How many scientists died because of the church. The Inquisition is a typically Christian invention

Most of our contemporaries remember the name Giordano Bruno from the history textbook for high school. It briefly says: this scientist was recognized as a heretic in the Middle Ages and burned at the stake, because, contrary to the then church dogmas, he, following Copernicus, argued that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun. But a closer acquaintance with the biography of the great Italian allows us to conclude: he was not executed for his scientific beliefs.

Left only the crucifix

One of the most common myths about Bruno is that he passed away at a young age. This is due to two surviving portraits where he actually looks young. All other images of him were destroyed by decision of the Catholic Church.
But Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 and was 52 years old before his execution. In Europe at that time, such an age was considered advanced. So we can assume that the scientist’s life was long.

At birth, the boy received the name Filippo; he was born in the town of Nola near Naples. His father served as a simple soldier, earning 60 ducats a year (the average city official received (200-300 ducats). Despite the fact that the boy showed himself well at the local school, it was clear that due to lack of money, the path to university was closed to him. The only option to continue scientific activity a career as a priest was imagined - since in church institutions they taught for free.
In 1559, when Filippo was 11 years old, his parents sent him to the school at the monastery of St. Dominic, located in Naples. The teenager studied logic, theology, astronomy and many other sciences. In 1565, he was tonsured a monk and began to bear the name Giordano, the Italian name for the sacred Jordan River, in whose waters Jesus was baptized.
Seven years later, Bruno received the priesthood. And then denunciations from other Dominicans began to arrive at the monastery’s leadership. Giordano was accused of reading heretical books, and also of removing all the icons from his cell and leaving only the crucifix there. But the main sin was doubts about the unshakable postulates christian church- for example, in the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. The authorities of the monastery began to investigate the activities of the heretic, but Bruno did not wait for the obvious solution and in 1576 fled first to Rome and then abroad.

Stubborn Shakespeare

Another myth is the claim that Giordano Bruno was not a scientist. Modern researchers like to emphasize that his works contain absolutely no mathematical calculations. Yes, he talks about the boundlessness of the Universe and the multiplicity of its planets, but rather as a publicist. And most of his works are comedies and poems. That is, he should be considered not a scientist, but a writer.
However long period travels abroad proves that Giordano Bruno was perceived by the people of his time as a man of science. During his years of wandering around Europe, he taught at major universities - including the Sorbonne and Oxford. Giordano defended two doctoral dissertations. Several of his works are devoted to the development of memory. Bruno himself, thanks to his personal memorization technique, knew by heart more than a thousand books, including the Bible and the works of Arab philosophers.
In 1581, the king attended one of Giordano's lectures. Henry III French, who was literally amazed by the scientist’s memory. The monarch invited him to his court and even gave him a good allowance. But quiet life did not last long - Giordano quarreled with scientists of the French Academy over the works of Aristotle and was forced to say goodbye to hospitable Paris. Henry II! advised him to go to England and gave letters of recommendation for the trip.
In London, Bruno lectured on the truth of Copernicus's ideas, according to which it is not the Earth, but the Sun that is at the center of our planetary system. He held discussions on this matter with the most outstanding people countries - writer William Shakespeare, philosopher Francis Bacon, physicist William Gilbert. Shakespeare and Bacon could not be convinced; they remained faithful to the beliefs of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy that the Sun is a planet and revolves around the Earth. But Gilbert not only became imbued with Bruno’s ideas, but also developed them, establishing some physical laws of the heliocentric system.
Here in England, Giordano published his main treatise“On Infinity, the Universe and Worlds”, where he argued that in the vastness of space there must be other inhabited
planets. Among the evidence was the following: God created our world in a week, didn’t he really want to try to do something else during the rest of the time? In total, Bruno wrote more than 30 scientific papers.

