Giordano Bruno

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Statue of Giordano Bruno by Ettore Ferrari, 1889
Campo de' Fiori
Rome, April 2013

“At this point the Roman Inquisition intervened and requested his extradition. After some hesitation the Venetian authorities agreed, and 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.” (Giordano Bruno, The Catholic Encyclopedia)