Editing Giordano Bruno (section)

==Retrospective views==
[[File:Monument to Giordano Bruno in Campo de' Fiori square - Rome, Italy - 6 June 2014_rectified.jpg|thumb|The monument to Bruno in the place he was executed, [[Campo de' Fiori]] in Rome]] [[File:Monument to Giordano Bruno at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Germany.jpg|thumb|Monument to Giordano Bruno at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany, referencing his burning at the stake while tied upside down]]

===Late Vatican position===
The Vatican has published few official statements about Bruno's trial and execution. In 1942, Cardinal [[Giovanni Mercati]], who discovered a number of lost documents relating to Bruno's trial, stated that the Church was perfectly justified in condemning him.{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}} On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, in 2000, Cardinal [[Angelo Sodano]] declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode" but, despite his regret, he defended Bruno's prosecutors, maintaining that the Inquisitors "had the desire to serve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save his life".<ref>{{cite news|last=Seife |first=Charles |title=Vatican Regrets Burning Cosmologist |url=http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2000/03/01-04.html |access-date=24 June 2012 |newspaper=Science Now |date=1 March 2000 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130608054739/http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2000/03/01-04.html |archive-date=8 June 2013  }}</ref> In the same year, Pope [[John Paul II]] made a general apology for "the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth".<ref>{{citation |author= Robinson, B A|date=7 March 2000|title=Apologies by Pope John Paul II|publisher=Ontario Consultants. Retrieved 27 December 2013}}</ref>

===A martyr of science===
{{See also|Conflict thesis}}
Some authors have characterized Bruno as a "martyr of science", suggesting parallels with the [[Galileo affair]] which began around 1610.<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/popularsciencemo0712newy#page/110/mode/2up ''"Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei,"''] The Popular Science Monthly, Supplement, 1878.</ref> "It should not be supposed," writes A. M. Paterson of Bruno and his "heliocentric solar system", that he "reached his conclusions via some mystical revelation&nbsp;... His work is an essential part of the scientific and philosophical developments that he initiated."<ref>Antoinette Mann Paterson (1970). ''The Infinite Worlds of Giordano Bruno''. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 1970, p.&nbsp;16.</ref> Paterson echoes [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]] in writing that Bruno "ushers in a modern theory of knowledge that understands all natural things in the universe to be known by the human mind through the mind's dialectical structure".<ref>Paterson, p.&nbsp;61.</ref>

Ingegno writes that Bruno embraced the philosophy of [[Lucretius]], "aimed at liberating man from the fear of death and the gods."{{sfn|Bruno|1998|loc="Introduction"}} Characters in Bruno's ''Cause, Principle and Unity'' desire "to improve speculative science and knowledge of natural things," and to achieve a philosophy "which brings about the perfection of the human intellect most easily and eminently, and most closely corresponds to the truth of nature."{{sfn|Bruno|1998|p=63}}

Other scholars oppose such views, and claim Bruno's martyrdom to science to be exaggerated, or outright false. For Yates, while "nineteenth century liberals" were thrown "into ecstasies" over Bruno's Copernicanism, "Bruno pushes Copernicus' scientific work back into a prescientific stage, back into Hermeticism, interpreting the Copernican diagram as a hieroglyph of divine mysteries."{{sfn|Yates|1964|p=225}}

According to historian Mordechai Feingold, "Both admirers and critics of Giordano Bruno basically agree that he was pompous and arrogant, highly valuing his opinions and showing little patience with anyone who even mildly disagreed with him." Discussing Bruno's experience of rejection when he visited Oxford University, Feingold suggests that "it might have been Bruno's manner, his language and his self-assertiveness, rather than his ideas" that caused offence.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Feingold|first1=Mordechai|title=Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance|last2=Vickers|first2=Brian|year=1984|pages=73–94|doi=10.1017/CBO9780511572999.004|isbn=978-0511572999}}</ref>

