Philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and occultist, b. 1548 (Nola near Naples, Italy), d. 17 February 1600 (Rome).
Filippo Bruno was the son of a professional soldier. At the age of 14 he went to Naples to study the humanities, logic and dialectics. He showed particular interest in the ideas of the Muslim philospher Averroës and his interpretation of Aristotle's works. In his own time he also studied works on memory devices (mnemotechniques).
After three years of study Bruno entered the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in 1565 and took the name Giordano. Although his ideas led to suspicion of heresy he was ordained into priesthood in 1572 and sent to continue theological studies.
By 1575 he had not only completed the prescribed course but also read two banned works of Erasmus. When preparations began for a trial for heresy he fled to Rome, where he found himself wrongly accused of murder. He fled again and left the Dominican order in 1576. After some time of uncertain travel he went to Geneva in 1578 and converted to Calvinism.
In Geneva Bruno supported himself through proofreading. He also continued his interest in religious affairs and soon discovered that the Protestant version of Christianity was as intolerant of independent thought as the Catholic version: He was arrested and excommunicated and had to sign a retraction of his thoughts before he was rehabilitated and allowed to leave the city.
Bruno then moved to France. In 1581 he arrived in Paris, then controlled by a moderate faction of Catholicism. Bruno came under the protection of king Henry III, who made him a lecteur royal. In 1583 he gave him a letter of recommendation for his ambassador in London, and Bruno moved to England in the hope to find a position at the university of Oxford. His lectures on Copernican theory were, however, ill received. He returned to London, were he was friendly received at the court of Elizabeth I and wrote six "Italian Dialogues", three on cosmology and three on morals:
Cosmological Dialogues
Moral Dialogues
Bruno returned to Paris in 1585. The political climate in France had changed; Protestants were persecuted, and free thought had become dangerous. In 1586 Bruno published Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo adversus Peripateticos ("120 Articles on Nature and the World against the Peripatetics"), a direct attack against Aristotle. He had to leave Paris and lived in Germany, surviving by giving lectures at universities.
In 1589 Bruno was excommunicated by the Lutheran Church of Helmstedt. In the following year the senate of Frankfurt am Main rejected his application to be allowed to stay and oversee the publication of some of his papers, but he could stay in the local Carmelite convent - the prior later said that Bruno "did not possess a trace of religion" and "was chiefly occupied in writing and in the vain and chimerical imagining of novelties."
In 1591 the chair of mathematics at the university of Padua was vacant. Bruno, who had accepted an invitation by the patrician Giovanni Mocenigo to come to Venice, gave lectures in Padua in the hope to receive an appointment. When this proved unlikely (the chair eventually went to Galilei) he returned to Venice to give Mocenigo private lessons and participate in progressive discussion circles. When he announced his intention in 1592 to return to Frankfurt to oversee arrangements for another publication, Mocenigo denounced him to the Inquisition, and Bruno was arrested.
The Venetian trial appeared to go in Bruno's favour, but in January 1593 he was handed over to the Roman Inquisition, which had demanded his extradition. The new trial lasted one week. The inquisitors wanted an unconditional retraction, and when Bruno declared that he had nothing to retract and did not even know what he was supposed to retract he was declared a heretic. When the death sentence was read to him he declared: "Perhaps your fear in passing judgement on me is greater than mine in receiving it." He was gagged and burned alive.
Bruno became an inspiration for the liberal movement of 19th century Europe and remains a beacon for freedom of thought. The influence of his ideas and theories was felt immediately, though sometimes hampered by his leaning towards occultism and his occasional volatile character. He is held in high esteem as a defender of religious and philosophical tolerance and humanist ethics.
Science acknowledges his cosmological vision as an anticipation of facts established by Copernicus, Galileo and others and honours him for his determination to defend what is right. 16 years after Bruno's death, in 1616, the Catholic church officially declared the Copernican theory "false and erroneous." The Parliament of Paris banned attacks against Aristotle in 1624.