“Fiery meteor of the Middle Ages” Text of a musical slide program dedicated to the Great Feat of Giordano Bruno

Great things are seen from a distance. Almost four centuries separate us from the fiery, meteor-like life of the Great Wanderer Giordano Bruno.

Italy, XVI century. How did people live in those days?.. Some lived in private houses: the rich in beautiful ones, decorated with columns;

And others, in small and sometimes collapsed ones. And hopeless ignorance reigned everywhere. The people suffered from many disasters: diseases and crop failures, cruel rulers and wars.

The Western Christianity that existed at that time had already begun to degenerate, overgrown with laws invented to please the church, and forced people to blindly believe in miracles. European science of that time demanded from people blind submission to the texts of holy scripture, a literal understanding of the symbols with which the Bible is rich.

Western scientists of that time, according to the theory of Ptolemy, believed that the Universe is a ball, inside of which crystal heavens move at different speeds, and in the center of this ball there is a motionless Earth. All these theories were carefully guarded by the Catholic Church so as not to lose its dominance over the minds of ordinary people. That time is rightly called the Dark Middle Ages.

Gradually, in the Western scientific world, views on the place and role of the Earth in the surrounding Cosmos changed. It was no longer possible to deny the sphericity of the Earth, since America was discovered by Columbus and the sea route to the East to India was discovered by Vasco de Gama.

Polish astronomer Copernicus found out that the Earth is not at the center of the Universe, that the Sun, planets and stars do not revolve around the Earth; and that the Earth is just one of the planets revolving around the Sun.

The resistance of the Catholic Church to new scientific ideas, new natural science theories was fierce and severe. The church had a wrong idea about the Cosmos, about our solar system, but nevertheless it forced everyone to think only the way it wanted.

One of the most severe misfortunes was the Inquisition. It was a whole service that found and punished all those who thought differently from the papal Catholic Church. The Inquisition had many spies who monitored everything that was happening in the countries.

Carefully guarding its power, the church vigilantly monitored the trustworthiness of citizens. People who dared to speak the Truth were found and judged. They were tortured and then cruelly punished by being burned at the stake. So the people lived in fear and ignorance, but this could not continue for long.

There were people in those distant times who, risking their lives, told the truth about the world in which we live, the truth about the Cosmos and cosmic laws. They brought new knowledge, discoveries, dreams.

It was during this difficult period of history for Europe that a person emerged who had the courage to become a torch for others, capable of igniting hearts with his enormous enthusiasm. Such a person, who brought the light of knowledge in the dark times of the Inquisition, was Giordano Bruno.

Giordano was born in 1548 in Italy in the town of Nola, near Naples. At birth he was given the name Filippo. His father, an impoverished nobleman, served as a standard bearer in the Neapolitan cavalry regiment.

Little is known about little Bruno's childhood. Very early on, the boy was struck by the starry sky with its beauty and mystery. Maybe even then little Bruno was trying to unravel the mystery of distant unknown worlds. He carried his love for the stars throughout his life.

Until the age of 10, the boy lived in his father's house, then attended school in Naples. It was difficult for parents to pay for education, but the child strived for knowledge. An atmosphere of philosophical free-thinking reigned at school. Giordano was capable and studied very diligently.

At the age of 17, Filippo Bruno became a novice in a monastery, where with great diligence he studied the works of ancient and modern thinkers. A year later he was tonsured a monk and changed his name to Giordano. Monastic documents mention "Brother Giordano Nolanec".

Thanks to his abilities and hard work, Giordano accumulated enormous knowledge during his stay in the monastery. Even then he began to understand that the world is not as simple as the church says.

In the monastery, the young monk removed all the icons and images of saints from his cell. This act was dealt with in a church court, but due to Giordano’s youth, it did not entail any special consequences. In addition, there was a great need for scientists and talented people within the monastery walls. What caused the protest in the soul? What alarmed the young monk?

Europe is divided into enemy groups. Boundaries are in souls. Often, irreconcilable enemies live under the same roof, considering each other heretics, i.e. dissidents. Intolerance destroys families, poisons nations with its poison, and pushes people into the abyss of war. Then Giordano writes:

“If the difference between light and darkness were naturally known, then the ancient struggle of opinions would cease... People, raising their hands to heaven, declare that only they possess the truth and believe in God... That is why it happens that different groups of humanity have their own special teachings and want to be first, cursing the teachings of others. This is the cause of wars and destruction...”

Bruno continues to study from morning to night, reads a lot, trying to comprehend the philosophical essence of Christianity and its history. He reads and rereads the works of Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Plato. He is extremely interested in how this beautiful and terrible world that surrounds us works. He also becomes acquainted with the secret teaching of medieval Jews - Kabbalah. He also reads Arab thinkers, as well as the works of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa.

Walking through the monastery park in the late evenings, he looked at the night sky and thought. And the stars shared their secrets with those who loved them. And he begins to understand that the Universe is not limited, but infinite, and that besides our solar system there are other countless worlds where everything lives and develops according to the single law of the Cosmos. Of course, expressing such thoughts out loud was dangerous, and even more so in a monastery.

Secretly, Bruno writes a comedy that satirically depicts the morals of society. Bruno writes both sonnets and poems. Muses compete in his soul. He chooses Athena - the goddess of knowledge and wisdom; he is not afraid of her severity and does not expect an easy fate.

Wisdom is given to a person much more difficult than wealth and pleasure. There are always fewer true philosophers than generals, rulers, playmakers and the rich. Giordano is not afraid of the thorny path; isn’t it better to fail by devoting oneself to a noble cause than in a small and base one.

Bruno admires the selflessness of true heroes. He loves the tale of the fearless Icarus, the first man to fly into the sky. A person who has acquired wings must, despising danger, rise higher and higher. He knows that such a striving upward will doom him to death, he knows and flies. Death is not scary if it is retribution for a feat. Icarus remained one of Bruno’s favorite heroes throughout his life.

