Anyone wishing to leave a death threat and/or Section 13 complaint in the commbox is welcome, but I've got to run.
Just received the following charming invitation:
Celebrate the feast of the Holy Combustion of Giordano Bruno - book-burning at our house 8 pm. Feel free to bring a drink and/or something to grill. We have some books, but any contributions are welcome. See you tonight.
Giordano Bruno, b. at Nola in Campania, in the Kingdom of Naples, in 1548; d. at Rome, 1600. At the age of eleven he went to Naples, to study "humanity, logic, and dialectic", and, four years later, he entered the Order of St. Dominic, giving up his worldly name of Filippo and taking that of Giordano. He made his novitiate at Naples and continued to study there. In 1572 he was ordained priest...It seems, however, that, even as a novice, he attracted attention by the originality of his views and by his outspoken criticism of accepted theological doctrines. After his ordination things reached such a pass that, in 1576, formal accusation of heresy was brought against him. Thereupon he went to Rome, but, apparently, did not mend his manner of speaking of the mysteries of faith; for the accusations were renewed against him at the convent of the Minerva. Within a few months of his arrival he fled the city and cast off all allegiance to his order...
he was excommunicated by the Calvinist Council on account of his disrespectful attitude towards the heads of that Church...
in February, 1593, Bruno was sent to Rome, and for six years was kept in the prison of the Inquisition. Historians have striven in vain to discover the explanation of this long delay on the part of the Roman authorities.
In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to retract his errors, he was finally condemned (January, 1600), handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (17 February).
Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
I'll have to get a picture for you of the statue, marking the spot where he was burned, in the Campo De Fiori some time. It was erected by Rome's anti-Clericals, who are still, by-the-by, alive and kicking (and spitting on nuns) in the old Urbs. The Campo De. F. is the only piazza in Rome, I am told, that does not have a church in it.
The fun in Rome never ends.
I'll take the camera with me. Pics tomorrow...promise.
Tell Wells I'm missing the old days, when we'd burn a boxful of heretical books and then Fr. would throw in some rainbow stoles and polyester chasubles for good measure!
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