Post by AuntieSocial on Nov 22, 2003 18:43:54 GMT -5
Vatican on defensive as Italian atheists honour their martyr
400 years after his death, thousands pay tribute to maverick priest who defended science[/b]
Click here to read the article on the original site
By: Rory Carroll
Published: February 17, 2000
Publication: The Guardian
Exactly 400 years after flames silenced his philosophical attacks, a swelling legion of followers will today renew Giordano Bruno's battle against his nemesis and executioner, the Catholic church.
Theologians, scientists, politicians, anarchists and atheists will gather at the Rome vegetable market where he was burned at the stake in 1600, and, in a move which is likely to make the Vatican squirm, hail him a martyr to free thought.
Bruno, a Dominican monk who travelled Europe preaching a blend of rationalism, pantheism and magic, was killed in 1600 after he refused to recant his beliefs during the anti-science backlash of the counter-reformation.
Pope John Paul II will next month strive to cleanse the church's soul by apologising for the execution, but he has ignored the clamour to fully rehabilitate Bruno.
Thousands of anarchists are expected to mobilise at a statue of the Dominican priest in the Piazzo Campo dei Fiori - the site of his execution for heresy - to reclaim his legacy.
"He's a symbol of the temporal powers of the church that we want to fight," said Giorgio Villella, of the Union of Rationalist Atheists and and Agnostics.
This week the former European Union commissioner Emma Bonino and members of Italy's Radical party have joined the throngs leaving roses at Bruno's statue, which has become a secular shrine since being erected amid controversy in 1887.
A separate gathering of international scholars will mark the official anniversary of his execution, which has spawned books, debates and acclaim for a maverick who in his brief life infuriated and insulted Protestants, kings and Oxford university professors.
Bruno was born in Naples in 1548 and was ordained a priest, although he quickly fell out with the church on dogma.
In addition to challenging the eucharist, immaculate conception and church authority, Bruno championed natural magic and endorsed Copernicus's correct but shocking claim that the earth orbited the sun, not vice versa. He also claimed that the earth was only one of an infinite number of inhabited worlds.
In 1576 he came to the attention of the Inquisition and fled abroad. While in England between 1583 and 1585, he trained Queen Elizabeth's court in the art of memory before moving to Oxford university. He left there in disgust after claiming the professors knew more about beer than Greek.
Lured back to Italy in 1591, he was arrested and put on trial for his heretical views. Unlike Galileo he refused to recant and was executed in February 17, 1600, also a holy year.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Vatican's pontifical culture council, has galvanised Bruno's supporters by saying his ideas were incompatible with Christian thought.
"I don't think you can talk about 'rehabilitation' in the Bruno case, since there are no grounds for it," he said.
The pope will apologise only for the execution, not the intellectual rejection of Bruno's ideas.
The apology will be part of a sweeping mea culpa to mark the Vatican's holy year which forms an official apology for persecution and errors committed by Christians over the past 2,000 years.
Gervaise Rosser, an Oxford professor of history, said: "The sad thing about Bruno's reputation in England is that he's remembered, if at all, either as a prophet of modern science or as a weirdo."
But hailing Bruno as a figurehead for science was a mistake, he added. "He used science to look back, not forward. He believed that Copernicus's insight was the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy."
400 years after his death, thousands pay tribute to maverick priest who defended science[/b]
Click here to read the article on the original site
By: Rory Carroll
Published: February 17, 2000
Publication: The Guardian
Exactly 400 years after flames silenced his philosophical attacks, a swelling legion of followers will today renew Giordano Bruno's battle against his nemesis and executioner, the Catholic church.
Theologians, scientists, politicians, anarchists and atheists will gather at the Rome vegetable market where he was burned at the stake in 1600, and, in a move which is likely to make the Vatican squirm, hail him a martyr to free thought.
Bruno, a Dominican monk who travelled Europe preaching a blend of rationalism, pantheism and magic, was killed in 1600 after he refused to recant his beliefs during the anti-science backlash of the counter-reformation.
Pope John Paul II will next month strive to cleanse the church's soul by apologising for the execution, but he has ignored the clamour to fully rehabilitate Bruno.
Thousands of anarchists are expected to mobilise at a statue of the Dominican priest in the Piazzo Campo dei Fiori - the site of his execution for heresy - to reclaim his legacy.
"He's a symbol of the temporal powers of the church that we want to fight," said Giorgio Villella, of the Union of Rationalist Atheists and and Agnostics.
This week the former European Union commissioner Emma Bonino and members of Italy's Radical party have joined the throngs leaving roses at Bruno's statue, which has become a secular shrine since being erected amid controversy in 1887.
A separate gathering of international scholars will mark the official anniversary of his execution, which has spawned books, debates and acclaim for a maverick who in his brief life infuriated and insulted Protestants, kings and Oxford university professors.
Bruno was born in Naples in 1548 and was ordained a priest, although he quickly fell out with the church on dogma.
In addition to challenging the eucharist, immaculate conception and church authority, Bruno championed natural magic and endorsed Copernicus's correct but shocking claim that the earth orbited the sun, not vice versa. He also claimed that the earth was only one of an infinite number of inhabited worlds.
In 1576 he came to the attention of the Inquisition and fled abroad. While in England between 1583 and 1585, he trained Queen Elizabeth's court in the art of memory before moving to Oxford university. He left there in disgust after claiming the professors knew more about beer than Greek.
Lured back to Italy in 1591, he was arrested and put on trial for his heretical views. Unlike Galileo he refused to recant and was executed in February 17, 1600, also a holy year.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Vatican's pontifical culture council, has galvanised Bruno's supporters by saying his ideas were incompatible with Christian thought.
"I don't think you can talk about 'rehabilitation' in the Bruno case, since there are no grounds for it," he said.
The pope will apologise only for the execution, not the intellectual rejection of Bruno's ideas.
The apology will be part of a sweeping mea culpa to mark the Vatican's holy year which forms an official apology for persecution and errors committed by Christians over the past 2,000 years.
Gervaise Rosser, an Oxford professor of history, said: "The sad thing about Bruno's reputation in England is that he's remembered, if at all, either as a prophet of modern science or as a weirdo."
But hailing Bruno as a figurehead for science was a mistake, he added. "He used science to look back, not forward. He believed that Copernicus's insight was the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy."
