That pioneer spirit pervaded Jesuit life; the Society prepared its members to go on mission anywhere in the world, and many of them did, sometimes facing torture and death with the remarkable physical courage of their founder, the onetime soldier Ignatius of Loyola, sometimes meeting alien cultures with an adaptability that terrified their more conservative brethren. Devoted to a religion in which God was supposed to have taken on human form, they always combined their intellectual feats with a certain physicality: each Father literally strove to embody the whole Church in himself, trained by the founder’s Spiritual Exercises to extend his imagination through all the senses to the extremes of heaven and hell. The Spiritual Exercises also acted as a form of memory training; the Jesuits aspired to the same command of their mental powers as Bruno did through the Nolan philosophy.
One of Bellarmine’s classmates at the Society’s Roman College, the German Christoph Clavius, would become a famous professor of mathematics at that same institution. Bellarmine himself felt the pull of natural philosophy in an age when the structure of nature and the universe was coming increasingly into question and provoking increasingly interesting discoveries. But unlike Clavius, who changed his mind over the years with every change in empirical data, Bellarmine gravitated early toward a world of certainty. He focused his talents at the college on mastering Christian doctrine, whose essential information had already been supplied once and for all by Scripture. He would eventually scour the Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, and, on occasion, Jewish scholarship to advance his understanding of the Christian mission, but his basic impulse, as he admitted to his fellow Jesuit Antonio Possevino, was a repressive one, whereas many of his fellow Jesuits seemed more inclined to limitless exploration and ecstatic wonder. As Clavius’s students Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall von Bell plunged into the center of Chinese society—dressing as mandarins, serving at court in Beijing, publishing in Chinese for Chinese readers—and as Clavius himself, German by birth, Portuguese-educated, teaching in Italy, corresponded with the astronomers of Europe about the structure of space, Bellarmine justified his own ignorance of French and German (and this after spending a few years at Louvain!) by insisting that Latin was the only language fit for learned discourse.
He described his mission in the Holy Office as that of teaching, noting that just as resistant schoolboys could expect to be beaten by their masters, so could resistant Christians expect to be punished for persisting in their errors. This is what he says, for example, in reviewing a censor’s comments on a book by the Protestant scholar Justus Lipsius:
The censor is wrong to say that this author says “We need a teacher, not a torturer,” and he is wrong to apply this statement to the Holy Office. For the author says this: “In these matters, first a teacher is needed”: where he first wants to instruct and teach—which is what happens in the Holy Office, and then, if they are not teachable, to punish.
Robert Bellarmine’s idea of obedience took a highly personal form, despite the clear prescriptions enjoined by his order: Ignatius of Loyola had decreed that if the Church were to tell him that black was white, he would obey and agree. Bellarmine’s obedience was more selective. He had evolved his own model of the cosmos early, when he studied at the order’s Roman College alongside Christoph Clavius. In some ways, his ideas about natural philosophy were far more radical than those of his mathematical colleague. Bellarmine had come to see interplanetary space as a liquid, even though the standard Jesuit curriculum endorsed Aristotle’s picture of the heavens as a set of concentric crystalline spheres. In its defense, Bellarmine’s liquid space ensured that the biblical account of “waters over the heavens” (mayim b’shamayim) was literally true, suggesting that in a pinch he would prefer a literal reading of the Bible to the force of Jesuit tradition. In the meantime, however, he followed the work of Galileo’s Roman friend Count Federico Cesi with great interest, for Cesi also believed in liquid space.
As a theologian, Bellarmine’s greatest gift was his ability to reduce theological disputes to a set of clearly expressed arguments; once he had outlined both sides of a question, he could press home his own position with relentless ingenuity—and perhaps a bit of reckless self-satisfaction, for when he tried this technique in 1589 against a reigning pope, Sixtus V, he found himself denounced before the Inquisition. Sixtus’s timely death in 1590 freed Bellarmine from the Inquisition’s toils and his latest work, the Disputations, from a threatened appearance on the Index of Forbidden Books. Thereafter he rose quickly to a position as the most powerful theologian in the Catholic Church, and in that position consulted for the Inquisition, although as a Jesuit he could not take part as an actual inquisitor: only Dominicans could.
A Jesuit could not be an inquisitor, but a cardinal was another matter. Hence Robert Bellarmine, elevated to cardinal, became the first Jesuit inquisitor, as well as one of the first Jesuit cardinals. His elevation in 1599 also brought him into direct contact with the troubling case of Giordano Bruno. Like Alexander the Great, who resolved the ancient puzzle of the Gordian knot by one slice of his sword in place of a patient unraveling, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine proceeded to cut through the knotty tangles of Giordano Bruno’s philosophy.
