Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an Italian philosopher, mathematician, theologian and religious man.
He defended the heliocentric theory, asserted the existence of other worlds, and even questioned the divine nature of Jesus Christ.
Biography
Giordano Bruno was born in 1548, in the city of Nola, located in Italy. He was the only son of the nobles Giovanni Bruno and Fraulissa Savolino, who named him Filippo Bruno.
The family considered that he had a religious vocation and, therefore, he was sent to a convent in the city of Naples. Bruno was 13 years old and began studying Humanities, Logic and Dialectics. At age 17, he changed his name to Giordano on the occasion of the celebration where he received the Dominican habit.
He was ordained a priest in 1572, and in 1575 completed his studies in theology. For expressing ideas different from common sense, he was accused of heresy and forced to leave Naples in 1576.
In the same year, Giordano Bruno leaves the cassock and in Geneva approaches the Calvinism. In this city he would be involved in polemics, accused of heresy and expelled.
From 1582 onwards, he began to teach in Paris and at the same time one of his first works was published: of Umbris Idearum.
The literary production of Giordano Bruno turns to the theory of heliocentrism in the period between 1583 and 1585, in England. His ideas, which corroborate those of Nicolas Copernicus (1473 - 1543) are published, as From the infinite universe and mondi.
As the English environment was no longer favorable to him—the French embassy had been attacked because of him—Giordano Bruno goes to Paris and later tries to teach at German universities.
In Germany he manages to teach Aristotle's philosophy for two years and later obtains a teaching post in the town of Helmstedt, where he would be excommunicated by followers of the Lutheranism.
In 1591, Bruno goes to live in Frankfurt, where he composes poems and deepens his studies of mnemonics, a technique of memorization. Invited by the nobleman Giovanni Mocenigo, he goes to Venice to demonstrate the mnemonic.
Mocenigo, impressed by Bruno's resourcefulness, believes that the memorization process is magic and denounces it to the Holy Inquisition. He is arrested and tried in Venice. However, he was transferred and tried again in Rome, but the final sentence was not announced until seven years later.
For some historians, Bruno fell into a trap set by the Church with the help of the nobleman.
THE Inquisition he demanded the full retraction of his theories. Giordano Bruno argued that the Universe was infinite and unfinished. In other words, it was not the perfect work completed by God, as postulated by the Catholic Church.
The philosopher also placed Jesus Christ as a magician endowed with great abilities and not an integral part of the person of God, together with the Holy Spirit.
Questioned by the inquisitors, Giordano Bruno highlighted that his ideas were philosophical and not religious. The argument was not accepted.
In 1599, the Catholic Church demands the retraction of Bruno that, if he did, he would be free from the death penalty. He did not accept to deny his thought and, by the sentence handed down by Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605) he would be burned alive.
For eight days before the execution of the sentence, several priests tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him to deny his thought.
Giordano Bruno was killed on February 17th in 1600 in Rome.
Philosophy
Bruno's philosophy reinterprets the neoplatonism and of Nicholas of Cusa.
For him, the natural reality (material beings) and the cosmic soul (God, spiritual beings) are the same thing. The mind of God would be in all creatures. What would distinguish them would be the form they present.
This union between nature and God makes us think about the question of the finitude of the universe. This could not be finished and finished, because God himself is infinite.
This philosophy goes exactly against what is preached by Christianity in general that makes the distinction between matter and spirit.
Cosmic Pluralism
In particular, it establishes the idea of the plurality of worlds at a time when studies indicated the universe as a sphere around the sun, thus constituting a closed world.
Giordano Bruno defends that each one of the stars would have a planet that revolves around it. Thus, Earth would not be alone in the universe.
Likewise, the universe would be filled with some substance that could be air or spirit that would always be in motion. In this way, he categorically rejects the idea of a static and hierarchical universe.
Sentences
- "The world is infinite because God is infinite. How to believe that God, being infinite, could have limited himself creating a closed and limited world?"
- "It is not outside of us that we should look for divinity, because it is on our side, or rather, in our inner forum, more intimately in us than we are in ourselves."
- "If I managed a plow, shepherded a flock, cultivated a vegetable garden, mended a garment, no one would would pay attention, few would notice me, few people would censure me and I could easily please all. But, because I am the outliner of the field of nature, because I am concerned with the nourishment of the soul, interested in the culture of the spirit and dedicated to the activity of the intellect, behold, the targeted threaten me, the observed assault me, the afflicted bite me, the unmasked me devour. And it's not just one, there are not a few, there are many, there are almost all."
Main Works
- the shadow of ideas (1582)
- The Cause, the Principle and the One (1584)
- About the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)
- Expulsion of the triumphant beast (1584)
- the heroic furors (1585)
- About the Triple Minimum and the Triple Measure (1591)
- The Monad, the Number and the Figure (1591)
- About the innumerable, immense and non-configurable (1591)
Curiosities
- In Campo de Fiori, where the punishment took place, a monument was erected in honor of Giordano Bruno. The project was completed in 1889 and the execution of the work was under the responsibility of the sculptor Ettore Ferrari (1845 - 1929).
- Giordano Bruno's life was made into a film in 1973 and directed by Italian Giuliano Montaldo.
- In 2017, the disappearance of a boy in the state of Acre moved Brazilian society. Leaving behind several writings about extraterrestrial life, the boy was a great admirer of the works of Giordano Bruno.
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heliocentrism
Geocentrism