When I spread my wings freely,
The higher the wave carried me,
The wider the wind blew before me.
So despising the debt, I directed my flight upward...

Let me fall like Him; the end is different
I don’t need it - wasn’t it I who praised my courage?..
I'm flying through the clouds and I'll die calmly,
Since death, fate crowns a worthy path...”

After graduating from the higher monastic school, Bruno defended his doctoral dissertation. Giordano's scholarship is legendary. Summoned to Rome, he demonstrates his brilliant abilities and phenomenal memory to the highest church ruler of the time. A little more and he will begin to climb the church stairs.

At the age of 24, Giordano received the priesthood; now he can leave the monastery and communicate more closely with people and nature. Here, in freedom, he reads the works of the first humanists and becomes acquainted with Copernicus’s book “On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies.”

But life in the monastery is burdensome... Giordano Bruno does not consider it necessary to hide his thoughts; it is difficult to hide the beautiful truth about the structure of the Cosmos, the infinity of worlds from people. Everyone knew that he read forbidden books and that in disputes he was not afraid to show the ignorance of others. New knowledge was bursting out.

This began to worry the authorities. The monastic brethren took up arms against Giordano, a denunciation was received against him, accusing him of dissent, and arrest seemed inevitable. Having thrown off his monastic robe, Bruno had to escape from the monastery by ship. Denunciations followed in his wake. Thus began months, then years of wandering around Europe, which lasted until the end of his life.

And here he is again, a wanderer. And again
He looks into the distance. The eyes shine, but strictly
His face. Enemies, you don't understand
That God is Light. And he will die for God.

So he walked through cities and countries. He came to universities, gathering crowds of people, he told them his new knowledge, his discoveries. He spoke wherever he could and spoke boldly, openly and very interestingly. His new knowledge, unusual for everyone, began to quickly spread throughout the world. He was in France, England, Germany, the Czech Republic, and returned to his homeland in Italy only 15 years later.

In his life, without wanting it, he embodied the image of a real Don Quixote, a lonely knight errant without fear or reproach, who had nothing of his own - no home, no family, no lover, but who had his own ideas and a lot of students and like-minded people. throughout Europe, whom he managed to inspire and ignite.

In all the cities where Bruno stayed, there were people who accepted his ideas, groups of students and like-minded people formed. Bruno worked a lot with such people, conveying his views and worldview. Many followers could not openly mention the name of their Teacher, so as not to bring danger to him and themselves.

Groups and circles continued to work after Bruno's departure; the seeds sown by him sprouted in the minds of people. A new understanding of the world was bursting into the walls of laboratories and scientists’ offices, foreshadowing a generous harvest of scientific theories, discoveries, and inventions.

What Giordano Bruno understood was much more beautiful and amazing than just the limited Universe of church views. But he had absolutely no astronomical instruments, not even a telescope. But he made discoveries that were confirmed by scientists only centuries later.

The very name of the teacher remained in the shadows. Only in the diary entries of Galileo Galilei, Kepler, Descartes, the name of the Teacher was preserved, to whom, however, glory was always alien, but Truth was dear.

Bruno teaches grammar to children and gives lectures on the celestial sphere to young nobles. He uses every opportunity to awaken dormant souls, he speaks of the eternity of the world and the infinity of the Universe.

He explained that comets are a special type of planet, and not the terrible phenomena that used to frighten people.

He argued that the Earth is only approximately spherical in shape: it is flattened at the poles. He said that it is not the Earth that is at the center of the solar system, but the Sun; and the sun rotates around its axis. And our Earth, together with other planets, revolves around the Sun.

Our Sun and the planets of the solar system are just a small corner in the boundless Cosmos.

And those distant stars that we see as luminous points are the same Suns as ours. Planets also revolve around these Suns, but we do not see these planetary systems because they are very far from us and are not as bright as stars.

Worlds and even systems in the Cosmos are constantly changing, they have a beginning and an end; Only the creative energy underlying them will remain eternal, only the internal force inherent in each atom will remain eternal...

This was Bruno's infinite Universe, and this is how modern scientists know it.

Thanks to his scholarship, Bruno was admitted to Oxford University. However, his public speeches and debates, where he defended the ideas of Pythagoras and expounded the Copernican system, ran into a wall of misunderstanding, conceit and ignorance.

He said things that made the walls of the theological audience blush: about the immortality of soul and body; how the body decomposes and changes, how the soul, having left the flesh, then by a long process forms a new body around itself; that a person builds his future with his actions and thoughts.

He argued that solutions to all the world's mysteries should be sought not somewhere in the transcendental spheres, in the seventh heaven, but in ourselves, for the world is one...

He also said that the distant worlds are inhabited by creatures of the same or higher development than on Earth. And they look at our Sun in the same way as we look at their stars. The entire Universe is a living organism, and in its infinite space there is a place for everything.

He liked to repeat that if for us, the inhabitants of the earth, the inhabitants of other planets are in the sky, then for them our Earth is also in the sky, and we are the inhabitants of heaven.

These are the amazing discoveries made by Giordano Bruno. But then no one knew about it, and many did not believe him. They laughed at him, they kicked him out of universities, they persecuted him. But he was confident that he was right and boldly expressed his thoughts. And there were people who listened to his words.

After being expelled from Oxford, Bruno publishes a book in which he sets out the broadest views on the structure of the Universe, and when the scientist Kepler later read this work, he felt dizzy; a secret horror seized him at the thought that he was wandering in a space where there was no center, no beginning, no end!

All his life Bruno was led by the Divine Muse - Urania, patron of astronomy and astrology. She revived his work with her immortal rays, revealing the secrets of the Universe - galaxies and worlds. Together with her, he felt the immortal harmony of the Music of the Spheres and, following Pythagoras and Plato, comprehended the hidden powers of human genius.