Fulfilling his self-stated mission to censor, teach, and, if necessary, punish, Bellarmine distilled Bruno’s heresies to eight propositions, which Bruno was then invited to abjure. The “propositions” in this kind of argumentation (a legacy from the Inquisition’s Dominican, Scholastic roots) could be as short as a sentence or as long as a printed page; Bellarmine must have written out the propositions for Bruno as summaries drawn from what he and the inquisitors knew of the Nolan philosopher’s writings and his oral testimony. The cardinal may also have supplied his own refutations of those propositions in order to teach Bruno the “correct” opinion. This, at least, is the kind of exchange we can see in connection with another set of eight propositions drawn up by Bellarmine in another context. Giovanni Marsilio’s Defense in Favor of the Reply to Eight Propositions Against Which the Most Illustrious and Reverend Lord Cardinal Bellarmine Has Written (1606) begins its reply to the cardinal by describing Bellarmine’s style of argument, or, as Marsilio calls it, his “arts.” Written by an independent-minded Venetian, this Defense suggests how the cardinal’s teaching method might also have struck the proud and independent-minded Bruno:
The first technique is that, no sooner had said treatise appeared in print, than it was banned by the congregation appointed to such business in Rome, among whose number the Lord Cardinal appears, without identifying the reason for said prohibition, but only certain general headings and concerns …
The second is that for an author’s words he fabricates an interpretation contrary to [the author’s] meaning and intention, in order to extract conclusions to reprove them now as heretical, now as schimastic, now as erroneous, now as impudent, now as scandalous, now as harmful, with this formula: “If the author means this,” he says (but the author means it otherwise), “then the proposition is heretical, wrong, etc.” …
The third is that he mixes up his material so that from that chaos of confusion he can draw similar conclusions …
The fourth is to say: The author doesn’t know logic …
The fifth is to ascribe common printer’s errors not to the printer but to the author, and to make digressions over these, truly unworthy of the doctrine and authority of this Lord …
The sixth is to take the road of supposition, as, for example, he supposes that the pope has supreme authority over Christians in temporal matters, and that temporal power is subordinate to spiritual power, and other matters of this sort, which he not only assumes as certain, and does not prove them, but also asserts that to deny them is heresy, without citing any text, Scripture, or definition by the Church.
Unfortunately, the eight propositions Bellarmine drew up for Bruno disappeared with the other records of his trial. However, the surviving Summary, drafted at the beginning of March 1598, may provide one clue to what those propo
sitions were, and Marsilio’s remark about Bellarmine’s fondness for the “road of supposition,” as we shall see, may provide another.
The Summary groups Bruno’s questionable opinions under twenty-nine subject headings and a thirtieth heading for miscellaneous remarks. Of these twenty-nine accusations, Bruno openly admitted to four: he had read forbidden books, eaten meat on fast days, traveled to Protestant lands and heard Protestant sermons, and denied that the “sin of the flesh” was a mortal sin.
Most of the Summary’s headings concern casual remarks he made in prison and elsewhere. Under interrogation, however, he readily denied having spoken ill of the holy Catholic faith and its ministers, of Christ, of transubstantiation, Mass, hell, the three Magi, Cain and Abel, Moses, the prophets, the decisions of the Church, the doctors of the Church, the invocation of saints, relics of saints, holy images, the virginity of Mary, the breviary, the punishment of sin, and the pope. Like many of his contemporaries (and like many contemporary Italians), he clearly made occasional irreverent remarks on all these subjects and blasphemed with gusto—a habit he also denied—but he insists repeatedly that he was joking when he made such comments, and the shock he expresses at hearing his own raw language sounds genuine.
For example, Giovanni Mocenigo reported in his first letter: “I have heard Giordano Bruno of Nola say … that Christ was a wretch, and that if he did such wretched work as deluding the people, he could easily have predicted that he would be hanged … that Christ showed reluctance to die, and fled death as long as he could.”
The Venetian inquisitors reported the accusation to Bruno:
He was asked if he had ever argued … that Christ was not God but a wretch, and as he went about his wretched ways he could have predicted his own death, even if he showed later that he died against his will.
He replied: “I can’t believe I’m being asked this; I never had such opinions, nor said anything of the sort” … And as he spoke, he became extremely upset, repeating, “I don’t know how they can accuse me of such things.”
On some subjects, however, Bruno would not back down even under duress. The Roman Summary describes those categories as:
On the Trinity, divinity, and incarnation.
That there are multiple worlds.
On the souls of men and beasts.
On the art of divination.
It seems unlikely that Bellarmine’s eventual eight propositions reflected the Summary’s headings precisely, but certainly these last four categories are more likely to have aroused the Inquisition’s interest than the infractions Bruno had admitted outright. In the first place, Bruno himself explains repeatedly that the lapses he committed in Protestant lands (eating meat, hearing Protestant sermons, reading forbidden books) were necessary concessions to local custom; furthermore, because he so readily admitted that the actions were wrong, they provided relatively little opportunity for profound “instruction” on the part of the inquisitors. On the other hand, his stated beliefs about the Trinity, reincarnation, divination, and multiple worlds were complex, unorthodox, and forcefully argued. These, and perhaps Bruno’s stubborn leniency about the “sin of the flesh,” would have posed the most obvious challenge to Bellarmine’s own censorious skill.
Our only concrete clue to the substance of the propositions comes from the text of Bruno’s sentence: “That you said that it is a great blasphemy for Catholics to say that bread transmutes into flesh, etc. et infra.”
