Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
You sometimes hear the name Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) invoked as a prequel to the life of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). These two natural philosophers, countrymen of the Italian peninsula, stood ready to shove the Earth from its ancient resting place and set it in orbit around the Sun. Though a rotating, revolving Earth challenged common sense and flew in the face of received wisdom, still they both embraced the idea—at their peril. The difference is that Bruno died for his beliefs (tied to a stake and set on fire in a public square in Rome), while Galileo recanted before the Inquisition and lived to advanced old age under house arrest. Legend connects their destinies, reducing Bruno's awful immolation to a cautionary tale that warns Galileo against too vigorous a defense of the dangerous new astronomy. But, as Ingrid Rowland makes clear in her probing, thoughtful biography, Bruno's support for the Sun-centered cosmos paled next to the rest of his crimes. He was a true heretic by the Catholic Church's definition, for he doubted the divinity of Jesus, the virginity of Mary and the transubstantiation of the Communion wafer into the body of Christ. Protestants—among whom Bruno lived for a time in Switzerland, France, Germany and England—also branded him a heretic, since he was, after all, a professed priest of the Dominican order. Bruno managed, in the span of his 52 years, to be excommunicated twice—from the Calvinist Church as well as the Catholic. Rowland identifies Bruno in her subtitle as philosopher and heretic. Her full text rounds out the list of his many other deserved epithets, including poet, playwright, private tutor, professor of sacred theology, linguist, master of the art of memory, even copy editor. As a philosopher, Bruno went far beyond the Sun-centered cosmology of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). Apparently the first man to envision infinity, Bruno posited an endlessly renewed and recreated universe. Its limitless expanses of space knew no particular center, but contained innumerable suns, circled by a plurality of earths—and every one of them inhabited. Rowland's own translations of Bruno's many works, including On the Immense and the Numberless, add immeasurably to her portrait of him. In 1581 he described himself as having the look of a lost soul... for the most part you'll see him irritated, recalcitrant, and strange, content with nothing, stubborn as an old man of eighty, skittish as a dog that has been whipped a thousand times, a weepy onion eater. He came into the world to light a fire, Rowland acknowledges of her subject. That he did, and in the end it consumed him. 8 pages of b&W illus. (Aug.)Dava Sobel, the author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter and The Planets, is at work on a play about Copernicus.
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Review
Intelligent biography of the renegade Italian friar burned at the stake in 1600 for his prodigious writings prefiguring modern science.Rowland (The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery, 2004, etc.) leavens her vast scholarly knowledge of Renaissance church history with a sprightly stylistic touch. Born in 1548 in a small city east of Naples, Bruno journeyed from the convent of San Domenico Maggiore through the exalted universities of Europe and England to test and deepen his theories of natural philosophy, with the Inquisition nipping at his heels all the while. From his first years as a Dominican friar, he entertained doubts about the "personhood" of Jesus, and his lack of reverence for the Catholic icons raised suspicions of Protestant leanings at a time when the Church was riven by the Reformation. Steeped in Aquinas, Aristotle and Plato, Bruno was also strongly influenced by the emotional rhetoric of Teofilo da Vairano and the Platonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, among others, and he delved into the Hebrew Kabbalah. Pursued by Venetian inquisitors for irreverence and harboring banned books, the exiled and excommunicated friar moved from Genoa to Geneva, Lyon to Paris, London to the Protestant German cities, teaching artificial memory, astrology, theology and mathematics, honing his philosophy. Finally, he discovered the work of German cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus, who proposed the idea that the universe might be infinitely large. In Bruno's poetic, atomic system, set out in On the Immense, he touched on the concept of infinite space and time, a "universal divine fertility" in which God was present everywhere. Returning to Venice in 1591, he was eventually denounced by his employer and spent eight years in prison while the Inquisition debated what to do with him. When he was condemned to death, he replied menacingly, "You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it." Dense and elegantly erudite - a skillful, accessible analysis of complex systems of religion, philosophy and literature. (Kirkus Reviews)
About the Author
Ingrid D. Rowland was previously a professor at the University of Chicago. She is a regular essayist for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. She is the author of The Culture of the High Renaissance and The Scorith of Scornello. She lives in Rome.
Customer Reviews
Giordanu Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic
A very well researched book about a man who refused to back down to the Inquisition.For this he was burned at the stake in 1600. He could have saved his life as did Galileo. He chose not to do so. His statue overlooks the marketplace of Campo de' Fiori (Field of Flowers) in Rome where he died. He was a martyr to his ideas which he refused to deny. He started out as a monk but became a visionary of modern science questioning just about everything the Catholic church held sacred predicting that there could be many worlds beside ours which could be inhabited by many other forms of life.The Holy Inquisition declared him to be "an impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic." He was indeed all that and one of our early heroes, a model for free thinking.
A Dull Bio of a Sharp Man
Rowland's work was a pretty big disappoint for me. Everything that was wonderful about Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World" (i.e. it was as fun to read as it was educationally rewarding) was missing in "Giardano Bruno". For a religious humanist who was so incredibly courageous, clever, exciting, and ahead of his time, his story, as told in this book, isn't a story at all. It is a dissertation on Italy during the time of the Inquisition. Rowland leaves literally no stone unturned, going on, sometimes for pages, about obscure influences and their influences, remarking on meaningless descriptions of plazas and statues that Bruno may have seen in the cities through which he traveled. The chapter on "The Art of Memory" was especially disappointing as, true to her form in the rest of the book, Rowland barely described this most famous aspect of Bruno's skill and philosophy, saying only that Bruno recited a psalm backward. I was looking forward to an enjoyable read. Bruno, if I get anything out of this book, was one of those rare geniuses, like a Shakespeare or a Poe, who had a sense of humor as well as a limitless intellect. This book was tedious and slow; I often, literally, had to force my way through it. For a book titled "Giardano Bruno: Philosopher, Heretic" I'd say about 75% of the novel isn't even about Bruno, his philosophy or his heresy. Rowland seemed to be more intent on displaying the breadth of her own research and understanding of the time period than on shedding any light on this remarkable and remarkably obscure man. I don't recommend this unless you're a Ph.d. candidate specializing in late 16th Century Italian Religious Figures Who Suffered Under the Inquisition and the World They Populated. The wikipedia entry on Giardano Bruno will tell you more about him in way less time. Ouch.
Roamin' Nolan
Here Ingrid Rowland continues to demonstrate her profound mastery of the society and space of sixteenth-century Rome. Unlike most other accounts, Rowland emphasizes Bruno's role as a writer and shows that his fiery death at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori provoked change in the policy of the Roman Inquisition's treatment of intellectuals. I admire most of all Rowland's ability to bring forth vivid details from Bruno's beginnings in Naples, from his travels through France, England and even to the Frankfurt book fair, and from his obstinate conclusions both religious and scientific. She does much to humanize both Bruno and his chief prosecutor, Cardinal Bellarmine, and in the end suggests how science and religion soon found that they belong together rather than in conflict. This bright and polished biography does much to put the imagination of Bruno and his moving historical context in this reader's mind.
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