Great Heretic

For 16 years, Giordano Bruno traveled around Europe, lecturing at universities and promoting his views. In 1591, he returned to Italy as a personal teacher to the Venetian aristocrat Giovanni Mocenigo. However, the relationship between teacher and student quickly deteriorated. A year later, Mocenigo wrote the first denunciation against the scientist. In a letter to the Venetian inquisitor, he said that Giordano Bruno is a heretic because he claims that other worlds exist, that Christ did not die of his own free will and tried to avoid death, that human souls, after the death of the body, pass from one living being to another, etc. . The first denunciation was followed by two more. As a result, the scientist was arrested and placed in prison. But Bruno's personality and influence were too large for provincial Venice - and in February 1593 he was transported to Rome, where he was tortured for seven years, forcing him to renounce his views.
Third and main myth about Giordano Bruno: he was executed for advanced scientific ideas - in particular, for the doctrine of the infinity of worlds and the heliocentric theory of the structure of our planetary system. But in late XVI Over the centuries, similar views have been expressed by many. The Inquisition had not yet sentenced the followers of Copernicus to death. Only 16 years after Bruno was burned at the stake, Pope Paul V declared that Copernicus' theory contradicted Holy Scripture, and only in 1633 Galileo was forced to renounce the opinion that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Paradoxical but true: all the works of Giordano Bruno were declared heretical only three years after his death. Then why was he sent to the stake?
Court documents in Rome indicate that Bruno was killed for denying the fundamental tenets of Christianity. The great scientist, in fact, created his own teaching, which threatened to undermine the influence of the Vatican. He called on everyone to doubt the sanctity of church books and argued that it was necessary to completely reconsider many provisions of Catholicism and create a different religion.
For more than seven years, the inquisitors tried through torture and persuasion to persuade Bruno to renounce these views - but they could not break the will of the convinced heretic. And releasing such an authoritative person meant subjecting the Catholic Church to tests in the fight against new religious teachings.

Execute, cannot be pardoned

On February 9, 1600, the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition declared Giordano Bruno “an unrepentant, stubborn and inflexible heretic.” He was deprived of his priesthood and excommunicated from the church. After which the Vatican authorities pretended to withdraw: the sinner was transferred to the court of the governor of Rome with a hypocritical request to impose a “merciful” punishment that does not shed blood. In reality, this meant a painful execution - burning alive at the stake.
The full text of the verdict of the secular court has not been preserved. From the passages that have survived to this day, it is known that it dealt with eight heretical statements - but more or less specifically we can talk about only one: the denial that bread can turn into the body of Christ, that is, the church dogma about holy communion.

According to legend, Giordano, after hearing the verdict, said:
- Burning does not mean disproving!
The execution took place on February 17, 1600 in the Piazza des Flowers in Rome. According to evidence, the verdict was deliberately read out so vaguely that the people did not understand who was being set on fire and for what.
Another myth about the great heretic is that the Roman Catholic Church today forgave him and condemned the then actions of the Inquisition. But, unlike Galileo, whom Pope John Paul II completely rehabilitated in 1992, Giordano Bruno has still not been acquitted. Moreover, in 2000, when the 400th anniversary of the scientist’s execution was celebrated, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, acting as an official representative of the Vatican, although he called the actions of the inquisitors a “sad episode,” but emphasized that these people did everything to save the heretic’s life. There was no talk of any forgiveness - so for Bruno the death sentence is still considered justified by the Church.
And despite the fact that back in 1889 a monument to Giordano Bruno was erected on the Square of Flowers, the already mentioned John Paul II, famous for his progressive views, meeting with a group of scientists, when asked why Bruno has not yet been rehabilitated, he sharply answered:
- When you find aliens, then we’ll talk.

The question that interests every generation is how many people did the Inquisition kill? Let's look at a short, but more than comprehensive answer.

The victims of the Inquisition and the issue of blasphemous attitude towards people in the Middle Ages haunt and caress the ears of many modern atheists (as well as believers, one should assume). The word "Inquisition" is perceived in modern society, as something out of the ordinary that discredits the history of Catholicism and the entire church as a whole. It's like being the boss large company and accidentally meet Fedya, who saw you shit yourself as a child. Yes, you don’t do that anymore, but Fedor will never forget about it, and since he also works for competitors, he will not miss the opportunity to remind you of your chocolate incident. We can say that the final argument in a dispute between an ardent atheist and a devout believer is: “But your church actually killed people!”

So what can I say? Well, yes, she killed and did it very inventively: fiercely in prison cells, drowned her and did God knows what else. And all for what? Many will say: “For the sake of saving a lost soul.” But no! Few people know that the death penalty through burning was applied to heretics who did not repent. Simply put, if you haven’t asked forgiveness from the church for being too smart, beautiful, well-read, or simply, then please go to the fire.