This unearthly love becomes his second voice, his second self. Urania appeared to him at night, pointing to the shining depths of the spirit, to the heavens strewn with pearls of distant worlds. And along this stellar path he, a citizen of the Universe, paved the way for all those who dared to tear themselves away from the warm hearth.

Love for Truth is what guides Giordano. “Truth is the food of every heroic soul; the pursuit of Truth is the only activity worthy of a hero.”

Of course, his activities haunted the Inquisition, which was constantly trying to catch him. Finally, she managed to lure Giordano Bruno into her network. Here's how it happened.

Love for the Motherland and longing for it become stronger and Bruno returns to Italy. He accepts the invitation of one of the students to live in his house and teach him wisdom. This was the beginning of the end.

This student turned out to be a traitor. He kept an eye on his Teacher, and, since Bruno’s character lacked restraint and caution, he collected a lot of incriminating material on Bruno, and then handed him over to the Inquisition.

Giordano Bruno was arrested at the student's house and taken to prison. The traitor steals all his manuscripts, and he also hands over the material to the Inquisition, on the basis of which the philosopher is condemned to death. Betrayal often accompanies the lives of great people.

Among the numerous accusations brought against the scientist, one stood out: active propaganda of the doctrine of the movement of the Earth, the infinity of the Universe and the countless number of inhabited worlds in it.

In this matter, Bruno went further than Copernicus, who believed that our solar system is unique and surrounded by a sphere of fixed stars. According to Bruno, “the sky is a single immeasurable space... in it there are countless stars, constellations, balls, suns, earths... they all have their own movements, independent of the world movement... they revolve around others.”

Initially, Bruno hoped that everything would work out for him. During interrogations, he tried to justify and defend his views by the fact that science and faith can exist side by side without interfering with each other. Giordano insisted all the time that everything he taught, he taught as a philosopher, and not as a theologian, and never touched on church views.

For 8 years Bruno languished in the terrible prisons of the Inquisition. Countless interrogations with threats, bullying, physical violence; torture alternated with long loneliness and months of uncertainty.

The judges tried to force him to renounce his scientific beliefs, and he received death threats. They did not decide to execute for a long time; Giordano was too prominent a figure. It was even more impossible for the church to give him freedom, because... no hardship could tame the powerful spirit of this man.

Judging by the surviving interrogation protocols, the torture used on Bruno did not produce results. The philosopher's persistent behavior corresponded to his Teaching. He wrote: “whoever is carried away by the greatness of his work does not feel the horror of death”... Nothing frightened this courageous and persistent man. He believed and knew that what he said was true. How could he refuse the truth?

Bruno spent his last years in a cell in a damp stone bag, the outer wall of which was hit by the river surf day and night. The ceiling of the cell was low, and Giordano could not stand up to his full height. He was not given paper, ink or books. Who knows what the lone warrior experienced, changed his mind, suffered over the long eight years? But his spirit was not broken!

The Inquisition presented Bruno with an ultimatum: either admitting his mistakes and renouncing - and saving his life, or excommunication and death. Giordano chose the latter. Then the judges of the Inquisition condemned him to a terrible execution - burning at the stake.

When pronouncing the verdict, Bruno behaved with imperturbable calm and dignity, and only said, turning to the judges: “Perhaps you pronounce the verdict with more fear than I listen to it.”

In one of his works, Bruno wrote about creators, geniuses, heralds of the new: “And death in one century grants them life in all subsequent centuries.”

The day arrived on February 17, 1600. In Rome, the Italian spring was fragrant in the Square of Flowers. The larks chirped in the blue ether; Nightingales sang in the myrtle groves.

The Great Prisoner makes his terrible last journey with shackles on his hands and feet. He is thin, pale, aged from long imprisonment; he has a Greek nose, large sparkling eyes, and a high forehead.

The condemned man climbs onto the fire pit and is tied to a post; below they light firewood, forming a fire... Bruno's books were burned at his feet. Church obscurantism triumphed.

Bruno retained consciousness until the last minute, not a single plea, not a single groan escaped from his chest - his gaze was turned to Heaven.

Thus, another Great Teacher of humanity ascended into immortality, accepting the cup of suffering from ungrateful humanity. The day Bruno was burned coincided with a strong earthquake during the eruption of Vesuvius. The ground vibrations reached Rome.

He moved through life fearlessly and swiftly, never avoiding obstacles and moving ahead. Perfectly controlling himself, not relying on anything or anyone, he was like a comet that illuminated the darkness of the Middle Ages, and, burning in the dense atmosphere of humanity’s ignorance, nevertheless fell to the ground and left an indelible mark-crater in the minds of people.

Only in 1889 In Rome, a monument to Giordano Bruno was erected at the site where the thinker was burned. On the pedestal there is an inscription: “He raised his voice for freedom of thought for all peoples and sanctified this freedom with his death.” The Catholic churches, having sold themselves to the devil, were shamefully closed on this mournful and bright day.

The struggle in Bruno's life was between knowledge and ignorance, between Light and darkness. We cannot stand Light in darkness, because when there is Light, there will be no more darkness. Knowledge is intolerable to ignorance, because ignorance is afraid of it.

And in this struggle, Giordano Bruno did not give up, did not betray the truth, which means he won. And his fiery faith carried him through all the suffering and lifted him to the stars.

Giordano Bruno is truly... a citizen of the Universe, the son of the Father-Sun and the Earth-Mother... a man of titanic daring and will, of the unquenchable Promethean fire... The price of life turned out to be a worthy payment, and the light He brought shines through the centuries...

