Bruno, Martyr for Magic

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Contrary to misguided anti-religious commentaries, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600 A.D.) did not support fundamental scientific principles, nor was he agnostic towards them, but rather flagrantly and vociferously denounced them as idiotic.  Indeed, an open letter by the devoutly religious Johannes Kepler to Galileo pointed out as much in 1616 A.D.

 

Apparently Bruno subscribed to the pagan cult of Hermes Trismegistus which was the fusion of the Egyptian god Thoth, scribe to the sun god Ra, and the Greek god Hermes and consequently taught that the Christian belief in a supernatural creator who endowed the world with consistent and orderly natural law was pure garbage.  Instead the universe was controlled by unpredictable mystical forces which enlightened savants, like himself, could control by magical spells.  As to cosmology, Bruno himself wrote that mathematical predictions of planetary motion were thus impossible and all attempts a futile exercise.  Consistent with this understanding, Bruno made no astronomical observations, conducted no experiments, and never indulged in any mathematical calculations.

Bruno’s cosmology was based on a reading of the Bible and other sacred texts from which he gleaned there were three categories of living beings, “principal bodies”, demons, and mankind to include animals.  The principle bodies consisted of the sun, moon, planets, stars and the Earth which moved of their own volition.  As to demons, he claimed to have direct personal experience of them having been mysteriously pelted by rocks in the night and of suffering other torments.

In his open letter, Kepler wrote that Bruno did not believe that any of his imaginings need be subject to empirical testing.  A case in point was Bruno’s assertion that relatively cold bodies like the Earth would naturally want to orbit hot bodies like the sun, because it was more vibrant.  Apparently all the planets and the sun were not inanimate matter but rather living beings who could chose their own paths.  This product of his imagination, according to Kepler, may have allowed for interesting sophistry but did absolutely nothing to provide any test of his theory against observation.  And in any event, Galileo’s discovery of the Jovian moons completely discredited it.

PRIOR WORK

 

Heliocentrism is thought to have been first proposed by the Greek astronomer Aristarchos of Samos (c. 310 – c. 230 B.C.).  This is known only from a fleeting reference in another work since the original has been lost.  Later Lucretius (c. 99 – 55 B.C.) in his book “On the Nature of Things” suggests an infinite universe at the end of his work.

Nicholas of Cusa (1401 – 1464) wrote a book entitled De Docta Ignorantia in which he suggested that the universe might be infinite in size.  This would make it without center and would consist of infinitely many worlds.  He further speculated that some of these worlds might be inhabited perhaps by self-aware aliens having human-like souls.  His speculative book was approved by the Catholic Church with an imprimatur in 1440.  Nicholas of Cusa was later made a cardinal by Pope Nicholas V in 1448. In 1459 he was appointed vicar general over the Papal States.

 

Only a few years before Bruno arrived in England, Thomas Digges (1546 – 1595 A.D.) had published a translation of Copernicus that also raised the possibility of infinity of worlds.  Of course in modern times, Einstein’s General Relativity and the evidence from many sources for a “big-bang” origin of the cosmos all indicate overwhelmingly that the universe is finite in both space and time rather than being infinite or unbounded.

From his own writings, we know that Giordano Bruno read Nicholas of Cusa’s work and perhaps translations of Copernicus by Thomas Digges as well.  Thomas Digges famously noted that because of the lack of stellar parallax which Tycho had confirmed to an accuracy of about 1/60^th of a degree, any heliocentric (sun centered) system needed to be millions of times bigger than had been previously supposed.  Indeed Bruno was exposed in Oxford lectures of claiming other’s inventions and of being an outright plagiarist for which offenses he was expelled.   He had to seek refuge in the local French embassy and later was forced to leave England for the continent.  

Bruno had a copy of Copernicus’ work but apparently never read it as he totally misunderstood the concepts as noted in his review of the work in his own in his Ash Wednesday Supper, published in 1584.  He not only misunderstood most details of Copernicus’s heliocentric model but pointedly rejected large parts of it based entirely on his mystical intuition.   As a case in point, Bruno thought Copernicus said the moon did not circle the Earth but was at the opposite end of a common epicycle and occupied the same orbit around the sun as another epicycle containing both Mercury and Venus.  Apparently Bruno had failed to look at the diagrams in Copernicus’ work as well.