The real number of victims of the Inquisition. Available from modern historians facts about the Inquisition are distinguished by their diversity. In addition, we should not forget that all this happened in the period from 1300 to 1700, so a lot could be misunderstood, not written down, fantasized, etc. As for the number of sinners burned at the stake, in archival documents and modern literature can be found absolutely various facts. So, Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code,” he writes that the total number of victims of the Inquisition is 5,000,000. But do not believe this scribbler, since fiction is far from the truth.

The real number of victims of the Inquisition is from 14,000 to 23,000 people. Moreover, these statistics cover not only Spain, but all European countries, where the Inquisition was trending in those years. It seems to you that not so much? Perhaps, but if you add in the crippled bodies and destinies, you can safely add in a few zeros.

Did the Inquisition always kill? Based on the fact that so much dirt was poured on the Inquisition, it is worth saying at least a few good words about this act of the church. So, imagine the situation: the dark Middle Ages and you are accused of a crime committed against the holy church. What to do? You panic, you tear the hairs on your butt, you try to run, your life is over! Of course, the first thing you think is that you will be burned at the stake as a heretic. But no! Most likely, you will simply be expelled from the city and deprived of all your property (some of which will go to the church) or they will simply cut something off, brand you - just business.

But at that time they burned only those heretics who stood their ground to the last and contradicted the moral foundations of the church. Well, or those sinners who were beautiful women. For it was necessary for God’s representatives on earth to know better!

The most popular victims of the Inquisition were not only beautiful women, heretics and scientists, but also everyone who was not pleasing for one stupid reason or another. By the way, it’s worth mentioning separately about scientists. The Inquisition, contrary to popular belief, did not terrorize scientists. Moreover, the activities of the Holy Inquisition often went side by side with universities. It’s just that sometimes the decisions of scientists were perceived as occultism (the demonic heresy that the earth is round). That's why they burned all sorts of upstarts like Copernicus and Bruno at the stake.

In short, you had to sit quietly, not stand out, and at the first opportunity prove your love ruling body. We remind you that we are not talking about the 2000s, but about the deep Middle Ages.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II apologized for the executions carried out by the Holy Inquisition and declared that the Church repented of "actions dictated by intolerance and cruelty in the service of the faith." However, until now, the majority of Catholic hierarchs believe that both the torture of heretics and the persecution of “overzealous” scientists were completely justified. And the second secretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Inquisition), in an interview given to English television in November 2005, agreed that “although the holiness of the late pontiff is not subject to discussion, his decision to condemn the Inquisition was premature.”

But if the methods of the medieval struggle against apostates from the official faith can still be debated, then the negative role of the Inquisition in the development of civilization and the nation is beyond doubt.

The Holy Tribunal was created...

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was distinguished by two striking and closely interrelated phenomena - the Crusades and the Holy Inquisition.

A total of 8 have been carried out since 1096. crusades for the liberation of the Holy Land from the infidels, of which only the first achieved any success - in 1099, the crusaders recaptured Jerusalem from the Muslims, plundered the city, but did not hold it for long. However, it was there, in the Middle East, far from the Holy See, that dissent began to mature among the knights who had seized upon easy prey. Thus, the Order of the Templars appeared, various reform movements began to emerge. In order to protect the official Christian doctrine, Pope Gregory IX created a permanent Inquisition of judges and monks in 1232. The duties of the inquisitors included the “salvation of lost souls” and the eradication of any deviations from the official point of view on both the spiritual and material construction of the world Naturally, any scientific discovery that did not fit within the framework of the “papal” doctrine was recognized as harmful and was persecuted with maximum cruelty.

The fight against science took on especially harsh forms after the papal bull “On Eradication” was issued in 1252, allowing torture.

One step forward and two steps back.

It should be recognized that even before the formation of the Holy Inquisition, the Catholic Church showed intolerance towards science. In 1163 the Pope Alexander III issued a bull banning the study of “physics or the laws of nature.” A century later, Pope Boniface VIII banned the dissection of corpses and chemical experiments. Those who ignored the Pope's orders were imprisoned and burned at the stake.

The situation worsened when, in the 13th century, the then influential theologian Thomas Aquinas put forward the idea of ​​“harmony of faith and reason.” According to it, the human mind is divine in nature, and therefore it must, first of all, substantiate and support the truths of faith, and not question them. Following this formula, pundits had no right to go beyond the boundaries outlined by the medieval theologian. At the same time, science often rolled back to pre-Christian positions, and the development of civilization slowed down. Suffice it to say that even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato in the 4th century BC. e. suggested that the Earth rotates and is spherical. And two millennia later (!) in 1600, according to the verdict of the Inquisition, the famous Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and poet Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for the same assumption.