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Vladimir Legoyda

Despite the fact that the idea of ​​religion as “the opium of the people” is no longer modern and relevant, many old views do not change and continue to wander from generation to generation. One of these ideas is the struggle between religion and science “not to the death, but to the death.” Supporters of this view habitually trump famous names: Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno. The most amazing thing is that the myths about these “martyrs of science” have become so firmly entrenched in everyday consciousness that sometimes it seems that they cannot be eradicated. Times change, history is subject to close and scrupulous analysis, but defenders of scientists allegedly offended by Christianity continue to accuse the “damned churchmen” of destroying science. The reason for the persistence of these myths is a topic for a separate serious conversation, involving both historians and cultural experts, as well as psychologists and sociologists. The purpose of our publications is somewhat different - to try to understand, firstly, what actually happened and, secondly, how much what happened relates to the conflict between religion and science, if such is possible at all. We talked about Galilee. Today we will talk about Giordano Bruno.

I'll start by stating a fact: Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) actually suffered at the hands of the inquisitors. On February 17, 1600, the thinker was burned in the Piazza des Flowers in Rome. Regardless of any interpretations and interpretations of events, the fact always remains: the Inquisition sentenced Bruno to death and carried out the sentence. Such a step can hardly be justified from the point of view of evangelical morality. Therefore, Bruno's death will forever remain a regrettable event in the history of the Catholic West. The question is different. For what Did Giordano Bruno get hurt? The existing stereotype of a science martyr does not even allow one to think about the answer. How for what? Naturally, for your scientific views! However, in reality this answer turns out to be at least superficial. But in fact, it is simply incorrect.

I'm making up hypotheses!

As a thinker, Giordano Bruno certainly had a great influence on the development philosophical tradition of his time and - indirectly - on the development of modern science, primarily as a successor to the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, which undermined the physics and cosmology of Aristotle. Moreover, Bruno himself was neither a physicist nor an astronomer. The ideas of the Italian thinker cannot be called scientific, not only from the standpoint of modern knowledge, but also by the standards of 16th-century science. Bruno was not engaged in scientific research in the sense that those who really created science at that time were engaged in it: Copernicus, Galileo, and later Newton. The name Bruno is known today primarily because of the tragic ending of his life. At the same time, we can say with full responsibility that Bruno did not suffer for his scientific views and discoveries. Simply because... he didn't have any!

Bruno was a religious philosopher, not a scientist. Natural scientific discoveries interested him primarily as reinforcement of his views on completely non-scientific issues: the meaning of life, the meaning of the existence of the Universe, etc. Of course, in the era of the emergence of science, this difference (scientist or philosopher) was not as obvious as it is now. Soon after Bruno, one of the founders of modern science, Isaac Newton, would define this boundary as follows: “I invent no hypotheses!” (i.e. all my thoughts are confirmed by facts and reflect the objective world). Bruno "invented hypotheses." Actually, he didn’t do anything else.

Let's start with the fact that Bruno was disgusted by the dialectical methods known to him and used by scientists of that time: scholastic and mathematical. What did he offer in return? Bruno preferred to give his thoughts not the strict form of scientific treatises, but poetic form and imagery, as well as rhetorical colorfulness. In addition, Bruno was a proponent of the so-called Lullian art of linking thoughts - a combinatorial technique that involved modeling logical operations using symbolic notation (named after the medieval Spanish poet and theologian Raymond Lull). Mnemonics helped Bruno remember important images that he mentally placed in the structure of the cosmos and which were supposed to help him master divine power and comprehend the internal order of the Universe.

The most accurate and vital science for Bruno was... magic! The criteria of his methodology are poetic meter and Lullian art, and Bruno’s philosophy is a peculiar combination of literary motifs and philosophical reasoning, often loosely related to each other. It is therefore not surprising that Galileo Galilei, who, like many of his contemporaries, recognized Bruno’s outstanding abilities, never considered him a scientist, much less an astronomer. And in every possible way he avoided even mentioning his name in his works.

It is generally accepted that Bruno's views were a continuation and development of the ideas of Copernicus. However, facts indicate that Bruno’s acquaintance with the teachings of Copernicus was very superficial, and in the interpretation of the works of the Polish scientist, the Nolanian made very serious mistakes. Of course, Copernicus' heliocentrism had a great influence on Bruno and on the formation of his views. However, he easily and boldly interpreted the ideas of Copernicus, putting his thoughts, as already mentioned, in a certain poetic form. Bruno argued that the Universe is infinite and exists forever, that there are countless worlds in it, each of which in its structure resembles the Copernican solar system.

Bruno went much further than Copernicus, who showed extreme caution here and refused to consider the question of the infinity of the Universe. True, Bruno’s courage was based not on scientific confirmation of his ideas, but on the occult-magical worldview, which was formed in him under the influence of the ideas of Hermeticism, popular at that time. Hermeticism, in particular, assumed the deification of not only man, but also the world, therefore Bruno’s own worldview is often characterized as pantheistic(pantheism is a religious doctrine in which the material world is deified). I will give only two quotes from the Hermetic texts: “We dare to say that man is a mortal God and that the God of heaven is an immortal man. Thus, all things are governed by the world and man,” “The Lord of eternity is the first God, the world is the second, man is the third. God, the creator of the world and everything that it contains, controls this whole whole and subjects it to the control of man. This latter turns everything into the subject of his activity.” As they say, no comments.

Thus, Bruno cannot be called not only a scientist, but even a popularizer of the teachings of Copernicus. From the point of view of science itself, Bruno rather compromised the ideas of Copernicus, trying to express them in the language of magical superstitions. This inevitably led to a distortion of the idea itself and destroyed its scientific content and scientific value. Modern historians of science believe that in comparison with the intellectual exercises of Bruno, not only the Ptolemaic system, but also medieval scholastic Aristotelianism can be considered the standards of scientific rationalism. Bruno did not have any actual scientific results, and his arguments “in favor of Copernicus” were just a set of nonsense that primarily demonstrated the ignorance of the author.

Are God and the Universe “twin brothers”?