In short, Bruno claimed that the universe is governed by magic mystical forces rather than natural law; and therefore geometry and mathematics were useless and theoretically unable to predict either earthly or heavenly motion. 

CHARGES OF THE ROMAN INQUISTION

Bruno did achieve a notoriety of sorts by being formally declared a heretic and excommunicated twice by the Catholic Church, of being formally declared a heretic and excommunicated by the Calvinists, of being formally declared a heretic and excommunicated by the Lutherans, and of being formally declared a plagiarist by the University of Oxford, most of which necessitated hasty exits.  Finally however, he was tried for heresy in Rome.

The only contemporaneous record of the charges by the Roman Inquisition against Bruno is a letter written in Latin on 17 February 1600 which was the day of Bruno’s execution.  This letter was written by a German Gaspar Schoppe, who was then living in the home of a leading inquisitor at Bruno’s trial, namely Cardinal Ludovico Madruzzo. The “most horrible and absurd things” that Bruno supposedly taught are as follows:

• “that a single soul can form two bodies;”
• “that a soul can indeed migrate from a body to another body and also to another World;”
• “that there’s a countless amount of Worlds [which is necessary if the ever increasing number of transmigrating souls are immortal and yet remain grounded in the physical world.  Note this belief sprang entirely from philosophical speculation based on his twisted interpretations of Biblical passages and the mystical writings of Hermeticism rather than any scientific or mathematical reasoning.];”
• “that the World exists from everlasting [and therefore was not created by God, as in the big bang];”
• “that magic is a good thing and it is allowed to practice it;”
• “that the Devil will be saved;”
• “that the Holy Scriptures are a fable;”
• “that only the Hebrew descend from Adam and Eve and that the rest of the Nations descend from two people that God made the day before;”
• “that the Holy Ghost is none other than the soul of the World and this is what Moses meant when he wrote that it hovered over the waters;”
• “that Moses performed the miracles through magic, in which he had greater skill than the rest of the Egyptians;”
• “that Moses fabricated the Laws himself;”
• “that Christ was not God, but a distinguished magician that mocked people and because of that he wasn’t crucified but rightly hanged [i.e. the only truth came from the Egyptian Troth – Greek Hermes fusion and by implication the entire Roman Curia should be hanged as well for teaching the false fables of Christianity];”
• “that the Prophets and Apostles were vile magicians and most of them were hanged.”

Heliocentrism as suggested by Copernicus and published with an official approval or “Imprimatur” of the Catholic Church some fifty years earlier, is nowhere to be found in these charges and its variants were not officially investigated by the Inquisition even as a possible source of heresy until decades later. 

With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, these were turbulent times to say the least.  The difficulty with heresy was not so much because of some abstract fall from spiritual grace but rather because it became a rallying cry for revolution, war, pillage, mass murder, and the literal overthrow of both religious and secular institutions.   And Bruno’s publications certainly contributed to such turmoil.  Indeed, the Catholic Dominican order in Italy, the Calvinists, the Lutherans, the Universities of England, the Catholics in Venice, all provided temporary support and shortly came to regret it for the rabble rousing insurrections he sought to inspire.

 

Finally the Catholics in Rome begged him to recant and cease advocating for insurrection for seven years before resorting to the unfortunate and unseemly act of handing him over to secular authority.   He may have been a martyr for free speech in rejecting scientific principles invented by the Catholic Church and calling for a return of pagan superstition and resort to magical spells, but a martyr to reason and logic, he was not.   In this however, he was perhaps no different from modern atheists who distort truth with apparent impunity and seem as sadly ignorant of both Christian religious and scientific principles as he was.

REFERENCES

(Macchiavellizatio, Qua Unitorum Animos Dissociare Nitentibus Respondetur, 1621)

 

“On Magic” by Giordano Bruno, translated by Scott Gosnell, Windcastle Press (2018).

 

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : Giordano Bruno, May 28, 2019, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bruno.

 

https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/07/21/was-giordano-bruno-really-a-martyr-for-science

 

https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/giordano-bruno-gaspar-schoppes-account-of-his-condemnation/

 

“Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition” by Frances A. Yates, University of Chicago Press (1964).

 

“Unbelievable: 7 Myths about the History and Future of Science and Religion” by Michael Newton Keas, ISI Books, Wilmington, DE (2019).

 

“Bruno and Copernicus” by Ernan McMullin, University of Chicago Press (1987).