And this situation remained in literally all areas of scientific thought until the final abolition of the Holy Inquisition in the 19th century.

My tongue is my enemy?

The massacre of Giordano Bruno became the most striking, even textbook, example of the obscurantism of the medieval church.

He was born in 1548, was ordained a priest in 1572, but four years later he was forced to flee Italy for publicly discussing texts prohibited by the church and for some time taught at universities in Europe.

To be fair, it must be said that Giordano Bruno did not propose anything new in astronomy; he only developed and popularized the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543).

Let us recall that Copernicus proposed the so-called heliocentric system for constructing planets, according to which the center of the Universe was not the Earth (which still somehow corresponded church canons), and the Sun. In 1530, he completed his work “On the Conversion of the Heavenly Spheres,” in which he outlined this theory, but, being a skilled politician, did not publish it and thus avoided accusations of heresy from the Inquisition. For more than a hundred years, Copernicus’s book was secretly circulated in manuscript, and the church pretended not to know about its existence. When Giordano Bruno began to popularize this work of Copernicus at public lectures, she could not remain silent.

The church fathers were also irritated by the fact that for the Italian there seemed to be no authority at all. At lectures in Geneva and Axford, he criticized the teachings of Aristotle, which was the basis in the Middle Ages higher education. And revealing to students the secrets of the forbidden teachings of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno went even further - he suggested that the Universe is infinite and consists of a huge number of worlds similar to ours.

The freedom lover was lured back to Italy by deceit, in 1592 he was handed over to the Inquisition and eight years later he was burned at the stake.

In general, the attitude of the church and, accordingly, the Holy Inquisition to the theory of building the world, the development of civilization, reflects, as it were, all stages of its relationship with the progressive science of that time.

At first, the mere assumption that the Earth was round inevitably led a troublemaker to the stake - so, in 1327, the outstanding astronomer Cecco d'Ascoli was burned for such sedition. Then the disposition changed somewhat: if in the case of Copernicus, the scientist refused to promote his ideas and observed the unspoken rules of coexistence with church dogma, they did not touch him and even contributed to his secular career.

Giordano Bruno's mistake was that he did not hide his free-thinking and went into open confrontation with the fathers of the church.

The matches are damp and you can’t light a fire.

The next victim of obscurantism was Galileo Galilei. His fate, according to most researchers, reflects the beginning of the decline of the Holy Inquisition, although it, as we noted, existed until the 19th century.

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564, thirty years after the publication of the work of Nicolaus Copernicus. Although he came from a rather wealthy noble family, his parents, seeing their son’s desire for exact sciences, allowed him to enter the university, after which he received the chair of mathematics in Padua in 1592. It was there that the scientist’s works on dynamics appeared. One by one According to the legends, Galileo carried out his experiments on gravity by throwing various items from the height of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Nevertheless, it was not physics and mathematics that brought Galileo truly worldwide fame, but astronomical discoveries. In 1609, he improved the telescope invented by the Dutch a year earlier and almost immediately discovered that a number of planets had their own satellites. This was another blow to the geocentric system. In 1610, he published his discoveries and became the court philosopher and mathematician of the Duke of Tuscany. Three years later, he described spots on the Sun, the shape of Saturn and the phases of Venus, which proved its rotation around the Sun.

Galileo immediately accepted the theory of Copernicus, but, seeing how the church treated Giordano Bruno, he was in no hurry to publicly declare his views. Only in 1613 did he dare to write to the Pope open letter in defense of this theory and was almost immediately summoned to Rome to give explanations. There the Pope listened to him again, confirmed the immutability of the church’s position in relation to the teachings of Copernicus and forbade “discussing and teaching such heresy.” Galileo obeyed, but in 1632 he still could not stand it and published his famous work “Dialogue of Two major systems world." In it, he finally proved the inconsistency of Aristotle's geocentricity and, with the help of the discoveries he made, confirmed the theoretical constructions of Copernicus.

It seems that after such disobedience, the scientist faced an inevitable path to the Inquisition fire. But times have changed, more than thirty years have passed since the death of Giordano Bruno, obscurantism catholic church was subjected to increasing public condemnation, and for the Holy Inquisition only the public renunciation of Galileo Galilei from his views was sufficient. By the way, the church overturned the verdict of Galileo’s trial only in 1972. And 20 years later, John Paul II recognized both the verdict and the trial as a mistake. For almost 360 years, Galileo was officially considered a heretic!

