentence imposed by the court of the Inquisition.
Death sentences for heresy usually consisted of hanging, drowning, mutilation or burning. But before being mutilated or burned, some convicts were strangled or decapitated to reduce the suffering
and horror. Being burned alive was regarded as the worst punishment, for the gravest offences.225 That was the punishment imposed on Bruno. It was a rare event in Rome. Schoppe commented that he
had not heard about any heretics being burned at the stake there.226
Although we do not know the total number of trials by the Roman
Inquisition, there are some figures about executions. For example,
the Archconfraternity that accompanied victims to their deaths
kept records, including the names of 97 heretics executed in Rome
between 1542 and 1761.227
On 12 February an official Notice of Rome announced that the
‘obstinate heretic’ from Nola would be brought to justice. It summarily stated that Bruno had been sentenced for authoring ‘various enormous opinions’ that he had refused to recant. It also noted some
of the cities where he had lived and added that ‘they say in Germany
that he had disputed several times against Cardinal Bellarmine. ’228
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Did that really happen? What did Bellarmine think about Bruno’s
eccentric claims? Since Bellarmine wrote many works, I suspected
that somewhere he commented on such beliefs. Indeed he did, years
later, as we will see.
A document recently discovered in a Roman archive and published in 2010 seems to note the importance of the heresy of the plurality of worlds. It seems to have been written on 12 February
1600, the same day that the official Notice of Rome announced
Bruno’s execution. It states:
The Proceedings were burned, those in which the curate
[parish priest] already noted had specified so many ¤ [suns]
and for which he was burned, and soon will be burned an
obstinate relasso [someone who relapsed into heresy] called
Tadeo Bruno of Nola, a famous writer who for 3 years has
been at the Holy Office; who recently said to the Cardinal
of Santa Severina that he knew more about doctrine and
especially about philosophy than St Thomas, and that
with greater happiness he had accepted his sentence to be
burned, by comparison to the bitterness and displeasure with
which they read it, but that he was quite disturbed when
the Cardinal told him that he would be burned in a place
where he would be publicly seen. And this hardened beast
of a philosopher bears a resemblance to those of antiquity.
They say that he is ill, but slightly, with phlegm.229
This document is very important because it seems to say that someone else had been burned before Bruno for the belief that there are many suns. It does not specify the name of that curate. Federica
Favino conjectures that it was actually Celestino Arrigoni, one of
the Venetian inmates who testified against Bruno and was executed
on 16 September 1599, shortly before Bruno, both at the Campo de’
Fiori.230
The document is also significant because it discusses Bruno
immediately after specifying the objectionable claim of many
suns, as if that too were his main crime, and because it compares
the obstin ate Bruno to the philosophers of antiquity. We should
note that the tenth proposition that had
been censured in Bruno’s
books, during his Roman trial, was precisely: ‘Again he posits many
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worlds, many suns necessarily containing similar things in kind and
in species, as in this world, and even men.’
A few days later, the ‘Journal’ of the Archbrotherhood of St
John the Beheaded (S Giovanni Decollato), in Rome, notes that
the ‘impenitent heretic’ brother Giordano Bruno was punished
for having ‘finally always stood in his cursed obstinacy, wandering
the brain and intellect with a thousand errors and vanities’. Bruno
was sentenced to public execution. When executions were public
instead of private, the intention was often to publicize the particular
heresies, as a kind of public warning.231
Sixteen years earlier Bruno had anticipated his fiery death at
the end of his Ash Wednesday Supper, his book about Copernicus:
if you do not want to accompany him [Bruno] with fifty, or
a hundred torches (which, even if he should march at the
middle of the day, wil not be lacking if he is to die in the
Roman Catholic land), then at least accompany him with
one of those, or even if this seems too much, accompany him
with a lantern with a tallow candle inside.232
Likewise, in his Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, he had written
about himself in the Dedication:
Come now, come now, as a citizen and servant of the world
[Bruno], son of the father Sun, and of the mother Earth;
since he loves the whole world so much: let us see what it
is to be hated, blamed, persecuted and expelled from it. But
in this moment, he is not idle, nor wrongly busied during
the expectation of his own death, of his transmigration, of
his transformation.233
The entry in the Journal of the Brotherhood describes what finally
happened to Bruno: ‘And he persisted so much in his obstinacy, that
from the ministry of justice he was taken to the Campo di Fiori, and
there stripped naked and tied to a pole. ’234
A crowd thus witnessed the execution on the funeral pyre, in
front of the ruins of the ancient Theatre of Pompey. In the letter he
wrote that day Schoppe said he saw Bruno’s execution: ‘Therefore,
today, on being led to the funeral pyre, as he was dying they showed
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
The Campo de’ Fiori, where Bruno was taken to be publicly burned alive. Map
by Antonio Tempesta, 1593.
him an image of the crucified Saviour, he rejected it by throwing
back his fierce face, so he perished miserably.’