So, Bruno was not a scientist, and therefore it was impossible to bring against him the charges that, for example, were brought against Galileo. Why then was Bruno burned? The answer lies in his religious views. In his idea of ​​​​the infinity of the Universe, Bruno deified the world and endowed nature with divine properties. This view of the Universe actually rejected Christian idea of ​​God who created the world ex nihilo(out of nothing - lat.).

According to Christian views, God, being an absolute and uncreated Being, does not obey the laws of space-time created by Him, and the created Universe does not possess the absolute characteristics of the Creator. When Christians say, “God is Eternal,” it does not mean that He “will not die,” but that He does not obey the laws of time, He is outside of time. Bruno's views led to the fact that in his philosophy God dissolved in the Universe, between the Creator and creation, the boundaries were erased, the fundamental difference was destroyed. God in Bruno’s teaching, unlike Christianity, ceased to be a Person, which is why man became only a grain of sand in the world, just as the earthly world itself was only a grain of sand in Bruno’s “many worlds.”

The doctrine of God as a Person was fundamentally important for the Christian doctrine of man: man is personality, since he was created in the image and likeness Personalities- The Creator. The creation of the world and man is a free act of Divine Love. Bruno, however, also talks about love, but with him it loses its personal character and turns into cold cosmic aspiration. These circumstances were significantly complicated by Bruno’s passion for occult and hermetic teachings: the Nolan was not only actively interested in magic, but also, apparently, no less actively practiced the “magical art.” In addition, Bruno defended the idea of ​​the transmigration of souls (the soul is capable of traveling not only from body to body, but also from one world to another), questioned the meaning and truth of the Christian sacraments (primarily the sacrament of Communion), ironized the idea of ​​​​the birth of the God-man from the Virgin and etc. All this could not but lead to conflict with the Catholic Church.

“Hermeticism is a magical-occult teaching that, according to its adherents, goes back to the semi-mythical figure of the Egyptian priest and magician Hermes Trismegistus, whose name we meet in the era of the dominance of religious and philosophical syncretism of the first centuries of the new era, and expounded in the so-called “Corpus Hermeticum”... In addition, Hermeticism had extensive astrological, alchemical and magical literature, which was traditionally attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, who acted as the founder of the religion, herald and savior in esoteric Hermetic circles and Gnostic sects... The main thing that distinguished esoteric-occult teachings from Christian theology... was conviction in the divine - uncreated - essence of man and the belief that there are magical means of purifying man that return him to the state of innocence that Adam possessed before the Fall. Having been cleansed of sinful filth, a person becomes the second God. Without any help or assistance from above, he can control the forces of nature and thus fulfill the covenant given to him by God before his expulsion from paradise.”

Gaidenko P.P. Christianity and the genesis of modern European natural science // Philosophical and religious sources of science. M.: Martis, 1997. P. 57.

Why were the inquisitors afraid of the verdict?

From all this it inevitably follows that, firstly, the views of Giordano Bruno cannot be characterized as scientific. Therefore, in his conflict with Rome there was not and could not be a struggle between religion and science. Secondly, the ideological foundations of Bruno’s philosophy were very far from Christian. For the Church he was a heretic, and heretics at that time were burned.

It seems very strange to the modern tolerant consciousness that a person is sent to the stake for deifying nature and practicing magic. Any modern tabloid publication publishes dozens of advertisements about damage, love spells, etc.

Bruno lived in a different time: during the era of religious wars. The heretics in Bruno’s time were not harmless thinkers “not of this world” whom the damned inquisitors burned for no reason. There was a struggle. The struggle is not just for power, but a struggle for the meaning of life, for the meaning of the world, for a worldview that was affirmed not only with the pen, but also with the sword. And if power were seized, for example, by those who were closer to the views of the Nolanite, the fires would most likely continue to burn, as they burned in the 16th century in Geneva, where Calvinist Protestants burned Catholic inquisitors. All this, of course, does not bring the era of witch hunts closer to living according to the Gospel.

Unfortunately, the full text of the verdict with charges against Bruno has not been preserved. From the documents that have reached us and the testimony of contemporaries, it follows that those Copernican ideas that Bruno expressed in his own way and which were also included in the accusations did not make any difference in the inquisitorial investigation. Despite the ban on Copernicus’s ideas, his views, in the strict sense of the word, were never heretical for the Catholic Church (which, by the way, a little over thirty years after Bruno’s death largely predetermined the rather lenient sentence of Galileo Galilei). All this once again confirms the main thesis of this article: Bruno was not and could not be executed for scientific views.

Some of Bruno’s views, in one form or another, were characteristic of many of his contemporaries, but the Inquisition sent only a stubborn Nolanite to the stake. What was the reason for this verdict? Most likely, it is worth talking about a number of reasons that forced the Inquisition to take extreme measures. Don't forget that the investigation into Bruno's case lasted 8 years. The inquisitors tried to understand Bruno's views in detail, carefully studying his works. And, apparently, recognizing the uniqueness of the thinker’s personality, they sincerely wanted Bruno to renounce his anti-Christian, occult views. And they persuaded him to repent for all eight years. Therefore, Bruno’s famous words that the inquisitors pronounce his sentence with more fear than he listens to it can also be understood as the clear reluctance of the Roman Throne to pass this sentence. According to eyewitness accounts, the judges were indeed more dejected by their verdict than the Nolan man. However, Bruno's stubbornness, refusing to admit the charges brought against him and, therefore, to renounce any of his views, actually left him no chance of pardon.

The fundamental difference between Bruno's position and those thinkers who also came into conflict with the Church was his conscious anti-Christian and anti-church views. Bruno was judged not as a scientist-thinker, but as a runaway monk and an apostate from the faith. The materials on Bruno's case paint a portrait not of a harmless philosopher, but of a conscious and active enemy of the Church. If the same Galileo never faced a choice: or his own scientific views, then Bruno made his choice. And he had to choose between church teaching about the world, God and man and his own religious and philosophical constructs, which he called “heroic enthusiasm” and “the philosophy of the dawn.” If Bruno had been more of a scientist than a “free philosopher,” he could have avoided problems with the Roman throne. It was precise natural science that required, when studying nature, to rely not on poetic inspiration and magical sacraments, but on rigid rational constructs. However, Bruno was least inclined to do the latter.