However, let's return to the 17th century. To paraphrase famous words, we can say: since the time of Galileo, scientists no longer wanted, and the church could not live in the old way. The Holy Inquisition increasingly had to reckon with social processes, and it was coming to an all-powerful end.

A seditious desire to heal.

Before early XIX centuries, inquisitorial tribunals intervened in literally all spheres of human activity.

In the 15th century, the Spanish Inquisition executed the mathematician Valmes just because he solved an equation of incredible complexity. And this, according to church authorities, was “inaccessible to human reason.” According to some reports, the great Leonardo da Vinci left Italy, among other things, because the Inquisition in every possible way prevented his anatomical experiments. And Isaac Newton was saved from the reprisals of Rome only by the fact that the position of the “church courts” in Great Britain was not as strong as in Europe.

But perhaps, after astronomy and mathematics, medicine suffered the most from the Inquisition. We have already mentioned Leonardo's forced emigration. Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo were also doctors by their main profession. In particular, Copernicus is credited with the first successful attempts to cure the plague. But if they all fell out of favor with the church for their other discoveries, then there were those who went to the stake precisely because of their desire to heal people.

Here the logic of the Inquisition was elementary: if God gave life to a person, then he has the right to take it away from him at any time. You shouldn’t interfere with him in this, which means it’s no good to treat people.

The Spanish and Portuguese branches of the Inquisition especially distinguished themselves. In 1553, the great Spanish thinker and physician Miguel Servet was sent to the stake. His only fault was that he dared to put forward the idea of ​​the existence of a pulmonary circulation and foresaw its physiological meaning. The great physician Paracelsus was forced to hide under false names for the last ten years of his life. The Church did not like his idea of ​​​​introducing chemicals into medicine. Even the intercession of high-ranking patients did not help him. Paracelsus died in 1541 in complete poverty.

At the same time, as in the case of astronomy, the actions of the Inquisition pushed medicine back thousands of years. For centuries, the Catholic Church opposed surgery - while modern excavations show that doctors Ancient Rome They successfully performed both abdominal surgeries and the most delicate surgeries on the retina. And chemical compounds in the treatment of gastric diseases were successfully used back in Ancient Egypt.

"Rome has a different opinion."

And of course, the Holy Inquisition could not ignore historians, philosophers, writers and even musicians. Cervantes, Beaumarchais, Molière, and even Raphael Santi, who painted numerous Madonnas and, at the end of his life, was appointed architect of St. Peter's Cathedral, had certain problems with the church. In 1510, Pope Julius II thought that the saints on the ceiling of one of the Vatican loggias were too naked. As a result, the artist was removed from work, and only after he fully realized his guilt and agreed to attribute the missing clothes to the saints, the order was resumed.

According to one version, even the death of the great Mozart is to blame for the Inquisition! Another thing is that in the 18th century, death at the stake was no longer so fashionable, and after the composer’s opera " magical flute“was convicted, a poisoner was sent to Mozart under the guise of a customer... But if this version, like the version about the envious Salieri, still requires evidence, then church trials of philosophers and historians were quite commonplace.

The Italian writer and philosopher, author of the famous utopia “City of the Sun,” Tommaso Campanella, spent 27 years in prison. His "Philosophy Proved by Sensations" was recognized as a "harmful heresy" and was banned from publication.

In 1733, the Inquisition sentenced the historian Belando, whose works are still used in high places. educational institutions Spain. He was persecuted for drawing up civil history Spain, in which he outlined all the events that had occurred in that country since the accession to the throne of Philip V (1700-1733). The Vatican did not like the historian's view of the Holy Inquisition, and even the intercession of the monarch did not help. “Rome has a different opinion,” the verdict read, and Belando was first imprisoned and then in a monastery under the strictest ban on writing anything. Those who tried to stand up for the historian soon found themselves there as well.

It is believed that only in the 17th and XVIII centuries By decision of the “church tribunal”, more than a thousand writers, historians and philosophers were imprisoned, whose works were recognized as not corresponding to the official doctrine.