The records of the Brotherhood of St John the Beheaded
state that the clergymen sang as Bruno died: ‘he was burned alive,
accompanied throughout by our Company singing the litany, and
the comforters up to the very end comforting him to let go of his
obstinacy, with which finally ended his miserable and unhappy life.’235
Among those present was Cardinal Santori as wel as the Roman
notary Giuseppe de Angelis. A few years ago De Angelis’s document
was discovered in a Roman city archive. The most stunning thing
about it is a simple but extraordinary drawing. Before that discovery there were no known depictions of Bruno during his life. De Angelis summarily described the event and drew a small sketch of
Bruno, with a thin beard and wearing a tunic, as he burned on the
funeral pyre, his hands apparently behind his back, while flames and
smoke rose around him.236 It is astonishing that this solitary image should precisely record the moment of Bruno’s death. The ink, which
has decomposed across the centuries, has created cracks and holes
in the yellowed paper as if the paper itself had been burned by the
fire that killed Bruno.
There exists another account. Johann Wackher von Wackenfels
was an imperial counsellor who had been a patron of Bruno in
Prague in 1588. He was also a patron of Schoppe. On 19 February
1600 Schoppe sent a letter to Wackher, telling him:
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Giordano Bruno as he died in the fire. Drawing by the notary Giuseppe de
Angelis, on 17 February 1600. Original document at the Archivio di Stato di Roma.
Lately, on Thursday Febr. 16 [ sic], Giordano Bruno was
adopted into the family of the Baron of Atoms. When the
pyre was about to start, an image of the Crucifix was offered
to him to kiss it, [but] he rejected it with a scowling face.
Now, I think, he shall announce to the worlds of the in numerable and Simonians how things are done in this one
[world] of ours.237
The Simonians were a heretical Christian sect that followed Simon
Magus, a reputed magician who was rebuked by the apostles Philip,
Peter and John (Acts 8:9–24). The Simonians were some of the
earliest Gnostics and predecessors of the Valentinians, who were
denounced as Pythagoreans. The Simonians were denounced as
heretics who believed in transmigration.238
The same day Schoppe wrote that letter, 19 February, a ‘Notice
of Rome’ was issued:
Thursday morning at the Campo di Fiore a Dominican friar
from Nola was burned alive, of whom it was already written:
obstinate heretic, and having by his caprice formed various
dogmas against our faith, and in particular against the most
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Holy Virgin and Saints, he chose to die obstinately in those
crimes; and he said that he died as a martyr and voluntarily,
and that his soul would rise with the smoke into paradise. 239
Why the Romans Killed Bruno
We should summarize al the accusations against Bruno. Luigi
Firpo counted 34 charges. Maurice Finocchiaro composed a longer
list: forty charges, including the plaintiffs for each. However,
Finocchiaro’s list includes a few repetitions and omissions, as well
as one interpolation, so I have prepared a more comprehensive list.
It consists of 54 accus ations, including selfincriminations, and it
specifies more clearly each alleged or actual transgression. Whereas
Finocchiaro described each charge briefly, for example that Bruno
‘had spoken ill of Moses’, I specify the actual accusation: what did
Bruno say about Moses? In addition, how did Bruno defend himself? I have also grouped the accusations in five major categories.
In the endnotes, I specify which accusers voiced each accusation.
i. Bruno’s Alleged Departures from Catholic Practices
and Rituals
1. Allegedly Bruno spoke ill of Catholicism, saying ‘that the
Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against the Majesty of
God’, that it is ‘full of doctrines of asses’, and that he would
create a new sect of ‘Giordanists’ in Germany called the
New Philosophy. But in his fourth deposition, Bruno denied
having ever spoken against the Catholic faith, and he denied
having created a religious sect.240
2. Reportedly, Bruno spoke ill of the breviary, the Catholic
book of rites, by saying that it is not worthy of being read
by good men, that it contains many confused and profane
things, and that it was written by a ‘
foul dog, a ’.
However, Bruno (fourteenth deposition) denied having
criticized the breviary at all. 241
3. Bruno habitually uttered blasphemies, and he foully gestured upwards and cursed against Heaven. Bruno (tenth 77
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deposition) admitted that sometimes he had said blasphemies, but nothing major, and he denied having gestured against Heaven.242
4. Four accusers also said that Bruno entertained atheist
ideas, did not believe in God, or had no religion. However,
Bruno (fourth and ninth depositions) denied having
abandoned the Catholic faith.243
5. Bruno allegedly held holy relics in contempt, saying it
is useless to venerate them. Yet Bruno (in an unspecified
deposition) denied having spoken against relics.244
6. Reportedly Bruno also disliked the veneration of sacred
images, saying that it constitutes idolatry. However, in his
twelfth Deposition he said he actually appreciated religious
images.245
7. Some accusers said that Bruno practised divination,
conjuration and judicial astrology, and said that magic is
good and legal. Indeed, in his fifth and fifteenth depositions, Bruno said he studied astrology only to see whether it works, but that he did not believe that fate guides events
in the world, only God’s providence. He said he was curious
about sciences because he was interested in medicine. In
his tenth deposition Bruno also replied that magic is only
illegal if it is used for evil purposes, because it is based on
observing nature and mixing substances, purely physical
operations.246
8. Next, Bruno allegedly condoned and performed sexual
sins, saying the Church sins by prohibiting sex with women.
However, Bruno (fourth deposition) replied that he agreed
with the Church and acknowledged often that sexual acts
are sins.247
9. He was also accused of apostasy, for having fled from the
Dominican order. Bruno (fourth deposition) said he had
not confessed sins for years, except twice, in Toulouse and
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The Crimes of Giordano Bruno
Paris. The confessor then said he could not absolve Bruno
because he was an apostate priest. But nevertheless Bruno
said he always asked God forgiveness for sins, and that he
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