whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

   Giordano Bruno

Campo dei fiori (in Rome) 17th february 1600
It is an incredible story

 He was a sensitive, imaginative poet, fired with the enthusiasm of a larger vision of a larger universe ... and he fell into the error of heretical belief. For this poets vision he was kept in a dark dungeon for eight years and then taken out to a blazing market place and roasted to death by fire.

In the year 1582, at the age of 34 he wrote a play Il Candelajo, The Chandler. He thinks as a candle-maker who works with tallow and grease and then has to go out and vend his wares with shouting and ballyhoo:

"Behold in the candle borne by this Chandler, to whom I give birth, that which shall clarify certain shadows of ideas ... I need not instruct you of my belief. Time gives all and takes all away; everything changes but nothing perishes. One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, however obscure the night may be, I await the daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night ... Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love."

In his book De la Causa, principio et uno, On Cause, Principle, and Unity we find prophetic phrases:

"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things."

found here

On January 20 of the first year of the new century Pope Clement VIII ordered that Bruno be handed over to secular authorities for punishment. Sentence is read on February 8th: Bruno is declared an impenitent, obstinate and pertinacious heretic, to be stripped of priesthood and expelled from the Church, and his works to be publicly burned at the steps of St Peters and placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Bruno replies: "Perhaps you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it."

Execution is delayed, why we do not know. At dawn on the 17th, Bruno is taken to the Campo dei Fiori, looking emaciated and broken. Even in his last moments on earth the church does not leave him alone. A company of monks from S. Giovanni Decollato accompany him, chanting, exhorting him till the last moment to abandon his heretical beliefs. Before the pyre is lit a monk offers him a crucifix to kiss. Bruno turns his head away angrily. He says he dies willingly, as a martyr, and that his soul will rise with the fire to paradise. He is stripped naked, tied to a stake, and burned alive, while the cantors sing continuous litanies.
found here

 

posted by: Whitebeard at 17:49 | link | comments |