According to the outstanding Russian thinker A.F. Losev, many scientists and philosophers of that time in such situations preferred to repent not out of fear of torture, but because they were frightened by the break with church tradition, the break with Christ. During the trial, Bruno was not afraid of losing Christ, since this loss in his heart, apparently, happened much earlier...

We once had a post about whether it really is, and now a little about Giordano Bruno.

Who doesn't know about Jordan Bruno? Well, of course, a young scientist who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition for spreading the teachings of Copernicus. What's wrong here? Except for the fact of his execution in Rome in 1600 - that’s all. Giordano Bruno a) was not young, b) was not a scientist, c) he was not executed for spreading the teachings of Copernicus.

But what was it really like?

Myth 1: young

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548, and in 1600 he was 52 years old. Even today no one would call such a man young, but in Europe in the 16th century, a 50-year-old man was rightfully considered elderly. By the standards of the time, Giordano Bruno lived a long life. And she was stormy.

He was born near Naples into a military family. The family was poor, the father received 60 ducats a year (an average official - 200-300). Filippo (that was the boy’s name) graduated from school in Naples and dreamed of continuing his education, but the family did not have money for university studies. And Filippo went to the monastery, because the monastery school taught for free. In 1565 he took monastic vows and became Brother Giordano, and in 1575 he set off on a journey.

For 25 years, Bruno traveled all over Europe. Been to France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, England. Geneva, Toulouse, Sorbonne, Oxford, Cambridge, Marburg, Prague, Wittenberg - he taught at every major European university. Defended 2 doctoral dissertations, wrote and published works. He had a phenomenal memory - contemporaries said that Bruno knew by heart more than 1,000 texts, ranging from the Holy Scriptures to the works of Arab philosophers.

He was not just famous, he was a European celebrity, met with royalty, lived at the court of the French king Henry III, met with the English Queen Elizabeth I and the Pope.

This wise, learned man hardly resembles a young man looking at us from the pages of a textbook!

Myth 2: scientist

In the 13th century, Bruno would undoubtedly have been considered a scientist. But at the end of the 16th century, all hypotheses and assumptions already had to be confirmed by mathematical calculations. Bruno does not have any calculations or figures in his works.

He was a philosopher. In his works (and he left more than 30 of them), Bruno denied the existence of celestial spheres, wrote about the boundlessness of the Universe, that the stars are distant suns around which planets revolve. In England, he published his main work, “On Infinity, the Universe and Worlds,” in which he defended the idea of ​​the existence of other inhabited worlds. (Well, it cannot be that God would calm down after creating just one world! Of course there is more!) Even the inquisitors, considering Bruno a heretic, at the same time recognized him as one of “the most outstanding and rare geniuses imaginable.”

His ideas were perceived by some with enthusiasm, others with indignation. Bruno was invited to visit the largest universities in Europe, only to be expelled with a scandal. At the University of Geneva he was recognized as an insulter to the faith, put in a pillory and kept in prison for two weeks. In response, Bruno did not hesitate to openly call his opponents imbeciles, fools, and donkeys, both verbally and in his writings. He was a talented writer (author of comedies, sonnets, poems) and wrote mocking poems about his opponents, which only made his enemies more numerous.

It’s simply amazing that with such a character and such a worldview, Giordano Bruno lived to be over 50 years old.

Execution on the Square of Flowers

In 1591, Bruno came to Venice at the invitation of the aristocrat Giovanni Mocenigo. Having heard about Giordano Bruno's incredible ability to remember huge amounts of information, Senor Mocenigo was inflamed with a desire to master mnemonics (the art of memory). At that time, many scientists earned money as tutors, Bruno was no exception. A trusting relationship was established between teacher and student, and on May 23, 1592, Mocenigo, as a true son of the Catholic Church, wrote a denunciation against the teacher to the Inquisition.

Bruno spent almost a year in the cellars of the Venetian Inquisition. In February 1593, the philosopher was transported to Rome. For 7 years, Bruno was demanded to renounce his views. On February 9, 1600, he was declared by the Inquisitorial court to be “an unrepentant, stubborn and inflexible heretic.” He was defrocked and excommunicated and handed over to the secular authorities with a recommendation to execute him “without shedding blood,” i.e. burn alive. According to legend, after hearing the verdict, Bruno said: “To burn does not mean to refute.”

On February 17, Giordano Bruno was burned in Rome in a square with the poetic name “Place of Flowers.”

Myth 3: execution for scientific views

Giordano Bruno was executed not at all for his views on the structure of the Universe and not for promoting the teachings of Copernicus. The heliocentric system of the world, in which the Sun was in the center, and not the Earth, was not supported by the church at the end of the 16th century, but it was not denied either; supporters of the teachings of Copernicus were not persecuted and were not dragged to the stake.

Only in 1616, when Bruno had been burned for 16 years, Pope Paul V declared the Copernican model of the world to be contrary to Scripture and the astronomer’s work was included in the so-called. "Index of Banned Books".

The idea of ​​the existence of many worlds in the Universe was not a revelation for the church. “The world that surrounds us and in which we live is not the only possible world and is not the best of worlds. It is just one of an infinite number of possible worlds. He is perfect to the extent that God is reflected in him in some way.” This is not Giordano Bruno, this is Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a recognized authority of the Catholic Church, the founder of theology, canonized in 1323.

And the works of Bruno himself were declared heretical only three years after the end of the trial, in 1603! Then why was he declared a heretic and sent to the stake?