Name: Giordano Bruno

Date of Birth: 1548

Age: 52 years old

Activity: Dominican monk, philosopher, poet, cosmologist

Family status: wasn't married

Giordano Bruno: biography

In February 1600, in the Piazza des Flowers of Rome, the Italian thinker Giordano Bruno was sentenced to death by burning by the Inquisition. Bruno's personality is so ambiguous that his role in world science and philosophy is still debated. Giordano developed a theory about the structure of the Universe, arguing that the stars are moving celestial bodies, and the Universe is infinite in time and space. But even with his heliocentric picture of the world, the Inquisition punished him only with arrest. Why was Bruno burned?

The situation is also interesting because over the past few decades the Catholic Church has revised a number of decisions of the Inquisition regarding scientists and philosophers, but Giordano Bruno was not one of them. Moreover, the church supports the decision of the Inquisition. So why did the church ministers dislike Giordano so much? Was it because of his scientific views or was the reason much deeper?

Childhood and youth

Philip Bruno was born in 1548, in the town of Nola near Naples, in the family of a hired soldier Giovanni and a poor peasant woman. In 1559, the boy went to Naples with the goal of studying the sciences, including dialectics, literature and logic. Four years later, Philip was sent to a monastery, where he spent 10 years. There the boy received a second name, under which he became known to the world - Giordano.

At the monastery, Philip studied in detail Copernicus’s book “On the Rotation of the Celestial Spheres” and spoke out against traditional beliefs and, pointing out their inconsistency with the data of practical observations. At the age of 24, Giordano became a priest and conducted his first service. Based on the bold statements of the young brother Giordano, the clergy suspected him of heresy.

This forced the young monk to go on the run. He left Italian territory in 1574 and wandered throughout Europe for 17 years. Over the years, Bruno visited Switzerland, England, France, and Germany. In 1577, having arrived in Toulouse (France), Bruno lectured on the science and philosophy of Aristotle. Two years later, Giordano, already in Paris, told the public about the works of the philosopher and theologian Lull, whose worldview he himself shared.

But five years later, the former church minister had a conflict with supporters of the teachings of Aristotle and he was forced to leave Paris, going to London. In England, Giordano worked fruitfully and wrote a number of philosophical treatises. In 1586, the thinker left for Germany, but he was forbidden to lecture in Marburg. Then Bruno took up teaching in Wittenberg.

The science

Giordano Bruno wrote philosophical treatises, spoke at debates, gave lectures, but everywhere in the end he was forced to stop promoting his ideas. The dignitary, who later participated in passing the death sentence on the thinker, wrote that Giordano was an outstanding mind, a philosopher of extraordinary knowledge and erudition.

Bruno strongly opposed the Catholic Church and, in general, any religion existing at that time, calling them the most serious obstacle that science had to overcome on the path of its development. In 1584, his work “On Infinity, the Universe and Worlds” was published.

This work of his is sometimes considered as the basis of modern materialistic natural science, including the doctrine of the material unity of the world and the spatial and temporal infinity of the Universe.

During the same period, the work “Feast on the Ashes” was published, consisting of five dialogues dedicated to the promotion of Copernicus’ astronomical theories. Along with them, the author expresses his ideas about the infinity of the Universe and the plurality of worlds. In this work, for the first time, the belief in oneself as a superman, a messiah, which modern researchers often attribute to the philosopher, manifests itself.

Promoting Copernicus's ideas about the rotation of the Earth and other planets in orbits around the Sun, Bruno did not achieve success even with enlightened minds like and. Disillusioned with the states of central Europe, Bruno went to Prague. Several more books on magic were published there.

In general, Bruno's philosophy was based on Neoplatonism - he believed that there is a certain single beginning that gave continuation to everything in the Universe. But not only the first principle was called God by the thinker, but also nature, and even man - this is something the church could not tolerate.

Today, researchers claim that significant scientific significance Bruno’s ideas did not exist, since they only continued the teachings of Copernicus, expanding it, but not confirming it with an evidence base. All the main ideas and discoveries of Giordano lay in the plane of mysticism or psychology, and not at all astronomy.

However, to completely deny the significance of Bruno's discoveries for modern science incorrect: the philosopher was the first to put forward a hypothesis about the movement of continents, the presence of distant planets invisible to humans, etc.

Personal life

Almost nothing is known about Bruno's personal life. Giordano was not married, had no children, and the thinker did not even have students or followers. Some biographers make assumptions about the philosopher's homosexual inclinations. However, this is not surprising for the morals of the Middle Ages and, in particular, for church ministers.