The wording of this passage from the sentence is taken directly from Giovanni Mocenigo’s first letter of accusation, showing that, six years after the fact, this single document still continued to form the backbone for Bruno’s trial. Mocenigo’s subsequent behavior in Venice had revealed him as a malevolent crank, but the trial of his former houseguest had long since taken on a life of its own in Rome. The Roman inquisitors knew Giovanni Mocenigo only on paper, as the writer of three indignant letters in the summer of 1592.
Mocenigo’s charge about transubstantiation was one of the items that Bruno emphatically denied under questioning; the Roman Inquisition, therefore, must not have been convinced by his protestations. If Bellarmine’s other propositions followed the same pattern as the first—that is, they were drawn from Mocenigo’s original accusation and elaborated by the Summary—then we can create a reasonably plausible list by combining these two sources. Here, for example, are seven other accusations that might be described under the “etc. et infra” of Bruno’s sentence, listed in the order that they appear in Mocenigo’s letter, but recorded as they have been paraphrased under their respective headings in the Summary that guided the inquisitors in their final deliberations in 1598:
2 (Summary heading 3). About Christ. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that Christ was a wretch, and that, if he did wretched things to seduce the people, he could perfectly well have predicted that he would have to hang, and that Christ performed illusory miracles and that he was a magician, that Christ showed he was unwilling to die, and fled to the extent that he could.”
3 (Summary heading 2). About the Trinity, divinity, and incarnation. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that there is no distinction of persons in God, and that this would be an imperfection in God.”
4 (Summary heading 7). That there are multiple worlds. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano Bruno say in my house that there are infinite worlds, and that God makes infinite worlds continually, because, he says, he wants to do so as much as he can.”
5 (Summary heading 22). About the souls of men and beasts. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that the souls created by the work of nature pass from one animal to another, and that, just as brute animals are born of corruption, so are men, when they return to be born after the floods.”
6 (Summary heading 1). That Brother Giordano has bad feelings about the holy Catholic faith, against which, and its ministers, he has spoken ill. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer in Venice: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that no religion pleases him. He has shown that he plans to make himself the creator of a new sect under the name of ‘new philosophy’ and has said that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against the majesty of God, and that it is time to remove the discussion and the income from friars, because they defile the world, that they are all asses, and that our opinions are the doctrine of asses, that we have no proof that our faith has any merit with God, and that he marvels at how many heresies God tolerates among Catholics.”
7 (Summary heading 24). That sins are not to be punished. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that there is no punishment for sins, and he has said that not doing to others what we do not want them to do to us is enough [advice] to live well.”
8 (Summary heading 23). About the art of divination. Giovanni Mocenigo, informer: “I have sometimes heard Giordano say in my house that he wants to pay attention to the art of divination and he wants all the world to follow after him, and when I kept him locked up to report him, he asked me to give back a copy of a book of spells that I had found among his papers.”
As the records of the Venetian Inquisition reveal, several of these propositions had appeared, more modestly expressed, in the trials of other people who came before the Holy Office in the same year as Giordano Bruno. Bruno’s opinions struck, then, at the papacy’s worst fears about Protestants on one side, renegade natural philosophers on another, and on yet another, those ancient objects of fear, the Jews.
The Protestant congregations in neighboring Lombardy, like the one that produced the convert Marcantonio Pestalozzi, specifically rejected transubstantiation, intercession by the Virgin and the saints, purgatory, confession, and even baptism; multiple worlds existed in Jewish mysticism; and most Protestants shared Bruno’s reported skepticism about the Roman Church and its rituals, echoing his desire to strip its precepts to the apostles’
simple life or to the Golden Rule. In the Roman phase of Bruno’s trial, the Protestant position on papal authority became particularly crucial. As Pestalozzi had declared to his Venetian inquisitors: “In my faith I have believed up to now that neither the pope nor any other priest has the authority to absolve us from sin, but only God alone.”
When Giovanni Marsilio rendered his own account of Bellarmine’s rhetorical “arts,” the sorest point of contention was precisely this one: the source of the Church’s authority. Marsilio was not the only contemporary who found Cardinal Bellarmine a little too ready to identify his own opinions automatically with those of the institution he represented. Prelates from Pope Sixtus V to Decio Cardinal Azzolini detected something insufferably arrogant about this Tuscan Jesuit and took action accordingly: Sixtus, pulled up short by Bellarmine for errors in one of the publications he had sponsored, had retaliated by putting the censor’s Disputations on the Index of Forbidden Books; Azzolini, for his part, squelched an early attempt at canonization (in fact, Bellarmine would be canonized only in 1930).
Bruno showed no greater willingness than Pope Sixtus or Giovanni Marsilio to bow to the Church’s chosen censor; he wanted confirmation of that authority from the pope, as the text of his sentence reveals, addressing him: “You replied that if the Holy See and the Holiness of Our Lord had declared the eight propositions as definitively heretical, or that His Holiness knew them to be such, or that they had been so defined by the Holy Spirit, then you were disposed to revoke them.”
Giordano Bruno Page 28