The mystery of the verdict

In fact, why the philosopher Bruno was declared a heretic and sent to the stake is unknown. The verdict that reached us says that he was charged with 8 counts, but which ones were not specified. What kind of sins did Bruno have that the Inquisition was even afraid to publicize them before his execution?

From the denunciation of Giovanni Mocenigo: “I report out of conscience and by order of my confessor that I heard many times from Giordano Bruno when I talked with him in his house that the world is eternal and there are infinite worlds... that Christ performed imaginary miracles and was a magician, that Christ he did not die of his own free will and, as far as he could, tried to avoid death; that there is no retribution for sins; that souls created by nature pass from one living being to another. He talked about his intention to become the founder of a new sect called “new philosophy.” He said that the Virgin Mary could not give birth; monks disgrace the world; that they are all donkeys; that we have no proof whether our faith has merit before God.” This is not just a heresy, this is something completely beyond the boundaries of Christianity.

Intelligent, educated, undoubtedly a believer in God (no, he was not an atheist), well-known in theological and secular circles, Giordano Bruno, based on his picture of the world, created a new philosophical teaching that threatened to undermine the foundations of Christianity. For almost 8 years the holy fathers tried to persuade him to renounce his natural philosophical and metaphysical beliefs and were unable to do so. It is difficult to say how justified their fears were, and whether Brother Giordano would have become the founder of a new religion, but they considered it dangerous to release the unbroken Bruno into the wild.

Does all this diminish the scale of Giordano Bruno's personality? Not at all. He truly was a great man of his time, who did a lot to promote advanced scientific ideas. In his treatises, he went much further than Copernicus and Thomas Aquinas, and expanded the boundaries of the world for humanity. And of course he will forever remain a model of fortitude.

Myth 4, last: justified by the church

You can often read in the press that the church admitted its mistake and rehabilitated Bruno and even recognized him as a saint. This is wrong. Until now, Giordano Bruno, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, remains an apostate from the faith and a heretic.

Vladimir Arnold, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of a dozen foreign academies, one of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century, when meeting with Pope John Paul II, asked why Bruno has not yet been rehabilitated? Dad replied: “When you find aliens, then we’ll talk.”

Well, the fact that in the Square of Flowers, where the fire broke out on February 17, 1600, a monument to Giordano Bruno was erected in 1889, does not mean at all that the Roman Church is happy about this monument.

The term " pseudoscience"goes far back to the Middle Ages. We can remember Copernicus, who was burned for saying “ But the Earth still turns"..." The author of this fantastic quote, where three different people are mixed up, is politician Boris Gryzlov.

Galileo Galilei was forced to renounce his views, but the phrases “ But still she spins!"he didn't speak

In fact, Galileo Galilei was persecuted for heliocentrism (the idea that the center of our planetary system is the Sun). The great astronomer was forced to renounce his views, but the phrases “ But still she spins!“he didn’t say - this is a late legend. Nicolaus Copernicus, who lived earlier, the founder of heliocentrism and a Catholic clergyman, also died a natural death (his doctrine was officially condemned only 73 years later). But Giordano Bruno was burned on February 17, 1600 in Rome on charges of heresy.

There are many myths surrounding this name. The most common of them sounds something like this: “The cruel Catholic Church burned a progressive thinker, scientist, follower of Copernicus’s ideas that the Universe is infinite and the Earth revolves around the Sun.”

Back in 1892, a biographical essay by Julius Antonovsky “Giordano Bruno. His life and philosophical activity." This is a real “life of a saint” of the Renaissance. It turns out that the first miracle happened to Bruno in infancy - a snake crawled into his cradle, but the boy scared his father with a cry, and he killed the creature. Further more. Since childhood, the hero has been distinguished by outstanding abilities in many areas, fearlessly argues with opponents and defeats them with the help of scientific arguments. As a very young man, he gained all-European fame and, in the prime of his life, fearlessly died in the flames of a fire.

A beautiful legend about a martyr of science who died at the hands of medieval barbarians, from the Church, which “has always been against knowledge.” So beautiful that for many the real person ceased to exist, and in his place a mythical character appeared - Nikolai Brunovich Galilei. He lives a separate life, moves from one work to another and convincingly defeats imaginary opponents.

For many, a real person ceased to exist, and in his place a mythical character appeared - Nikolai Brunovich Galilei.

Monument to Giordano Bruno in Rome

But this has nothing to do with the real person. Giordano Bruno was an irritable, impulsive and explosive man, a Dominican monk, and a scientist more in name than in essence. His “one true passion” turned out to be not science, but magic and the desire to create a unified world religion based on ancient Egyptian mythology and medieval Gnostic ideas.

Here, for example, is one of the spells for the goddess Venus, which can be found in the works of Bruno: “Venus is good, beautiful, most beautiful, amiable, benevolent, merciful, sweet, pleasant, shining, starry, Dionea, fragrant, cheerful, Afrogenia, fertile, merciful ", generous, beneficent, peaceful, graceful, witty, fiery, the greatest reconciliator, the mistress of love" ( F. Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition. M.: New Literary Review, 2000).

It is unlikely that these words would be appropriate in the works of a Dominican monk or an astronomer. But they are very reminiscent of the conspiracies that some “white” and “black” magicians still use.

Bruno never considered himself a student or follower of Copernicus and studied astronomy only to the extent that it helped him find “strong witchcraft” (to use an expression from the “goblin translation” of “The Lord of the Rings”). This is how one of the listeners of Bruno’s speech in Oxford (admittedly rather biased) describes what the speaker was talking about:

“He decided, among very many other questions, to expound the opinion of Copernicus that the earth goes in a circle, and the heavens are at rest; although in fact it was his own head that was spinning and his brain could not calm down" ( quote from the said work by F. Yeats).