The most famous image Giordano Bruno

In the photographs of surviving portraits, Giordano appears as a fragile young man with a thoughtful expression on his face. This thoughtfulness, passion for science and mysticism replaced the man with the delights of social life and carnal pleasures in the arms of women.

Death

Returning from his travels around Europe back to Italy, Giordano Bruno immediately fell into the hands of the Inquisition. According to a number of biographers, the philosopher could have avoided the death sentence if not for his speeches against monastic profits and estates and demands for their confiscation. Other researchers believe that the thinker’s statements about the plurality of worlds and the infinity of the Universe became the main reason that aroused the wrath of the Inquisition.

But Galileo’s theories clearly contradicted church doctrines, so why did the Inquisition treat him much more gently and tolerantly? According to researchers, the answer to this question lies in the methods used by thinkers. Galileo was a classical scientist who used mathematical tools to develop theories. And Giordano, rather, is a mystic, a thinker who used instead scientific methods magic where arguments were lacking.

A number of biographers say that the execution of Giordano Bruno was the result not so much of a struggle against science and enlightenment, but rather a struggle for power. Bruno was incredibly convincing in his teachings, and his main ideas were the rejection of religion as such, which was quite dangerous freethinking in the Middle Ages. Bruno was arrested after a denunciation from a certain Mocenigo, who accused the philosopher of heresy. The trial lasted six years, which the philosopher spent in captivity in a Roman prison.

A number of researchers believe that the Inquisition made it possible former priest to renounce heresy and stay alive, but he refused. The text of the sentence that the Inquisition passed on the heretic Giordano was lost, it is only known that the guilt was not at all scientific theories, and in blasphemy a former minister of the church. It was the threat to church authority that became the main reason for the execution of the rebellious and stubborn philosopher.

The personality of Giordano Bruno is so extraordinary that there are more myths about him than facts from his real biography. This is due to the ambiguous attitude of researchers towards his theories and teachings. And indeed, a number of interesting facts took place in the life of the thinker. Thus, even during his life at the monastery, Brother Giordano expressed doubts about the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, horrifying the holy fathers. This fact was later often recalled by the Inquisition during the trial.

His long work in France, despite the local church ministers’ rejection of the philosopher’s ideas, is explained by his phenomenal memory. Henry III drew attention to her and asked to teach him mnemonics. An aristocrat from Venice later made the same request to Bruno, but later it was Mocenigo who wrote a denunciation against his teacher, accusing him of heretical statements.

According to the nobleman, Giordano considered Jesus a magician and argued that his death was accidental, and did not atone for the sins of mankind, but human souls are not immortal in the sense that Christians understand this concept, but are subject to reincarnation after the death of the physical body.

The sentence ultimately passed on the philosopher was “execution without shedding of blood,” which meant death at the stake. And the works of Giordano Bruno were on the list of literature prohibited by the Catholic Church until the mid-twentieth century.

Now on the Square of Flowers in Rome there is a monument to the thinker who considered himself a martyr. But even the opening of the monument was accompanied by scandal and anti-Catholic demonstrations. Another interesting fact is that, contrary to the wishes of the church, centuries later secular society rehabilitated the philosopher: in 1973, a film of the same name was even released in Italy, and even the crater on the Moon is named after Giordano Bruno.

Bibliography

• 1582 – “On the Shadows of Ideas”
• 1582 – “The Art of Memory”
• 1582 – “Song of Circe”
• 1582 – “On the abbreviated construction and addition of the art of Lull”
• 1583 – “The Art of Remembering”, or “The Art of Remembering”
• 1583 – “Sealing of Seals”
• 1584 – “Feast on the Ashes”
• 1584 – “On the cause, the beginning and the one”
• 1584 – “On infinity, the universe and worlds”
• 1585 – “The Killen Donkey”
• 1586 – “On the interpretation of dreams”
• 1588 – “Theses against mathematicians”
• 1595 – “Code of Metaphysical Terms”

On February 17, 1600, according to the verdict of the Inquisition court in Rome, one of the greatest thinkers Renaissance Giordano Bruno. His scientific research on the structure of the Universe was considered heresy, undermining the foundations of faith. In essence, they undermined not faith, but the worldview imposed by the church. And the Inquisition was created so that Catholics would not dare to contradict church dogmas and leave the influence of the Holy See.

Over the six centuries that the Inquisition existed, millions of people found themselves undesirable and were executed or ended their lives in exile. Among them are many epoch-making personalities, whose names will never fade on the pages of history.

