Bruno had argued that the universe was infinite, that the stars were suns with their own planets, and that the Earth moved, and he had questioned central Christian doctrines, including the divinity of Christ. Arrested in Venice in 1592 and sent to Rome, he refused to recant. On hearing his sentence, he reportedly told his judges that they pronounced it with greater fear than he received it. In 1889 a statue of Bruno was erected on the spot where he died.
Born in Nola, near Naples, in 1548, Bruno entered the Dominican order as a young man but fled it in 1576 after being suspected of heresy. For the next 15 years he wandered through Europe, teaching and publishing in Geneva, Paris, London, Wittenberg and Prague. In England he wrote dialogues defending the Copernican system and going far beyond it, imagining an infinite universe filled with inhabited worlds.
In 1591 a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, invited him to Venice to teach him the art of memory, then denounced him to the Inquisition. Bruno was handed over to Rome, where he was held for seven years. The theologian Robert Bellarmine was among those who examined him. Bruno was accused of heresies about the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and the transmigration of souls, as well as his cosmology.
On February 17, 1600, he was led to the Campo de' Fiori with his tongue restrained so he could not speak, and burned alive. His works were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Nearly three centuries later, supporters of Italy's secular state raised the hooded bronze statue that still stands in the square.
Key people: Giordano Bruno, Pope Clement VIII, Robert Bellarmine