Bruno patted his senior comrade on the shoulder in absentia and said: yes, to Copernicus “we owe liberation from some false assumptions of general vulgar philosophy, if not from blindness.” However, “he was not far from them, since, knowing mathematics more than nature, he could not go so deep and penetrate into the latter as to destroy the roots of difficulties and false principles.” In other words, Copernicus operated with exact sciences and did not seek secret magical knowledge, therefore, from Bruno’s point of view, he was not “advanced” enough.

Such views brought the philosopher to the stake. Unfortunately, the full text of Bruno's verdict has not been preserved. From the documents that have reached us and the testimony of contemporaries, it follows that Copernican ideas, which the defendant expressed in his own way, were also among the accusations, but did not make a difference in the inquisitorial investigation. Many readers of the fiery Giordano could not understand why among his works on the art of memorization or the structure of the world there were some crazy schemes and references to ancient and ancient Egyptian gods. In fact, these were the most important things for Bruno, and the mechanisms of memory training and descriptions of the infinity of the Universe were just a cover. Bruno, no less, called himself the new apostle.

This investigation lasted eight years. The inquisitors tried to understand in detail the views of the thinker and carefully study his works. All eight years he was persuaded to repent. However, the philosopher refused to admit the accusations made. As a result, the inquisitorial tribunal declared him an “impenitent, stubborn and inflexible heretic.” Bruno was stripped of his priesthood, excommunicated and executed ( V. S. Rozhitsyn. Giordano Bruno and the Inquisition. M.: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1955).

Of course, imprisoning a person and then burning him at the stake just because he expressed certain views (even false ones) is unacceptable for people of the 21st century. And even in the 17th century, such measures did not add to the popularity of the Catholic Church. However, this tragedy cannot be viewed as a struggle between science and religion. Compared to Giordano Bruno, the medieval scholastics are more reminiscent of modern historians defending traditional chronology from the fantasies of Academician Fomenko, rather than stupid and limited people who fought against advanced scientific thought.

If now Middle Eastern terrorists are burning Jordanian pilots, and the civilized public condemns this, then four centuries ago during the so-called Renaissance, things were somewhat different. The Inquisition burned everyone, paying special attention to those whose views, to one degree or another, contradicted church dogma. No one dared to condemn such actions in those days. At least publicly.

This happened with Giordano Bruno. True, contrary to the popular version, he did not suffer for his scientific views.

The heliocentric system, which Giordano Bruno adhered to, was explained by him far from a scientific point of view.

If a person like him appeared now, then, with a high probability, he would not be listed as a religious philosopher, but in the section as one of the main characters. True, for example, in Saudi Arabia, religious authorities and now we are sure that the Earth does not revolve around the Sun.

As for Giordano Bruno, at the end of the 16th century his views could well be called progressive. By the way, at birth the thinker’s name was Filippo; he became Giordano only when he entered a monastery to study. It was within its walls that Bruno became acquainted with the works of ancient Greek philosophers, and also became interested in logic. In addition, at the monastery Bruno was able to study the works of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa.

Already at the age of 24 in 1572, Giordano Bruno received the priesthood. Somewhere at the same time, he read Copernicus’s work “On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies.”

And if this work, revolutionary by the standards of those years, was not formally prohibited by the Inquisition, then the rest of the books that Bruno read often were. And because of this, the newly minted priest first had problems with the Inquisition - first Bruno fled to Rome, and from there he began his journey through the cities of Italy, France and Switzerland. However, he was unable to stay in any of them due to the plague epidemic that was raging in Europe in those years.

Giordano Bruno spent some time in Toulouse, where he received a doctorate and the title of ordinary professor of philosophy. By 1580 he had become a first-class teacher, and his lectures invariably attracted large numbers of students. Giordano Bruno spent especially a lot of time in this role in Paris - here he taught until 1583, and then moved to Foggy Albion, where Oxford University became the refuge of the young philosopher.

It was at Oxford that Giordano Bruno first argued with other philosophers about the structure of the Universe. And if they were of the opinion that the Earth is the center of the Universe, around which the Sun, Moon and stars revolve, then Bruno put the Sun at the center of the universe.

Among other things, Giordano Bruno went further than his contemporary Galileo Galilei, who also risked proposing a heliocentric system, but under pressure from the Inquisition abandoned his views. Bruno was one of the first to suggest that the Earth is flattened at the poles, that the Sun rotates around its axis, and that the other stars are analogues of our Sun. After Giordano Bruno expressed his views to respectable men, he was expelled from Oxford in disgrace.

Due to his reluctance to return to the mainland, Bruno settled in London, where he lived until 1585. Then he returned to France, but even here he did not find peace: disagreements with the church led to the philosopher going to Germany, where he stayed until 1588, giving lectures and entering into disputes with local philosophers.

And in 1591 Bruno returned to Italy, although there was still a danger that the Inquisition would overtake him.

He settled in Venice and became a teacher to the young nobleman Giovanni Mocenigo. However, he could not teach the young man anything - he was under the unlimited influence of his confessor, who was of the opinion that Bruno was a heretic. At the end of May 1592, the philosopher tried to escape, but the student had already informed the inquisitors - Giordano Bruno was captured and imprisoned. He stayed there until September, and then was transferred to Rome.

Giordano Bruno spent eight years in the dungeons. Over the years, his health deteriorated, and torture contributed to this. On January 20, 1600, the last meeting of the court took place. As a result, the philosopher was excommunicated from the church and deprived of his priesthood. In addition, they chose “the most merciful punishment and without shedding of blood” - burning. The sentence was carried out on February 17, 1600 in Rome's Square of the Flowers. Several thousand people gathered there that day. And Bruno silently looked into the sky, devoured by the flames and the hateful glances of the crowd.

In 1889, a monument was erected at the site of the burning of Giordano Bruno. She still hasn’t made a decision to rehabilitate the “freethinker,” because Bruno never renounced his views. However, this did not prevent the Vatican from rehabilitating Galileo in the 20th century, as well as organizing the Papal Observatory, building its own observatory, etc.