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

The legendary Joan of Arc was a commoner who, at the age of 13, began to see saints in visions. The Hundred Years' War raged, and voices allegedly called on Joan to bow to the heir to the throne, Charles VII, to convince him to attack the British and expel them from French lands.

There was a prophecy that God would send France a savior in the form of a young virgin. Therefore, when Jeanne achieved an audience with the king and, during interrogations, convinced him that she was being sent higher power, the girl was entrusted with command of the troops. In white armor, riding a white horse, Jeanne really looked like an angel, God's messenger. Maid of Orleans, demonstrating amazing abilities for a young peasant woman, won one victory after another, everyone joined her army more people, inspired by the image of the holy warrior.

In 1430, Jeanne was captured. The British, in order to justify their defeats, accused her of having connections with the devil and handed her over to the Inquisition. The girl was forced to renounce her “delusions,” branded a heretic, and on May 30, 1431, burned at the stake, tied to a pole in the square of Rouen. 25 years later, at the request of Charles VII, who did not lift a finger to save Jeanne, the trial was reviewed and the unfortunate woman was found innocent.

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

The Neapolitan philosopher Giordano Bruno actively popularized the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus, who developed the concept of a heliocentric world system in his works, was persecuted by the church, but still was not condemned. The fate of his follower was more tragic.

Developing the theory of Copernicus, Bruno put forward ideas about the unity of the Universe and multiplicity inhabited worlds. But the Inquisition persecuted him not for his scientific views, but for his criticism of generally accepted ideas about afterlife. Moreover, he called religion a force that gives rise to wars, strife and vices of society. The churchmen could not forgive this.

In 1592, the Italian was captured and thrown into prison for eight years. They tried to convince him to back down, but Bruno remained true to himself. The court pronounced the death sentence. Having ascended the scaffold, the scientist said: “To burn does not mean to refute! The coming centuries will appreciate and understand me!” Two and a half centuries later, a monument to Giordano Bruno was erected in Campo dei Fiori, where the execution took place.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

The heliocentric system, as we know, was true, so over time many scientists came to it. Including the outstanding Italian physicist, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei. For defending heretical ideas in 1633 he was put on trial.

The process lasted only two months. Galileo was treated relatively carefully due to the fact that he was patronized by Pope Paul V himself. Historians believe that the scientist, as they say, actively cooperated with the investigation and quickly renounced his ideas. Therefore, the legend that after the trial Galileo shouted the sacramental: “And yet she turns!” - is questioned.

A page from the interrogation report of Galileo Galilei with his signature.

Nevertheless, the physicist was still sentenced to life imprisonment. True, the punishment was soon replaced by House arrest, and Galileo spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Inquisition.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Unlike Galileo, the poet Dante was a devout fighter for his beliefs. He regularly attended church, respected the ministers, but, as a true humanist, he could not agree with the cruel sentences that the Lord pronounces on sinners. Among whom, in his opinion, there are many worthy people.

In his great poem « The Divine Comedy", written in the first person, Dante takes pity on gluttons, pagans, soothsayers, and sometimes his compassion is so great that he cannot hold back his tears. Naturally, such a condemnation of the divine will could not but irritate the Inquisition. In addition, the description of the journey through purgatory was clean water heresy, because the dogma of purgatory was introduced by the church much later.

Dante was also disliked because he openly criticized the policies of the pope and was an active participant in the political struggle in Florence. The inquisitors persecuted the poet, and in 1302 he was forced to leave his hometown forever.

Jan Hus (1369-1415)

In the 15th century, an era began in Europe that went down in history as the Reformation - the struggle against the Catholic Church and papal power. One of the first notable figures in this movement was the Czech theologian Jan Hus. He traveled to cities and gave lectures exposing feudal lords and the clergy.

Gradually, Hus's influence on the people's minds became so great that the Pope issued a special bull excommunicating the Czech priest from the church. His sermons were banned, but Hus continued his educational activities.

In 1414 he was summoned to church cathedral in Konstanz, Germany, guaranteeing complete safety. But as soon as the thinker arrived in the city, he was arrested and put in the prison of the Holy Inquisition, where he spent seven months. Even under torture, Hus did not repent, for which he was sentenced to be burned. A fire was built in a nearby square. When the fire had already started, an old woman threw a bundle of brushwood into the fire. “Holy simplicity,” Gus said bitterly.