===Theological heresy===
In his ''[[Lectures on the History of Philosophy]]'', [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]] writes that Bruno's life represented "a bold rejection of all [[Catholic]] beliefs resting on mere authority."<ref>Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy, translated by E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson, in three volumes. Volume III, p. 119. The Humanities Press, 1974, New York.</ref>

Alfonso Ingegno states that Bruno's philosophy "challenges the developments of the Reformation, calls into question the truth-value of the whole of Christianity, and claims that Christ perpetrated a deceit on mankind&nbsp;... Bruno suggests that we can now recognize the universal law which controls the perpetual becoming of all things in an infinite universe."{{sfn|Bruno|1998|p=x}} A. M. Paterson says that, while we no longer have a copy of the official papal condemnation of Bruno, his heresies included "the doctrine of the infinite universe and the innumerable worlds" and his beliefs "on the movement of the earth".<ref>Paterson, p.&nbsp;198.</ref>

Michael White notes that the Inquisition may have pursued Bruno early in his life on the basis of his opposition to [[Aristotle]], interest in [[Arianism]], reading of [[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]], and possession of banned texts.{{sfn|White|2002|p=7}} White considers that Bruno's later heresy was "multifaceted" and may have rested on his conception of infinite worlds. "This was perhaps the most dangerous notion of all&nbsp;... If other worlds existed with intelligent beings living there, did they too have their visitations? The idea was quite unthinkable."{{sfn|White|2002|p=7}}

[[Frances Yates]] rejects what she describes as the "legend that Bruno was prosecuted as a philosophical thinker, was burned for his daring views on innumerable worlds or on the movement of the earth." Yates however writes that "the Church was&nbsp;... perfectly within its rights if it included philosophical points in its condemnation of Bruno's heresies" because "the philosophical points were quite inseparable from the heresies."{{sfn|Yates|1964|pp=354–356}}

According to the ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]'', "in 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy. When [...] Bruno [...] was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology."<ref>Sheila Rabin, [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/ "Nicolaus Copernicus"] in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (online. Retrieved 19 November 2005).</ref>

The website of the [[Vatican Apostolic Archive]], discussing a summary of legal proceedings against Bruno in Rome, states:

<blockquote>In the same rooms where Giordano Bruno was questioned, for the same important reasons of the relationship between science and faith, at the dawning of the new astronomy and at the decline of Aristotle's philosophy, sixteen years later, [[Robert Bellarmine|Cardinal Bellarmino]], who then contested Bruno's heretical theses, summoned Galileo Galilei, who also faced a famous inquisitorial trial, which, luckily for him, ended with a simple abjuration.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://asv.vatican.va/en/doc/1597.htm|title=Summary of the trial against Giordano Bruno: Rome, 1597|publisher=Vatican Secret Archives|access-date=18 September 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100609095413/http://asv.vatican.va/en/doc/1597.htm|archive-date=9 June 2010}}</ref></blockquote>

Galileo ultimately recanted his views and agreed to [[house arrest]] and was spared from being burned at the stake, while Bruno held his positions until death.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/378-years-ago-today-galileo-forced-to-recant-18323485/|title=378 Years Ago Today: Galileo Forced to Recant|first=Smithsonian|last=Magazine|website=Smithsonian Magazine}}</ref> The concepts of [[exoplanets]], the idea that the [[shape of the universe]] goes on [[infinitely]], and the [[Solar System]] holding no [[Meaning (philosophy)|cosmic importance]] or center, would later became major concepts in the field of [[cosmology]], as well as philosophy.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/1c9ff494adc904622b88a70df92ed1cf/|title=Giordano Bruno's cosmic hypothesis: The universe is infinite, evolving, and filled with planets, life and intelligence - ProQuest|website=www.proquest.com}}</ref><ref>{{ Cite journal|url=https://journals.muni.cz/anthropologia_integra/article/view/9429|title=Giordano Bruno: The Cosmic Perspective|author1=H. James Birx|author2=Branko Milićević|author3=Alexander V. Tenodi|journal=Anthropologia Integra |date=2018 |volume=9 |pages=61–74 |doi=10.5817/AI2018-1-61 |doi-access=free}}</ref>