Dangerous Cosmology

 In 1584 an ex Dominican priest named Giordano Bruno published two tracts on Cosmology that were extraordinarily prescient in their scope. Going one step further than Copernicus' loose idea that the planets revolved around the sun which was considered both blasphemous and ridiculous by most educated experts at the time, Bruno suggested that the other stars were in fact suns similar to our own. He further suggested that these stars each also had planets in their orbit similar to earth. This was an astoundingly different view of the universe and one that Bruno refused to recant to the end of his life which was to occur some sixteen years later. 

At various points in his life, Bruno was to suggest many things that seemed outlandish and infuriating to authorities in Italy, France, and England. He questioned if Mary was truly a virgin. He suggested that the universe was vast, unknown, and endless with other planets, other life forms, and an endless array of intelligent life that may or may not be similar to human forms. He suggested that reincarnation might be possible and true and studied Cosmology and Astrology from Islamic texts when that culture was vastly superior in knowledge to Western European thought. He also suggested that Jesus and God might not be of the same substance and form and had by 1570 found himself a target of some church leaders bent on punishment for his heresies. 

Finally, in 1592 he made the mistake of going back to Italy as a private tutor for a wealthy patrician in Venice. This eventually led to his imprisonment and trial by the Inquisition. Bruno was both inventive and arrogant it seems. He refused to admit that his views surrounding religion contrasted with Catholic orthodoxy but he also refused to recant his Cosmological views about the universe itself. For seven years his trial continued in Rome. He was eventually judged guilty of crimes against the church and heresy. 

On February 17, 1600 he was burned at the stake in a public square in Rome. He was stripped naked and hung upside down from a stake while a large fire was started below him to slowly burn him alive for his heresies. In order to assure he couldn't spout such heresies during his execution his tongue was placed in a thumbscrew iron clamp that was tightened as tight as possible before burning the protruding end of his tongue with a hot piece of iron so that it would swell enough that he could no possibly remove it from the clamp during his execution. 

Knowledge can literally be a dangerous thing. As late as the year 2000 church leaders publicly regretted the fact that Bruno refused to recant his views. Apparently not so much that they he died for having views antithetical to their beliefs, but that it was necessary to torture and kill him for doing so. Newton, Einstein, and an endless list of some of the brightest minds in history have since proved that Bruno was right about the universe. I somehow doubt that Bruno himself was able to take much comfort in that once they clamped his tongue and roasted him alive.